The Quantum Soul (2)

"Bond of Union" - M.C. Escher - Lithograph - 1956

"Omni: That seems to fit in well with your thoughts about death.

Bohm: Death must be connected with questions of time and identity. When you die, everything on which your identity depends is going. All things in your memory will go. Your whole definition of what you are will go. The whole sense of being separate from anything will go because that's part of your identity. Your whole sense of time must go. Is there anything that will exist beyond death? That is the question everybody has always asked. It doesn't make sense to say something goes on in time. Rather I would say everything sinks into the implicate order, where there is no time. But suppose we say that right now, when I'm alive, the same thing is happening. The implicate order is unfolding to be me again and again each moment. And the past me is gone.

Omni: The past you, then, has been snatched back into the implicate order.

Bohm: That's right. Anything I know about "me" is in the past. The present "me" is the unknown. We say there is only one implicate order, only one present. But it projects itself as a whole series of moments. Ultimately, all moments are really one. Therefore now is eternity.
In one sense, everything, including me, is dying every moment into eternity and being born again, so all that will happen at death is that from a certain moment certain features will not be born again. But our whole thought process causes us to confront this with great fear in an attempt to preserve identity. One of my interests at this stage of life is looking at that fear."

- Excerpt of an interview with quantum physicist, David Bohm, conducted by F. David Peat and John Briggs;  originally published in Omni Magazine, January 1987.

***

I was doing a bit of research for a recent post (Quantum Esoterica) on my art blog , when I came upon this interview with David Bohm , the quantum physicist I most admire, in which, among other topics, he talks about death; so, I thought this might supplement my previous "quantum" post.

 As it was, after suffering through a period of emotional depression following the time of this interview, Bohm died of a heart attack in 1992. His last book,  The Undivided Universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory , was published a year after his death. 

That being said, in this interview excerpt, it almost seems as if he's referring to "memories" as the standard localized neurological codes of a dying brain, as opposed to the more intriguing concepts of consciousness I generally associate with him: i.e., the brain as merely a receiver and translator of non-local waves of codified information. But maybe that's just my own spin, combined with philosophical artifacts picked up elsewhere.

Then again, from a transdimensionalist's point of view, if the "implicate order" is an infinite, multi-dimensional order - which I somehow always assumed it was - it seems that "features", which have apparently "sunk" into the oblivion of the implicate order, may well have the ability to explicate in another dimension. But, once again, that just might be my own misinterpretation.

Incidentally, you may recall F. David Peat's name appearing on PMB in the past... notably on the following posts: The Hypocrisy of Science and Materialism: "Thoughtcrime", Wolfgang Pauli and #137, Synchronicity and the Skies above... Volcanoes!, and The Red Book.