... and the Unfolding

“As above, so below” Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet

Physicist David Bohm believes our lives as we perceive them are actually mirages. Underlying them is an immeasurable and incomprehensible level of reality from which our physical experience is created. He refers to this level of reality as the implicate (or enfolded) order. He refers to our current, physical level of existence as the explicate (or unfolded) order.

Bohm believes that all appearances in the universe are caused by an endless flow of enfoldings and unfoldings that occur between these two orders. For example, when a subatomic particle appears, it has unfolded from the implicate order into the explicate order. When it is destroyed it enfolds back into the implicate. This has striking implications relating to non-locality, the interconnectedness of the universe and the phenomenon we call death.

His description of these orders leads us to assume that the implicate, at some level, provides the template for the explicate. And that appears to be true. There is a background to our reality that we do not normally perceive.

Dr. Richard Gerber asserts that the etheric body is comprised of a holographic energy template that serves as the blueprint for the spatial organization of the fetus. In the 1940’s, neuroanatomist Harold Burr was started to discover that salamanders possessed an energy field shaped like the adult animal and that the field contained an electrical axis aligned with the brain and spinal cord. More striking, however, was the fact that the axis formed in the unfertilized egg. He also found that the electrical field around a seedling is not the shape of the seedling – it is the shape of the adult plant. This strongly suggests that living organisms are ordained to follow an established growth template birthed at some level of the implicate order.

More supports are found in Kirlian photography – a method where objects are photographed in the backdrop of a high frequency, high voltage, low amperage electric field. Kirlian photography captures the image of an objects electromagnetic field, which appears as a corona discharge of various colors. If you photograph a maple leaf using this technique, you will clearly see the electrical discharge surrounding the edges of the leaf. If you cut the leaf in half and photograph it again, you will not see the physical part of the leaf that was removed. But you will continue to see the “shape” of the entire leaf in the form of the corona discharge. The electromagnetic field cannot be amputated because it remains the template of the organism. This helps explain why healers can affect the physiological health of a person by manipulating the energy field and why amputees feel phantom pain in lost limbs. Perhaps Bohm is close to the truth – our existence on earth may be a form of illusion with the primary reality of our consciousness being housed in the implicate order.

A while ago I was strolling through a Florida airport killing time between flights. People watching is a favorite pastime of mine and this airport was the perfect setting – filled with people bustling here and there. As I walked along, I was started when my vision abruptly changed. The “normal” landscape flickered out and was replaced by what I can only describe as some level of the implicate background of the entire setting. People appeared as fluid, colorful patterns and templates of light energy. Their physical constructs were completely gone although their energetic structures approximated the shapes of their bodies. If someone was running or walking quickly, an ethereal trail of dissipating colors flowed behind them. People who were engaged in animated conversation projected clouds of color toward the people with whom they were talking … and the energy fields of many individuals merged together in a type of fused configuration. As strange as it may seem, even the building itself appeared to possess some type of individual consciousness with its own vibrational pattern and template. There are, frankly, no words adequate to accurately describe what I saw. After a few moments my vision returned to “normal.” But I was left with a greater appreciation for the background of our existence.

My experience helped further shift my thinking about who we are and how we can function in this world. Spend a few minutes meditating on what these insights mean to the fields of medicine, theology, psychology and sociology. If you knew you were more than what you see in the mirror – that you were a child of the implicate order – how would you change your thinking and your living?