Conducted at the Apartment of Henrik Tschudi at Tidemandsgt 22, Oslo, Norway
Interviewer Astrid Brekken.
Wholeness
ASTRID BREKKEN: If you should explain your main theory about being, about the universe, about us to a seven year old, how would you say it?
DAVID BOHM: Well, that’s what I meant to say, there’s quantum theory’s not so easy as classical physics, you see, but I think that we could put this idea of enfoldment, that everything becomes a part of everything by enfoldment. Now you see, you have that experience all the time because you can say that when you look at the world, the whole world enters and becomes a part of you through your perception and your consciousness. Now, that affects all that you do and all that you think and everything that happens to you, right? So, it becomes a part of you. So you could say that actually when it comes to the psychological level people are not separate, right? That they are - and this was known thousands of years ago and this was lost since - now, well, also you can see that nature is not separate, that if you take the tree, everything in the tree has come from the air and the water and the sun, and it has all come together. You have to ask the child, how did the tree grow, you see, where did it come from? Now you see, the water, the carbon dioxide came from all over the world, the water from all over the world, and it came together in this tree, and eventually it goes back to into the earth, too. So everything unfolds to give rise to each thing, and each thing enfolds back. Now, the meaning of modern physics is something similar, that the electron can be looked at, the particles of physics, could be looked at that way, right? There’s a…therefore, an internal relationship between everything and everything. Now that idea was the original idea which prevailed for the human race, and even as late as the end of the middle ages it was a commonly held idea of mutual participation, everything participates in everything. So, it’s not such a difficult idea.