Why did Bohm Collaborate with Krishnamurti?
Some Reminiscences and Reflections
David Edmund Moody
This article is adapted from
a talk the author gave in
London on June 24 at the
Bohm/Prigogine centennial
celebration conference.
It is based upon his recent
book, An Uncommon
Collaboration: David
Bohm and J. Krishnamurti.
Both David Bohm and Ilya
Prigogine were honorary
members of the SMN.
The article gives a unique
insight into the relationship
between the two men by
someone who knew them
both well.
Background
David Bohm was 43 years old when he met
Krishnamurti, and Krishnamurti was 66.
The year was 1961, and their work together
continued for a quarter of a century, until
Krishnamurti died in 1986. During those
25 years, the two men participated together
in 144 recorded dialogues. Many of these
were with various groups of people, but
there were 30 recorded conversations
consisting of just the two men talking
together. These were published in a series
of books, including Truth and Actuality,
The Ending of Time, The Limits of Thought,
and The Future of Humanity.
Many of Bohm’s colleagues in the scientific
world held a somewhat negative or
disparaging attitude toward his involvement
with Krishnamurti’s work, and, on the
surface of events, one can understand why.
To someone not familiar with Krishnamurti’s
actual philosophy, it might appear that he
was an unscientific individual, probably
some kind of mystic or the leader of a
cult. His name alone would have evoked
associations with Maharishi, or Yogananda,
or perhaps someone who made substances
materialise by rubbing his fingers together.
In addition to his name, Krishnamurti had
a close affiliation in his youth with the
Theosophical Society. That organisation
raised him from the age of 14 and cultivated
him to become an important spiritual
teacher. But the Theosophical Society had a
strongly esoteric or occult component, which
probably reinforced or cemented in the
minds of some people the image of a guru
offering platitudes to a credulous cult
of followers.
But if one looks underneath the surface,
the reality of Bohm’s relationship with
Krishnamurti was very different. The most
important difference is that the image of
Krishnamurti as a cult figure is completely
divorced from who he actually was. Early
in his career, more than 30 years before he
met David Bohm, Krishnamurti categorically
separated himself from his theosophical
roots, and he made it a central pillar of his
philosophy not to encourage or develop
any sense of authority in psychological or
religious matters. He emphasised repeatedly
that he was not a guru, not a leader, not an
authority, and that he did not want to create
any kind of organisation to join or any sense
of belonging to a special group of followers.
On the contrary, “Be a light to yourself” was
one of his most frequent and familiar refrains.
Bohm’s relationship with Krishnamurti was
based on something entirely different than the
superficial image of a guru and his follower.
The reality is that Krishnamurti developed
a comprehensive and original philosophy
of mind, a deep and elaborate exposition of
the nature and structure of consciousness,
including a diagnosis of the sources of
illusion and of conflict in the individual and
in society. That detailed, concrete, and radical
philosophy is what attracted Bohm
to Krishnamurti.
And so the relationship between these two
men was indeed highly unusual, but not
for the reasons Bohm’s scientific colleagues
might have imagined. Their relationship
was uncommon because Krishnamurti’s
philosophy of mind was uncommon.
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It is very original and entirely outside the
mainstream of conventional ways of thinking.
And so the question is not, what caused
Bohm to abandon his scientific background
and pursue a mindless allegiance to the leader
of a cult. The real question is what moved
Bohm to become so involved and invested in
this particular philosophy of mind, one so
radical, original, and outside the parameters
of conventional ideas.
Krishnamurti’s philosophy
Space does not permit any thorough
description of Krishnamurti’s philosophy,
but here is a brief summary, for illustrative
purposes, of some of the principles or ideas
that he rejected or objected to:
• Nationalism
• Organised religion
• All psychological authority
• Fame, pleasure, ideals, “seeking”
• All systems or methods of meditation
• Knowledge as a source of transformation
• Psychological achievement, “becoming”
Each one of these items represents just the
tip of a large iceberg. Krishnamurti would
never have presented them in this summary
form or any kind of epigrammatic or casual
fashion. Rather, each point was the product
of a complete and detailed exposition.
These are just a few highlights that I have
pulled together to illustrate the original and
unconventional character of his philosophy.
But in addition to what he rejected, here is
a list of some of the things he encouraged or
actively endorsed:
• Nature
• Intelligence (as distinct from
intellect)
• Facts
• What is (not escaping)
• Inquiry – doubt, questioning
• (True) meditation
• Not-knowing
Common elements
With this as background, we can examine
what influences or sequence of events
contributed to Bohm’s involvement with
this philosophy. We can begin with the fact
that quantum physics, which is the branch
of physics that deals with events inside the
structure of the atom, is a field of science
highly conducive to philosophical inquiry.
When you penetrate quantum mechanics to
its deepest level, many of the principles of
ordinary reality that we take for granted fly
out the window and give rise to questions
that are normally the province of philosophy.
Perhaps the most notorious of the strange
features of the quantum world is the
connection between the apparatus that
we use to observe quantum events and the
events under observation. In the quantum
domain, the act of observation is inextricably
linked with whatever is observed. This basic
reality bears a strong resemblance to one of
Krishnamurti’s most characteristic statements
about events in the psychological field:
that the observer is the observed. Indeed, it
was precisely this feature of Krishnamurti’s
philosophy of mind that initially attracted
Bohm’s interest and led to his involvement
with Krishnamurti’s work.
But this is not the only feature of quantum
reality that connects with Krishnamurti’s
philosophy. Another important and
controversial element of the quantum domain
is a principle called non-locality. Some of
the experimental evidence suggests that
subatomic particles that are separated at a
distance from one another may be related
or “entangled” so that what happens to one
particle immediately affects or influences
what happens to the other. This phenomenon
is called non-locality because it does not seem
to matter whether or not the particles are
located near to one another. They can still be
connected or related no matter how far apart
they may be.
What non-locality suggests is an underlying
wholeness or deep connectivity within the
basic fabric of physical reality. It is partly
for this reason that wholeness was a crucial
feature in the development of Bohm’s
theoretical physics. It is a key concept in his
most important book, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order.
The principle of wholeness was also a
central feature in Krishnamurti’s philosophy
of mind. He held that consciousness as we
know it is divided in numerous ways, and
that these divisions are inherently illusory. He
maintained that the divisions in consciousness
are a by-product of our failure to understand
the nature of thought and cognitive processes,
and that a true and accurate perception
brings about psychological wholeness. This
fundamental element of his philosophy was
similarly important to Bohm and formed one
of the basic elements of their collaboration.
Bohm’s political affiliations
The philosophical nature of quantum
mechanics was not the only stream of
inquiry that brought Bohm into contact
with Krishnamurti. A second stream had its
roots in his interest in Marxist philosophy.
During his graduate years working with
Oppenheimer at the University of California
at Berkeley, several of Oppenheimer’s students
were interested in and attracted to Marxist
ideology, as was Oppenheimer himself to
some extent.
Because of Oppenheimer’s involvement in the
Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb
during World War II, his graduate students
were under some degree of surveillance
by the army intelligence and the FBI. As a
result, in 1949, when Bohm was working as
a professor at Princeton University, he was
called to testify before the House Committee
on UnAmerican Activities regarding people
he knew and political activities from several
years earlier.
Because he refused to answer all of the
Committee’s questions, Bohm was indicted,
along with dozens of others, and tried in
federal court. The court exonerated him, but
the president of Princeton University was a
devout anti-Communist, and he intervened
in what was normally a faculty decision and
refused to renew Bohm’s contract. That is
what led Bohm to leave the United States and
to take a position at a university in Brazil,
and then in Israel, and finally at University
of London, where he remained for the rest
of his career.
As a result of this experience, Bohm suffered
a deeply personal loss based on his political
convictions, and this must have contributed
to his acute awareness of the currents of
irrationality prevalent throughout society.
This too would have prepared him to be
receptive to some of Krishnamurti’s views.
Hegelian logic
In addition, the ideology of Marx had its
roots in the philosophy of Hegel, and after
Bohm left the United States, he became deeply
immersed in the study of Hegelian logic. The
new form of logic that Hegel introduced is
known popularly in terms of the dialectical
progression of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
But this phrase is really just an abbreviation
for a deep examination of basic concepts
and their relationship to one another. Hegel
maintained that within any fundamental
concept lie the seeds of its opposite, so that
the tension between apparently opposing
concepts is resolved in a higher and more
complete synthesis.
In his dialectical logic, Hegel was giving
close attention not only to the issues with
which philosophy is concerned, but also to
the process by which philosophical concepts
arise and are developed. That is, he was
giving attention to the very process by which
thought functions. This was a key, crucial step
that led to Bohm’s interest in and receptivity
to the work of Krishnamurti.
For Krishnamurti was above all a philosopher
of the nature and structure of thought and
its pervasive effects upon consciousness and
daily life. Krishnamurti held that the manner
in which thought functions is not properly
understood, and the failure to understand it
is a primary source of illusion and conflict
in the individual and in society. Bohm was
keenly receptive to this point of view in
part as a result of his immersion in the
philosophy of Hegel.
To illustrate Krishnamurti’s view, here is a list
of some of the things he had to say about the
nature of thought.
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• Thought is mechanical.
• Thought is a material process.
• Thought is limited.
• Thought is fragmentary.
• Thought is knowledge.
• Thought is time.
• The word (thought) is not the thing.
As with our previous list, Krishnamurti
would never have expressed these ideas in
the brief, summary manner in which they are
presented here. In his exposition any one of
these ideas would form part of an integrated,
comprehensive description of how thought
functions and the ways in which it is not
properly understood.
These are some of the themes of crucial
interest to Bohm and the reason for his
extensive collaboration with Krishnamurti.
Four years after Krishnamurti died, Bohm
conducted a seminar in Ojai, California that
became the basis for a book called Thought
as a System. In that book, many of these
themes are described in detail, with Bohm’s
exceptional skill at elucidating subtle ideas
with illuminating examples and colorful
metaphors.
So the collaboration between Bohm and
Krishnamurti was indeed uncommon,
but not for the superficial reasons one
might at first imagine. It was a direct and
logical consequence of the progression of
Bohm’s thinking both in the philosophical
implications of quantum theory, and also
along the path from Marx to Hegel, including
the attention to the nature and process of
thought and its effects upon consciousness.
Personal reminiscences
Years ago, when Krishnamurti was alive and
I was serving as director of his school in Ojai,
the Oak Grove School, Bohm and his wife
Saral used to come out to Ojai from their
home in England every year for six weeks
during the Spring. It was Bohm’s habit to take
a nap in the afternoon between three and
four, and when he got up, he liked to have
a cup of tea and go for a long walk. During
those years, I often went up to his apartment
at the four o’clock hour to talk with him and
have tea and walk together.
Bohm and his wife always stayed in an
upstairs apartment in the office building next
to Krishnamurti’s home in the east end of the
Ojai valley, and our daily walk took us half
a mile up a slight incline to the campus of an
old and well-established private school. There
we continued our walk around a road that
circled the whole perimeter of the large
school property.
On our way home, Bohm liked to quote a
saying from Hegel. It was an aphorism about
Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom.
Minerva had a little owl that used to go
with her wherever she went, and so the owl
of Minerva became known as a symbol of
wisdom. Hegel believed that the development
of philosophy was tied to the development
of history, but he thought that philosophy is
always one step behind historical events, and
doesn’t catch up until a major era or epoch of
history is almost over.
Hegel said that the owl of Minerva flies at
dusk, by which he meant that the wisdom of
philosophy can only make a new development
at the end or the twilight of an historical
epoch. So when Bohm and I kept talking
philosophy until night was starting to fall,
he would sometimes adapt Hegel’s aphorism
in an amusing way and say, “The owl of
Minerva flies at dusk.”
Over the course of seven or eight years, I
went on a hundred or more walks like this
with Bohm. Our conversation usually lasted
two hours or more. The topic of discussion
was almost always psychological issues
of the kind that he liked to explore with
Krishnamurti, and he would do about ninety
percent of the talking. My role was to listen
and pose questions and say what points I did
not understand or were unclear. Bohm was
absolutely tireless in his willingness to explain
and explore and explicate whatever question
we were discussing, even as night fell and it
began to get dark. The owl of Minerva flies
at dusk.
Relative contributions
One of the issues I had to address in my book
was the relative contributions of Bohm and
Krishnamurti to the work they were engaged
in. The centre of gravity of their work
together was Krishnamurti’s philosophy of
mind, and that was the basis for their mutual
explorations. Nevertheless, Bohm made a
great contribution to Krishnamurti’s work.
Krishnamurti clearly wanted his teachings
to be consistent with a scientific approach.
He wanted the teachings to be factual, not
speculative. He wanted people to challenge
and question and inquire. He didn’t want
anything to be accepted on the basis of
personal authority. All of this is consistent
with the spirit of scientific inquiry. Bohm was
well attuned to that mode of inquiry, and he
helped Krishnamurti proceed and discuss in
that manner.
Nevertheless, there were some differences in
their manner and their approach. This was
apparent in the way they handled
group discussions, such as the many
conversations with teachers at the school.
Krishnamurti was very serious and sometimes
a little bit sharp in the way he replied to
people in group dialogues, whereas Bohm
was more relaxed and agreeable. Some people
said that whenever Krishnamurti was asked
a question, he would always begin by saying
no, whereas Bohm would begin by saying yes.
When I was a teacher at the school, sitting in
the group meetings with Krishnamurti, I would
sometimes complain to him afterwards about
the way he responded to people. Once I said
he seemed to be angry, and he said, no, he was
not angry, he just wanted to move. Another
time he told me, “I cannot tame myself.”
There was one occasion when Krishnamurti
asked me directly how I would assess the
relative contributions of Bohm and himself.
I said he was like the sun and Bohm was like
the moon, suggesting that the light of the
moon is a reflection of the sun. This seemed
to satisfy Krishnamurti, but it wasn’t quite
fair to Bohm, because his light was by no
means just the reflection of Krishnamurti or
anyone else. What I found remarkable is that
Krishnamurti even raised such a question.
There is no one else in his career that he
would have posed this question about. But it
was pretty clear when I said he was the sun
and Bohm was the moon, that he thought I
was on the right track.
I still agree with that assessment.
Krishnamurti was the one with the
extraordinary insight, and he always
spoke from that direct perception. Bohm
was more articulate in some ways, more
precise in his language and detailed in his
descriptions, but I think his understanding
was more intellectual and not as deep and
comprehensive as Krishnamurti.
We can also turn the question around and
consider what was Bohm’s assessment of
Krishnamurti. With respect to that issue, we
don’t have to guess or speculate, because I
recorded a conversation with Bohm about
two years after Krishnamurti died and raised
these questions with him. The transcript of
that conversation is included as an appendix
in my book. I won’t try to summarise
it except to say that Bohm had a very
interesting and nuanced overall assessment
of the philosophy and the personality of
Krishnamurti.
At the end of his life, Bohm suffered a
serious depression that required him to be
hospitalised for several months. Some people
have interpreted this as the failure of his
work in the psychological field, but I feel
this is unfair and wrong. One person who
had this attitude told me, “By their fruit you
shall know them,” meaning that if Bohm
got depressed, then all of his work in selfunderstanding must have been for nothing.
That passage in the Bible comes from the
book of Matthew:
Beware of false prophets, which come
to you in sheep’s clothing…. A good
tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth
good fruit. Wherefore by their fruits ye
shall know them.
In reality, the causes of depression are not
well understood, and there is a great deal
of evidence that depression is often purely
chemical in nature and may not have any kind
of psychological source. It may be simply an
illness, like pneumonia or Parkinson’s disease.
So to attribute Bohm’s depression to some
kind of psychological failure seems to me
wrong and unfair.
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But even if his depression did have some
degree of psychological origin, that in no
way diminishes his accomplishments in
the psychological field. We have no way of
knowing how disturbed he may have become
if he had never met Krishnamurti or taken
any interest in psychological issues. He may
have become much more depressed at a much
earlier age.
Who was Krishnamurti?
Finally, I would like to mention one other
issue that is addressed in my book. That
is the question raised by Krishnamurti’s
biographer, Mary Lutyens, in the second
volume of her biography, Years of Fulfillment.
At the end of that book, she asks, “Who
or What was Krishnamurti?” She describes
how she addressed this question directly
to Krishnamurti. They discussed it at
some length, but in the end he said he was
incapable of answering it. He makes the
rather memorable statement, “Water can
never find out what water is.” Mary Lutyens
leaves the question unresolved.
One way to approach this question is simply
to bring into focus why it is necessary to ask
it. And that is because Krishnamurti was
such an unusual individual. I review in my
book some of the unique characteristics of
him that demand explanation. One was the
extraordinary prophecy made in his early
teens that he would become the “World
Teacher.” He had an extreme sensitivity
to nature, as expressed in exceptionally
detailed and nuanced descriptions recorded
in many of his books. He had a unique form
of meditation, unlike any other approach,
which he insisted was the only meaningful
kind of meditation. He experienced a strange,
intermittent pain in his head and neck
throughout his adult life, one which was
associated in some obscure manner with his
psychological observations. And above all
there was his original, profound philosophy
of mind.
Any one of these characteristics would mark
Krishnamurti as highly unusual, but taken
together they represent an entirely singular
individual, someone unlike anyone else who
has ever lived. So in one of the last chapters
of my book, I address the question posed
by Mary Lutyens and review some possible
answers, and attempt to shed some light on
this mystery.
I would like to conclude by saying what
a privilege it was to know and work with
each of these men. I knew at the time it
was happening how lucky I was, but my
admiration and appreciation for them has
only grown through the years. Therefore
to write the story of their relationship
was not only a privilege but an enormous
responsibility. Krishnamurti and Bohm were
both historic figures and their relationship
with one another was an important chapter in
the history of the twentieth century.
David Edmund Moody, Ph.D., is the author of An Uncommon Collaboration: David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. He is the former director of Oak
Grove School, founded by Krishnamurti in Ojai, California, where he worked closely for more than a decade with both Bohm and Krishnamurti.
His experiences there are described in his previous book, The Unconditioned Mind: J. Krishnamurti and the Oak Grove School. He is currently
working on a new book containing transcripts and analysis of several conversations he conducted with Bohm. The tentative title is Philosophy,
Science, and Religion: Dialogues with David Bohm.
References
Krishnamurti, J. Truth and Actuality. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978.
Krishnamurti, J., and David Bohm. The Ending of Time: Where Philosophy and Physics Meet. New York, NY: Harper One, 2014.
Krishnamurti, J., and David Bohm. The Limits of Thought. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Krishnamurti, J., and David Bohm. The Future of Humanity. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986.
Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
Bohm, David. Thought as a System. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Lutyens, Mary. Krishnamurti: Years of Fulfillment. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983.
Moody, David Edmund. An Uncommon Collaboraton: David Bohm and J. Krishnamurti. Ojai, California: Alpha Centauri Press, 2017.
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