David Bohm and the portal: physics of the soul without the quantum charlatans

When I say «physics of the soul», it is easy to file me among the charlatans — next to those who sell «quantum healing» and stick the word «quantum» onto any nonsense. So I name at once the man I stand behind: David Bohm. A real physicist, a colleague of Einstein, not a coach with a slide deck.

And the word «physics» beside the word «soul» does not trouble me. For me the spiritual world is primary and the material world secondary — but between them there is an absolute link that I cannot yet put into human language. Bohm spent his life searching for a language for exactly that link. That is why he is close to me.

What Bohm saw

Bohm distinguished two orders. There is the explicate order — the one we see: separate things, separate people, separate events scattered in space. And there is the implicate order, hidden, folded — where everything is enfolded in everything, where there are no separate parts but one movement, out of which the surface unfolds like a pattern out of cloth.

He said: separateness is not the truth of the world, it is a habit of the mind. At depth, everything is connected to everything. Matter and consciousness are not two different substances but two sides of one movement.

For me this is not physics — it is a description of what I paint. My portal-«0», from which the soul is born, is an attempt to show the implicate order: the point where there are not yet separate things, but already everything. The painting «Birth of the Soul» is about that very moment when the one unfolds into the particular. And notice: this is not the «quantum mysticism» of the advertisements. Bohm derived his wholeness through rigorous physics. The difference between him and the sellers of «quanta» is the difference between a cathedral and a postcard of a cathedral.

Where his model is not complete for me

Bohm, for all his depth, stayed in words. His instrument was theory and dialogue: he believed people would see wholeness if they spoke rightly. He wrote books about it, held long conversations. He explained the whole — to the mind.

That is enormous work, and I do not correct it; my model simply begins where his language reaches its edge. The whole is hard to explain in words: words by their nature divide, cutting the one into «this» and «that». And what is primary cannot be cut.

So I do not prove to you that the world is one — I set you before an image where it is visible before any word. Where portal, figure, light and geometry are not «connected by logic» but plainly arise from one. Bohm addressed the mind that will understand. I address the thing in you that recognizes without explanation. Both entrances lead into one room. I simply chose the one without words.

What this means for you

Honestly, with no promises: a painting proves nothing and heals no one. It is not an instrument and not a pill.

But if Bohm is right and separateness is a habit of the mind, then it has cracks. Moments when you suddenly feel that everything is connected: in silence, in nature, before a strong image. A good painting makes such a crack on purpose. It does not convince you of oneness — for a second it returns you into it.

And still

Bohm searched for a language in which the whole could be spoken of without cutting it into parts. He never found words that satisfied him — and I understand him, I have not found them yet either.

Perhaps that is why the whole fell to art and not to physics alone. A painting does not divide. Look at one thing beside you — truly, all the way. If you look honestly enough, the border between you and it begins to melt. Bohm called it the implicate order. I call it painting.

The work in question — «Birth of the Soul» →

— Evgeny Fleysher