Formless and the Formed

David Bohm sought to understand an underlying reality that held, as one, 'energy', 'matter', and 'meaning'.

To do so, he created a new ontology, one that was radically different from a reality defined by Cartesian dualism.

This ontology held a dynamic tension reminiscent of Whitehead's three ultimates of 'God', 'World' and 'Creativity'.

Bohm's reality was defined by types of order of a unified whole, chiefly the enfolding 'implicate order' and an unfolding 'explicate order' all flowing within a unified movement, something he called 'holomovement'.

The implicate order is without space and time, a flowing formless energy which we now recognize as 'quantum fluctuations' .

From that formless energy, form appears – Ontic Form which Whitehead called 'actual occasions' and Bohm referred to as 'moments'. Moments of unfolding that then enfold once again in an integrated universal 'holomovement'.

We sense that these explorations are reconnecting us to ancient wisdom not only in our western and eastern religions but also that long held by indigenous people but largely forgotten by the rest of us.

Wisdom revealed, for instance, by Australian aboriginal people of non-temporal experience of 'Altjira', the divine absolute. Wisdom revealed by other North American people through the mystical non-temporal experiences, such as those within sweat lodges.

Experience of the formless that informs the formed that we sense may be associated with the Monadic Vortex experienced within Individual and Collective Emergence.