Background Image
...
In Some Sense Man Is A Microcosm Of The Universe; Therefore What Man Is, Is A Clue To The Universe. We Are Enfolded In The Universe.
-David Bohm
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

In Some Sense Man

David Bohm
...
In Some Sense Man Is A Microcosm Of The Universe; Therefore What Man Is, Is A Clue To The Universe. We Are Enfolded In The Universe.

Understanding the Quote: "in some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what..."

This quote by David Bohm reflects deeply on the theme of science. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Science, Men, Clue, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how David Bohm interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About David Bohm

David Bohm is celebrated for insightful thoughts on science and men. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 18989
Topic
Science
Men
Clue
More From David Bohm
In Nature Nothing Remains Constant. Everything Is In A Perpetual State Of Transformation, Motion, And Change. However, We Discover That Nothing Simply Surges Up Out Of Nothing Without Having Antecedents That Existed Before. Likewise, Nothing Ever Disappears Without A Trace, In The Sense That It Gives Rise To Absolutely Nothing Existing In Later Times.
Inspirational
Giving
Transformation
The Notion Of A Separate Organism Is Clearly An Abstraction, As Is Also Its Boundary. Underlying All This Is Unbroken Wholeness Even Though Our Civilization Has Developed In Such A Way As To Strongly Emphasize The Separation Into Parts.
Civilization
Unbroken
Way
Individuality Is Only Possible If It Unfolds From Wholeness.
Individuality
Awareness
Ifs
So One Begins To Wonder What Is Going To Happen To The Human Race. Technology Keeps On Advancing With Greater And Greater Power, Either For Good Or For Destruction.
Technology
Race
Wonder
Ultimately, All Moments Are Really One, Therefore Now Is An Eternity.
Moments
Eternity
Similarly, Thought Is A System. That System Not Only Includes Thought And Feelings, But It Includes The State Of The Body; It Includes The Whole Of Society - As Thought Is Passing Back And Forth Between People In A Process By Which Thought Evolved From Ancient Times.
People
Feelings
Body
And Thought Struggles Against The Results, Trying To Avoid Those Unpleasant Results While Keeping On With That Way Of Thinking. That Is What I Call 'sustained Incoherence.
Struggle
Thinking
Trying
Thought Is Creating Divisions Out Of Itself And Then Saying That They Are There Naturally.
Creating
Division
One Thus Sees That A New Kind Of Theory Is Needed Which Drops These Basic Commitments And At Most Recovers Some Essential Features Of The Older Theories As Abstract Forms Derived From A Deeper Reality In Which What Prevails In Unbroken Wholeness.
Commitment
Reality
Essentials
We Can't Simply Take The Way Things Seem And Just Work On That, Because That Would Be Another Kind Of Mistake Thought Makes-taking The Surface And Calling It The Reality.
Mistake
Reality
Mind
In The Long Run, It Is Far More Dangerous To Adhere To Illusion Than To Face What The Actual Fact Is.
Running
Long
Faces
There Is No Reason Why An Extraphysical General Principle Is Necessarily To Be Avoided, Since Such Principles Could Conceivably Serve As Useful Working Hypotheses. For The History Of Scientific Research Is Full Of Examples In Which It Was Very Fruitful Indeed To Assume That Certain Objects Or Elements Might Be Real, Long Before Any Procedures Were Known Which Would Permit Them To Be Observed Directly.
Real
Long
Reason Why
Thought Is Constantly Creating Problems That Way And Then Trying To Solve Them. But As It Tries To Solve Them It Makes It Worse Because It Doesn't Notice That It's Creating Them, And The More It Thinks, The More Problems It Creates.
Thinking
Creating
Trying
Dialogue Is Really Aimed At Going Into The Whole Thought Process And Changing The Way The Thought Process Occurs Collectively. We Haven't Really Paid Much Attention To Thought As A Process. We Have Engaged In Thoughts, Put We Have Only Paid Attention To The Content, Not To The Process. Why Does Thought Require Attention? Everything Requires Attention, Really. If We Ran Machines Without Paying Attention To Them, They Would Break Down. Our Thought, Too, Is A Process, And It Requires Attention, Otherwise Its Going To Go Wrong.
Way
Doe
Attention
...consciousness Is A Coherent Whole, Which Is Never Static Or Complete, But Which Is In An Unending Process Of Movement And Unfoldment.
Unity
Movement
Consciousness
When You Are Thinking Something, You Have The Feeling That The Thoughts Do Nothing Except Inform You The Way Things Are And Then You Choose To Do Something And You Do It. That's What People Generally Assume. But Actually, The Way You Think Determines The Way You're Going To Do Things. Then You Don't Notice A Result Comes Back, Or You Don't See It As A Result Of What You've Done, Or Even Less Do You See It As A Result Of How You Were Thinking. Is That Clear?
Thinking
People
Feelings
We Could Say That Practically All The Problems Of The Human Race Are Due To The Fact That Thought Is Not Proprioceptive.
Race
Facts
Problem
If We Can Be Cheered Up By Positive Images We Can Be Depressed By Negative Ones. As Long As We Accept Images As Realities We Are In That Trap, Because You Can't Control The Images.
Reality
Long
Mind
Consciousness Is Much More Of The Implicate Order Than Is Matter... Yet At A Deeper Level [matter And Consciousness] Are Actually Inseparable And Interwoven, Just As In The Computer Game The Player And The Screen Are United By Participation.
Player
Order
Games
People Are No Longer Primarily In Opposition, Nor Can They Be Said To Be Interacting, Rather They Are Participating In This Pool Of Common Meaning Which Is Capable Of Constant Development And Change.
People
Development
Common
Thought Creates Our World, And Then Says 'i Didn't Do It
Our World
World
From The Point Of View Of The Species, Death Is Part Of This Whole Process. You Could Say That Species Have Evolved In Such A Way That Individual Members Last A Certain Time. Perhaps A Certain Kind Of Species Would Be Better Able To Survive If The Individuals Didn't Last Too Long. Other Kinds Could Last Longer.
Death
Views
Long
From The Outset, However, This Whole Controversy Has Been Plagued By Tacit Assumptions, Very Often Of A Philosophical Rather Than A Physical Character.
Philosophical
Character
Science
Suppose We Were Able To Share Meanings Freely Without A Compulsive Urge To Impose Our View Or Conform To Those Of Others And Without Distortion And Self-deception. Would This Not Constitute A Real Revolution In Culture.
Real
Learning
Knowledge
Ultimately, The Entire Universe...has To Be Understood As A Single Undivided Whole.
Understood
Whole
Universe
Perhaps There Is More Sense In Our Nonsense And More Nonsense In Our 'sense' Than We Would Care To Believe.
Believe
Care
Nonsense
Then There Is The Further Question Of What Is The Relationship Of Thinking To Reality. As Careful Attention Shows, Thought Itself Is In An Actual Process Of Movement.
Reality
Thinking
Attention
Universe Consists Of Frozen Light.
Light
Frozen
Universe
The Question Of Relevance Comes Before That Of Truth, Because To Ask Whether A Statement Is True Or False Presupposes That It Is Relevant (so That To Try To Assert The Truth Or Falsity Of An Irrelevant Statement Is A Form Of Confusion).
Truth
Science
Irrelevance
We Are All Linked By A Fabric Of Unseen Connections. This Fabric Is Constantly Changing And Evolving. This Field Is Directly Structured And Influenced By Our Behavior And By Our Understanding.
Understanding
Unseen
Connections
A New Kind Of Mind Thus Beings To Come Into Being Which Is Based On The Development Of A Common Meaning That Is Constantly Transforming In The Process Of The Dialogue.
Mind
Development
Common
If Each One Of Us Can Give Full Attention To What Is Actually ‘blocking’ Communication While He Is Also Attending Properly To The Content Of What Is Communicated, Then We May Be Able To Create Something New Between Us, Something Of Very Great Significance For Bringing To An End The At Present Insoluble Problems Of The Individual And Of Society.
Block
Communication
Giving
Thus, In A Dialogue Each Person Does Not Attempt To Make Common Certain Ideas Or Items Of Information That Are Already Known To Him. Rather, It Can Be Said That Collectively They Are Making Something In Common
Ideas
Doe
Information
Indeed, The Attempt To Live According To The Notion That The Fragments Are Really Separate Is, In Essence, What Has Led To The Growing Series Of Extremely Urgent Crises That Is Confronting Us Today.
Essence
Live For Today
Growing
To Change Your Reality You Have To Change Your Inner Thoughts.
Teaching
Learning
Reality
But The Way People Commonly Use The Word Nowadays It Means Something All Of Whose Parts Are Mutually Interdependent - Not Only For Their Mutual Action, But For Their Meaning And For Their Existence.
Mean
People
Use
We Are Internally Related To Everything, Not [just] Externally Related. Consciousness Is An Internal Relationship To The Whole, We Take In The Whole, And We Act Toward The Whole. Whatever We Have Taken In Determines Basically What We Are. Wholeness Is A Kind Of Attitude Or Approach To The Whole Of Life. If We Can Have A Coherent Approach To Reality Then Reality Will Respond Coherently To Us.
Attitude
Taken
Reality
It Is Proposed That A Form Of Free Dialogue May Well Be One Of The Most Effective Ways Of Investigating The Crisis Which Faces Society, And Indeed The Whole Of Human Nature And Consciousness Today. Moreover, It May Turn Out That Such A Form Of Free Exchange Of Ideas And Information Is Of Fundamental Relevance For Transforming Culture And Freeing It Of Destructive Misinformation, So That Creativity Can Be Liberated.
Creativity
Ideas
Fundamentals
In Some Sense Man Is A Microcosm Of The Universe; Therefore What Man Is, Is A Clue To The Universe. We Are Enfolded In The Universe.
Science
Men
Clue
In Nature Nothing Remains Constant. Everything Is In A Perpetual State Of Transformation, Motion And Change.
Nature
Transformation
States
Yet, In Spite Of This World-wide System Of Linkages, There Is, At This Very Moment, A General Feeling That Communication Is Breaking Down Everywhere, On An Unparalleled Scale.
Communication
Feelings
Promise
Deep Down The Consciousness Of Mankind Is One. This Is A Virtual Certainty Because Even In The Vacuum Matter Is One; And If We Don't See This, It's Because We Are Blinding Ourselves To It.
Vacuums
Matter
Consciousness
Can We Learn To Become More Learning-oriented Individually And Collectively, Rather Than 'i Know' Oriented?
Learning
Ego
Knows
Another Problem Of Fragmentation Is That Thought Divides Itself From Feeling And From The Body. Thought Is Said To Be The Mind; We Have The Notion That It Is Something Abstract Or Spiritual Or Immaterial. Then There Is The Body, Which Is Very Physical. And We Have Emotions, Which Are Perhaps Somewhere In Between. The Idea Is That They Are All Different. That Is, We Think Of Them As Different. And We Experience Them As Different Because We Think Of Them As Different.
Spiritual
Thinking
Ideas
Then There Is The Further Question Of What Is The Relationship Of Thinking To Reality. As Careful Attention Shows, Thought Itself Is In An Actual Process Of Movement. That Is To Say, One Can Feel A Sense Of Flow In The Stream Of Consciousness Not Dissimilar To The Sense Of Flow In The Movement Of Matter In General. May Not Thought Itself Thus Be A Part Of Reality As A Whole? But Then, What Could It Mean For One Part Of Reality To 'know' Another, And To What Extent Would This Be Possible?
Mean
Thinking
Reality
What Is Needed Is To Learn Afresh, To Observe, And To Discover For Ourselves The Meaning Of Wholeness.
Needed
Wholeness
This Kind Of Overall Way Of Thinking Is Not Only A Fertile Source Of New Theoretical Ideas: It Is Needed For The Human Mind To Function In A Generally Harmonious Way, Which Could In Turn Help To Make Possible An Orderly And Stable Society.
Thinking
Ideas
Mind
During The Past Few Decades, Modern Technology, With Radio, Tv, Air Travel, And Satellites, Has Woven A Network Of Communication Which Puts Each Part Of The World In To Almost Instant Contact With All The Other Parts.
Travel
Communication
Past
Dialogue Is A Space Where We May See The Assumptions Which Lay Beneath The Surface Of Our Thoughts, Assumptions Which Drive Us, Assumptions Around Which We Build Organizations, Create Economies, Form Nations And Religions. These Assumptions Become Habitual, Mental Habits That Drive Us, Confuse Us And Prevent Our Responding Intelligently To The Challenges We Face Every Day.
Organization
Space
Empathy
There Is A Difficulty With Only One Person Changing. People Call That Person A Great Saint Or A Great Mystic Or A Great Leader, And They Say, 'well, He's Different From Me - I Could Never Do It.' What's Wrong With Most People Is That They Have This Block - They Feel They Could Never Make A Difference, And Therefore, They Never Face The Possibility, Because It Is Too Disturbing, Too Frightening.
Block
Differences
People
Thought Reflexes Get Conditioned Very Strongly, And They Are Very Hard To Change. And The Also Interfere. A Reflex May Connect To The Endorphins And Produce An Impulse To Hold That Whole Pattern Forther. In Other Words, It Produces A Defensive Reflex. Not Merely Is It Stuck Because It's Chemically So Well Built Up, But Also There Is A Defensive Reflex Which Defends Against Evidence Which Might Weaken It. Thus It All Happens, One Reflex After Another After Another. It's Just A Vast System Of Reflexes. And They Form A 'structure' As They Get More Rigid.
May
Patterns
Might
In Relativity, Movement Is Continuous, Causally Determinate And Well Defined, While In Quantum Mechanics It Is Discontinuous, Not Causally Determinate And Not Well Defined.
Movement
Mechanic
Quantum
The Treatment Of The Indeterminacy Principle As Absolute And Final Can Then Be Criticized As Constituting An Arbitrary Restriction On Scientific Theories, Since It Does Not Follow From The Quantum Theory As Such, But Rather From The Assumption Of The Unlimited Validity Of Certain Of Its Features, An Assumption That Can In No Way Ever Be Subjected To Experimental Proof.
Science
Principles
Doe
If You Engage In Positive Thinking To Overcome Negative Thoughts, The Negative Thoughts Are Still There Acting. That's Still Incoherence. It's Not Enough Just To Engage In Positive Thoughts When You Have Negative Thoughts Registered, Because They Keep On Working And Will Cause Trouble Somewhere Else.
Pain
Positive Thinking
Somewhere Else
We Havent Really Paid Much Attention To Thought As A Process. We Have Engaged In Thoughts, But We Have Only Paid Attention To The Content, Not To The Process.
Attention
Engagement
Process
Real Dialogue Is Where Two Or More People Become Willing To Suspend Their Certainty In Each Other's Presence.
Real
Two
People
My Suggestion Is That At Each State The Proper Order Of Operation Of The Mind Requires An Overall Grasp Of What Is Generally Known, Not Only In Formal Logical, Mathematical Terms, But Also Intuitively, In Images, Feelings, Poetic Usage Of Language, Etc.
Order
Feelings
Mind
We Have Reversed The Usual Classical Notion That The Independent "elementary Parts" Of The World Are The Fundamental Reality, And That The Various Systems Are Merely Particular Contingent Forms And Arrangements Of These Parts. Rather, We Say That Inseparable Quantum Interconnectedness Of The Whole Universe Is The Fundamental Reality, And That Relatively Independent Behaving Parts Are Merely Particular And Contingent Forms Within This Whole.
Independent
Reality
Usual
Space Is Not Empty. It Is Full, A Plenum As Opposed To A Vacuum, And Is The Ground For The Existence Of Everything, Including Ourselves. The Universe Is Not Separate From This Cosmic Sea Of Energy.
Sea
Space
Energy
Anybody Can Use Science And Technology Without Fundamentally Altering His Own Frame Of Mind Which Governs How They Are Used.
Science
Technology
Mind
Thought Runs You. Thought, However, Gives False Info That You Are Running It, That You Are The One Who Controls It. Whereas Actually Thought Is The One Which Controls Each One Of Us.
Running
Giving
Awareness
This Is Another Major Feature Of Thought: Thought Doesn't Know It Is Doing Something And Then It Struggles Against It Is Doing. It Doesn't Want To Know That It Is Doing It.
Struggle
Want
Knows
A Corporation Is Organized As A System - It Has This Department, That Department, That Department... They Don't Have Any Meaning Separately; They Only Can Function Together. And Also The Body Is A System. Society Is A System In Some Sense. And So On.
Together
Body
Corporations
Ego-centeredness Is Not Individuality At All.
Ego
Individuality
Centeredness
We Have The Idea That After We Have Been Thinking Something, It Just Evaporates. But Thinking Doesn't Disappear. It Goes Somehow Into The Brain And Leaves Something-a Trace-which Becomes Thought. And Thought Then Acts Automatically.
Thinking
Ideas
Brain
The Ability To Perceive Or Think Differently Is More Important Than The Knowledge Gained.
Learning
Knowledge
Thinking
The System [of Thought] Doesn't Stay With The Difficult Problem That Produces Unpleasant Feelings. It's Conditioned Somehow To Move As Fast As It Can Toward More Pleasant Feelings, Without Actually Facing The Thing That's Making The Unpleasant Feeling.
Fear
Moving
Feelings
Trending Author
Brad Henry
Anouk Aimee
Lee H. Hamilton
Jeff Sessions
Joel Madden
Tracy McGrady
Category
Information