PATHWAYS OF CHANCE

As readers will be aware, David Peat died in the summer – on the same day as Jung – before he was able to take part in our centenary conference on David Bohm, with whom he had a long and close relationship. I thought I would reread his autobiography, which interweaves a number of important themes with his life story. It is worth quoting his overall statement from the back cover at some length: 'the new vision I'm calling for would extend throughout all phases of our lives and transform not only ourselves but also our society and its activities. Hand-in-hand with that transformation comes a new order of thought, a new way of integrating experience, perception and knowledge; one that combines intellectual rigour with creative openness; one that values harmony and balance over formal logic and surface consistency. It is not that human reason is to be thrown out of the window but that reason should be enriched by a new logic of perception, compassion, harmony and love.' This sums up his work and approach, which brought together science, art, language, psychology and spirituality.

David was brought up in Liverpool and hugely influenced by his aunt, showing a precocious capacity and curiosity that sometimes needed to be curbed, such as when he dissolved part of the interior of the fridge with his chemistry set. He also read voraciously in science, literature and art, and acquired an early and extensive knowledge of music - he was able to borrow records and develop his own tastes, from jazz to Bach. His art master encouraged him to contemplate great works, which he subsequently did in many galleries around the world, and which undoubtedly influenced his perceptions in other areas. In one of eleven 'excursions' woven into the book, he discusses his experience with the Blackfoot and the way their language worked, a theme he also developed with David Bohm.

At one point in his career, he was given the friendly advice to avoid David Bohm if he wanted to develop his own reputation - advice he naturally ignored. It is fascinating to read about how they talked and interacted together, and also about Sir Roger Penrose, who was also at Birkbeck at the time and whose seminars were memorable for their spontaneous creative brilliance. As readers of the last issue will appreciate, Bohm was as much a philosopher as a physicist, with an extraordinarily penetrating and subtle mind. Their conversations explored the nature of consciousness as well as dialogue and his ideas on the implicate order, undivided wholeness and active information. John Wheeler was another important influence with his move from observer to participator.

Participation is also implied in synchronicity, about which David wrote a book and gave courses. As a physicist, he was also interested in his relationship and work with Pauli. For David, synchronicity transcended the restrictions in time and space, and within the present are contained and enfolded the orders of time and the patterns of meaning to unfold. Synchronicity played an important role in bringing him to the hilltop village of Pari in Tuscany, where he spent the last 20 years of his life. For a while after he arrived, he literally did nothing – sitting in a deck chair looking out over the landscape. Gradually things began to take shape, the 'Palazzo' at the top of the hill was refurbished and served as a meeting space bringing people together from around the world to this magical place. The Pari Centre for New Learning was established, respecting the locals and the rhythms of the seasons, bringing new faces into this traditional landscape where people have been making olive oil and wine for centuries.

Beyond the passive observer of landscape, David explored 'inscape', a term coined by Gerald Manley Hopkins and representing our capacity to take each experience and perception as unique and authentic and reminding us that 'every analysis is incomplete and provisional, dependent on a wider context'. Artists like Monet and Cezanne return 'again and again to that act of perception and depiction, each time discovering new levels of truth, yet questioning how that truth is to be made manifest in line, form, mass, colour, texture and so forth' in a new level or expression of integration. He illustrates this by conjuring up the process of Cezanne painting a group of apples, engaging each one directly, then in relation to the others: 'the order of the canvas is emerging both out of the authenticity of each object in itself and the dynamic position that it occupies upon the canvas.' (p. 134) Again, this is a process of participation and creative emergence.

The same applies to David's concept of gentle action, respecting context and systemic complexity as well as recognising the limits of control in a fundamentally holistic world. It is underpinned by harmony and love while acknowledging the danger of unpredicted consequences arising from linear thinking. He sums up these reflections in a series of guidelines: foster transparency and openness, respect the whole and competition, acknowledge redundancy, respect creativity and accept uncertainty. In reflecting on David's life and work, I am left with the sense of a quest for connection and a search for meaning across the disciplines while respecting the contribution each has to make in a dance within the whole.