Holomovement

This is in many ways a companion volume emanating from the same publisher as The Great Upshift launched in December and edited by Ervin Laszlo and myself. A great deal of collective imagining and thinking is occurring to envision a new worldview and how we might transform our existing systems, values and priorities accordingly. The notion of the holomovement was originated by Honorary Member David Bohm to represent wholeness in flowing movement as a coherent process orientation embodying the dynamism of the verb rather than the fixity of the noun.

This is well articulated in the foreword by William Keepin in the context of the award of the 2022 Nobel Prize for physics for work on non-locality. Bohm’s 1952 theory inspired John Bell to come up with his theorem in 1964, later experimentally validated by the 2022 Nobelists John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. It has taken more than a generation for this work to be formally recognised in this way to constitute scientific recognition of undivided wholeness and intrinsic oneness. Stan Grof puts it slightly differently by stating that his deepest conviction is that each of us is everything.

Readers can consult the article by editors Emanuel Kuntzelman and Jill Robinson above, where they explain the eight fundamental principles of the holomovement as a way of embracing our collective purpose to unite humanity. Bohm was surely right in stating that ‘What is needed today is a new surge that is similar to the energy generated during the Renaissance but even deeper and more extensive…’ involving loosening of intellectual structures and a melting of the hardness of heart that can foster truly creative intelligence. The 16 chapters are divided into two parts, the first discussing attributes of what Bohm called the Implicate Order as a way of understanding reality in its wholeness, and the second focused on experience, practice and action towards wholeness. They feature many well-known thinkers and visionaries.

Important contributions in the first part include Jude Currivan’s exposition of a unitive narrative underpinning the holomovement and an essay by Ervin Laszlo on the holotropic attractor as a bias towards wholeness, complexity and coherence. Earlier thinkers such as Bergson (élan vital), Driesch (entelechy) and Teilhard (syntony) have prefigured this notion resisted by rigid mechanistic thinking. He sees the cosmic attractor as in-formative, in other words creatively mind-like, and the laws of nature as universal algorithms. Moreover, a striving towards wholeness is ultimately a striving towards Love, as Teilhard also envisioned, and as experienced by mystics down the ages.

Readers will be familiar with the Chinese character that denotes crisis as opportunity, which is also an evolutionary pattern. An essay on holistic design and biomimicry suggests that ‘the dissonant story of separation…gives rise to the yearning for harmonic resolution, through belonging, community and collaboration.’ (p. 53) I certainly experience this myself, and the longing for coherence, belonging and love is inherent in the nature of human life. The authors suggest that we must align ‘with life’s regenerative patterns, natural laws, and cosmic principles of highlife creates, composts and regenerates’, giving rise to a thrivability beyond mere survival in a pattern of ‘WEvolution.’

Two chapters are devoted to the crucial issue of values as a grounding for the holomovement. Few readers will be aware of the moral values inscribed on the Scottish Parliamentary Mace: Wisdom, Integrity, Compassion, Justice. This was a visionary statement from 25 years ago, and it would be interesting to know who was on the committee. Indeed, it would be a good practice for parliamentarians to commit themselves to these values at the beginning of each session. I only learned at the memorial service of the Earl of Crawford (1927-2023), whom I knew as a neighbour for 60 years, about the prayers that are read at the start of each session, also in the Lords. Here is the principal prayer:

“Lord, the God of righteousness and truth, grant to our King and his government, to Members of Parliament and all in positions of responsibility, the guidance of your Spirit. May they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind; so may your kingdom come and your name be hallowed. Amen.”

I belong to the generation of compulsory chapel, which I do think can lay a spiritual foundation, not only through prayers, but also the beauty of choral and organ music.

One of the essays formulates the simple principle: beliefs divide and values unite. A 2010 survey in the US showed that nine out of the top ten personal values were exactly the same for Republicans and Democrats: caring, family, humour/fun, honesty, friendship, responsibility, respect, accountability and positive attitude. The only difference was that Republicans chose integrity and Democrats selected compassion. Similar results emerge from Singapore, but include health, happiness and well-being. Lynne Twist and Mary Earle Chase write about the Sophia Century: Divine Feminine Rising. They suggest that benign masculine values when taken to an extreme have led to domination, exploitation, greed, overconsumption and corruption. We now need a balance of heart-centred values: compassion, empathy, nurturance, diversity, equity, inclusion, humility and love. They propose that rebalancing is required so that ‘empathy, insight, nurturing, collaboration, compassion and gratitude can combine with logic, reason, technology, initiative and power to build a world that works for everyone.’ (p. 105) In the short term, this means challenging patriarchy and promoting the Sophia values of feminine wisdom to become Sophia Warriors.

Ken Wilber contributes an essay on waking up, growing up, opening up, cleaning up and showing up within his integral vision. Articles in the second part cover healing the noosphere, the essential role of education, the art of altruism in redefining our true nature, building bridges towards unitive healing and justice, weaving unity and difference into a movement of movements, Earth Voice and a Return to Wholeness as expressions of the soul of the holomovement as an emerging common purpose. One of the metaphors used is the mycelium as a model of networked intelligence and ecosystemic self-organisation with multiple modes of communication and coordination.

Missing from many volumes of this kind is the challenge of power embedded in existing institutions of governments, UN agencies and elite invitational forums like the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos next week. Interestingly, the WEF shares some of the systemic diagnoses found in this volume, but their proposed solutions are centralised, technocratic and authoritarian. Authors in this volume are more aligned with the World Social Forum, and our challenge is how the grassroots can come together in an effective voice characterised by a sense of kinship, unity and harmony in diversity - what Jean Houston calls the possible human and the possible society based on a profound understanding of oneness and interconnectedness enacted by means of a viable theory of change and transformation.