A very large part of the culture doesn't agree at all

Kinfonet Discussion
1

On Dialogue by David Bohm Published in 1990.

P. 70 I say thought pervades us. It’s similar to a virus— somehow this is a disease of thought, of knowledge, of information, spreading all over the world. The more computers, radio, and television we have, the faster it spreads. So the kind of thought that’s going on all around us begins to take over in every one of us, without our even noticing it. It’s spreading like a virus and each one of us is nourishing that virus.

P. 90 I am suggesting, however, that thought is a system belonging to the whole culture and society, evolving over history, and it creates the image of an individual who is supposed to be the source of thought. It gives the sense of an individual who is perceived and experienced. This would be conducive to the next step, which is for thought to claim that it only tells you the way things are and then the individual inside decides what to do with the information—he chooses. This is the picture which emerged gradually; thought tells you the way things are, and then “you” choose how to act from that information.

P. 93 The ordinary picture is that the only connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions is the central entity who does it all and experiences it all. That is one idea of how everything is connected up, and that is why the “central entity” is felt to be so important: everything goes through him. He is at their source, their center. But in fact you can get evidence that thoughts and feelings move as processes on their own; they are not being run by “me.” They are not being produced by the me, and they are not being experienced by the me…

P. 108 All the thoughts, feelings, views, opinions come in, and they are growing in us, even as we think we are resisting them. We are particularly affected by the thought, “That’s his view, and this is mine”—which is false. All the views are just thought. Wherever thought is, it is just thought—it is all one…Thought is all one, manifesting in all sorts of places and with all sorts of specific content. So the spirit of a dialogue is important in facing this question of literal and participatory thought, even though we realize that we are going in a direction which a very large part of the culture doesn’t agree with at all.

Note: After K’s death in 1986, Bohm conducted annual seminars on dialogue in Ojai until 1992. Here’s the link to those recorded seminars as well as some of his recorded discussions with K.

3 Likes
2

And yet thoughts and feelings are clearly being run, produced, and experienced! Assuming I am not the experiencer, what is, who’s the culprit?

They seek him here, they seek him there
The Seekers seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven, or is he in hell?
That damned, elusive, pimpernel!

3

I’m not sure I buy all these theories. But, at least I now know why it seemed dialoguers from Ojai tend to speak of thought as an entity.

4

Why assume there’s a culprit? The experience itself arises within thought, and the ‘experiencer’ is simply the imaginary center created by thought to sustain itself.

5

Why does thought need to sustain its dysfunctional self?

6

Does thought ‘need’ to sustain anything, or is this simply what it does as part of its nature?

Thought, being rooted in memory and habit, operates in patterns. The dysfunction arises not because it intends to sustain itself, but because it is unaware of its own movement. When there is observation of this without resistance or justification, the question of ‘need’ dissolves, and what remains is… clarity.

7

What enables the experience to be known? To what does it appear? The body-mind? Awareness? What is aware? Is awareness itself the awarer?

8

Awareness is simply the clear seeing of what is, without division, without an entity that claims ownership of that seeing.

When we question “what enables” or “to whom it appears,” aren’t we still caught in the pattern of seeking a center, a perceiver? Can we instead remain with the fact of awareness itself, without the need to define or grasp it? In that observation, the question dissolves.

Stay with the question without seeking an answer. Our whole conditioning is against this intention.

1 Like