The great physicist/philosopher, David Bohm, suggests that the universe is multi-dimensional, and many physicists today agree, but that there are dimensions which our faculties or senses cannot experience without heightened or awakened faculties as mentioned in the section on Revelation. Bohm suggests a general other state to the one we experience daily, implicit rather than explicit, unmanifest rather than manifest, interior rather than exterior. Physicists already generally agree that there is a vast unknown within and in between the great physical universe which we know by experience. This can be described as the ‘interiority'.

Bohm believes that these dimensions or a great hidden interiority may constitute a deeper dimension of reality. Space and time might actually be derived from it and indeed everything we perceive and experience in a physical sense. We and the world and the universe as we experience them may be manufactured by this hidden ‘Implicate Order' and projected (or exuded!) out onto the beautiful but lonely surfaces of our planetary universe. Back, however, within the Implicate Order everything is connected; and, in turn connected to us, although we may not all, or always, be aware of this connection. At the centre of this great interiority may be the divine Presence or cosmic or holy Intelligence.

Bohm believes that the Implicate Order has to be extended into a multidimensional reality; in other words, the holomovement endlessly enfolds and unfolds into infinite dimensionality. Within this milieu there are independent sub-totalities (such as physical elements and human entities) with relative autonomy. The layers of the Implicate Order can go deeper and deeper to the ultimately unknown. It is this 'unknown and undescribable totality' that Bohm calls the holomovement. The holomovement is the 'fundamental ground of all matter'.

Bohm's theory of the Implicate Order stresses that the cosmos is in a state of process. His cosmos is a 'feedback' universe that continuously recycles forward into a greater mode of being and consciousness. Each of us if we choose can be part of this mechanism.

The Implicate Order implies enfoldment into everything. Everything that is and will be in this cosmos is enfolded within the Implicate Order. There is a special cosmic movement that carries forth the process of enfoldment and unfoldment (out into the explicate order where we exist or appear to exist). This process of cosmic movement, in endless feedback cycles, creates an infinite variety of manifest forms and mentality. Bohm is of the opinion that a fundamental Cosmic Intelligence is the 'Player' in this process; it is engaged in endless experimentation and creativity. This Player, the Cosmic Mind, is moving cyclically onward and onward accruing an infinity of experienced being!

What is it that emerges from this ultimate ground, this 'unknown totality of the universal flux'? It is the extension of the Implicate Order into a multidimensional reality. It is the interplay between the implicate and the explicate orders. It is the flow of matter, manifested and interdependent, towards consciousness.

What we experience - 'abstracted and separate forms that manifest to the senses, forms that have an approximate kind of recurrence, stability and separability'. These forms are capable of appearing tangible, solid, and thus make up our manifest world. So what lies ahead? For Bohm it is the development of consciousness! Bohm conceives of consciousness as more than information and the brain; rather it is information that enters into consciousness. For Bohm consciousness 'involves awareness, attention, perception, acts of understanding, and perhaps yet more'. Further, Bohm parallels the activity of consciousness with that of the Implicate Order in general.

Bohm considers the human individual to be an 'intrinsic feature of the universe, which would be incomplete--in some fundamental sense' if the person did not exist. He believes that individuals participate in the whole and consequently give it meaning. Because of human participation, the 'Implicate Order is getting to know itself better'.

Bohm also senses a new development. The individual is in total contact with the Implicate Order, the individual is part of the whole of mankind, and he is the 'focus for something beyond mankind'. Using the analogy of the transformation of the atom ultimately into a power and chain reaction, Bohm believes that the individual who uses inner energy and intelligence can transform mankind. The collectivity of individuals has reached the 'principle of the consciousness of mankind', but they have not quite the 'energy to reach the whole, to put it all on fire'.

Continuing with this theme on the transformation of consciousness, Bohm goes on to suggest that an intense heightening of individuals who have shaken off the 'pollution of the ages' (wrong worldviews that propagate ignorance, such as dominant narratives which promote ideologies), who come into close and trusting relationship with one another, can begin to generate the immense power needed to ignite the whole consciousness of the world. In the depths of the Implicate Order, there is a 'consciousness, deep down - of the whole of mankind'.

It is this collective consciousness of mankind that is truly significant for Bohm. It is this collective consciousness that is truly one and indivisible, and it is the responsibility of each human person to contribute towards the building of this consciousness of mankind, this noosphere! "There's nothing else to do - there is no other way out. That is absolutely what has to be done and nothing else can work." Bohm also believes that the individual will eventually be fulfilled upon the completion of cosmic noogenesis. Referring to all the elements of the cosmos, including human beings, as projections of an ultimate totality, Bohm notes that as a 'human being takes part in the process of this totality, he is fundamentally changed in the very activity in which his aim is to change that reality, which is the content of his consciousness'. Bohm is intuiting that the human person and mankind collectively, upon accomplishing a successful noogenesis, will come to fullness within that greater dimension of reality - the Cosmic Apex.

Bohm considers that consciousness is an exchange between the explicate and implicate orders. Consciousness is part of the play of the cosmic process, grasping itself (through its sub-totalities) into higher and higher levels of consciousness. Logically, if cosmic sub-totalities (such as human beings) can be considered to be persons (of which only a few are developing toward higher levels of Personhood), then through the feedback interchange, the cosmos is becoming progressively personalized as well.

For Bohm unfolded creative intelligence originated in the depths of the generative order (the Implicate Order). "In the free play of thought," Bohm says, the "creative intelligence responds to opposition and contradiction with new proposals." He believes that every aspect of human experience, whether physical or mental, emotional or intellectual, can be 'profoundly affected by creative intelligence, wherever this is able to act'. This is a 'breakthrough' experience, because through the action of cosmic creative intelligence 'everything may take on a new meaning'.

Our limited faculties

As David Bohm leads us to believe one great ‘manifestation’ of the unknown (quotation marks acknowledging the paradox of a manifestation of what is unmanifest) is the acceptance of the existence of a great interiority within (or containing) the universe itself. A reader new to this concept should take time to read more about the work of David Bohm, which is linked from below.

No matter how much we improve them, our perceptive and emotional faculties and our ability to expand our levels of awareness are ultimately limited and no match for the vastness and complexity of the unknown, which may encompass this interiority. Imagine then if there was a buried human faculty, which in extraordinary circumstances could be activated to allow access to, or experience of, part of the great unknown, for example those great other dimensions, or the holomovement itself, described by Bohm.

This would mean that an individual, no matter how minute, is no longer overwhelmed by the vastness of either the perceived physical universe or the great unknown.

This possibility is explored in the section on Revelation.

Read up on the work of David Bohm.

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