14. THE FINITE, THE
INFINITE, AND THE DESTINY
STATE

THIS ENERGY, OR SPIRIT, INFUSES ALL LIVING BEINGS, AND WITHOUT IT ANY ORGANISM MUST FALL APART INTO ITS CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS.
– David Bohm

The next morning, David convened the meeting by reading a short piece Bohm had written in 1987 to be read at the memorial service for a lifelong friend, a classmate of Bohm’s at Penn State University. The piece was later read at Bohm’s own memorial service at Birkbeck College:

The field of the finite is all that we can see, hear, touch, remember, and describe. This field is basically that which is manifest, or tangible. The essential quality of the infinite, by contrast, is its subtlety, its intangibility. This quality is conveyed in the word spirit, whose root meaning is “wind or breath.” This suggests an invisible but pervasive energy to which the manifest world of the finite responds. This energy, or spirit, infuses all living beings, and without it any organism must fall apart into its constituent elements. That which is truly alive in the living being is this energy of spirit, and this is never born and never dies.

After David concluded, he stood without comment while we all absorbed what had been read. The solemnity of the moment was manifest, the energy in the room palpable. Without further comment, David asked Basil Hiley, if he could, to be the first to present.

Basil spoke for about an hour, using the blackboard part of the time to write mathematical equations – very quickly, but in a fluid, sweeping way that I found completely absorbing. I had never seen a physicist “speak” this way before – it was a process and a language that would be repeated by the physicists that day and the next. At one point, Andrew and I exchanged glances, and he said, “The math – the beauty of it – we don’t understand it at one level, but at another, we do completely. It’s like listening to opera – in Italian.”

At one point later in the day, Yakir was performing “opera” at the blackboard with his chalk. It was magnificent, although I couldn’t understand any of it. But in the midst of it he exclaimed, “The Destiny State,” paused a moment, and then went on writing at the blackboard. Later I found out from David that Yakir had been showing how to derive dynamic, living time out of the mathematics. He was showing that time, although it can run in reverse sequence, moves into the future, attracted by what he calls a destiny state. I found this to be a stunning statement – because it’s exactly as I picture the dynamics of the universe and an unfolding future. It comports precisely with the guiding principles lying at the heart of the Stage IV organization and helps to explain why they are so successful: their unfolding future is driven by their strong sense of meaning and purpose.

Of all those in the room, Basil was the one who had worked most closely with Bohm for the longest period of time. He was Bohm’s assistant. Bohm would have the original ideas. Basil would then work out the mathematics. Several days later, Basil would present his mathematics to Bohm, who appeared to have already arrived at the same point via intuition.

Throughout the later decades of his life, Bohm sought a new order in physics. According to Bohm, the ground, or essence, of the cosmos is not elementary particles, but pure process – a flowing movement of the whole. Within this new order, Bohm deeply believed one could resolve the ancient conception that mind and matter are separate – that mind cannot act on the material universe. It was his conviction that the entire universe is intricately connected – it is all about relationship – and that this is an undeniable, underlying truth. As Basil said that day to me, “Wholeness is built into the universe – there is no hierarchy. Bohm’s life was infused by a search for this truth, no matter what the consequences.”

Basil and Bohm set out to search for this new order in physics, developing the idea of nonlocality in quantum theory, the implicate order, quantum potential, and the notion of active information.