Kabbalah and the Physics of David Bohm

Amit Goswami

Olival Freire

Chris Talbot

M. Teodorani

Hyman M. Schipper

The last century has witnessed a remarkable conflation of thought between contemporary physics and the Jewish mystical tradition or Kabbalah. Nowhere does this merger resonate more cogently than with ideas promulgated by the influential and iconoclastic physicist, David Bohm. Notwithstanding the radically different lexicons invoked, there exist striking conceptual parallels between the ‘implicate-explicate orders’ and ‘holographic universe’ of Bohmian mechanics and the fundamental Kabbalistic principles of Enclothement, Interinclusion, and Interpenetration. In this confluence of Bohmian mechanics and Jewish mysticism, and drawing on additional insights derived from mainstream quantum and relativistic physics, a Kabbalistic ontology of consciousness incorporating the tenets of panpsychism and panentheism is presented. The phenomenon of synchronicities is analysed through the lenses of Kabbalistic panpsychism and Bohmian physics to underscore further the conceptual homologies that exist between these disparate disciplines. Potential implications of this exercise for epistemology, science, and religion are briefly considered.

Laurence Bettany

David Bohm (1917-93) was a highly original and individual physicist. His novel ideas and profound intuition extended not only to the physical world but also to the nature of consciousness and society. Bohm regarded science as having become essentially fragmented in its approach to understanding physical reality and sought a more holistic physics based on order, transformation and flowing movement. His notion of an implicate order provides an unusual and exciting challenge for both teachers and students alike.