My imagination was captured this week by the holographic order of David Bohm with its two kinds of order and the idea of holomovement. Allan Combs and Mark Holland (1996) describe the holographic order as being one of reflection, enfolding and configurations of movement saying, “we might envision the entire cosmos as . . . spreading, interpenetrating, and creating complex patterns of interaction throughout” (p. 18). Inherently at the center of this idea is the whole contained in the part and vice versa. When commenting on Bohm’s “comic web of relations” Fritjof Capra (1987) says “If any part of a hologram is illuminated, the entire image will be reconstructed, although it will show less detail than the image obtained from the complete hologram” (p. 96).
I see metaphorical connections between this idea in quantum physics, the archetypes of Jung, and the archetypal moves of Hillman. Jung (2010) says, “the archetype represents psychic probability,” meaning that all its emerging possibilities are contained within the whole, and Hillman (1977) tells us that the archetypal is a “subliminal richness” of “invisible depth” (p. 80) even when on the surface it shows us something with less detail like the illuminated hologram. Both interpretations of the archetype have at their core the notion of movement, either as a kind of circling around or a downward spiraling similar to the holomovement of Bohm where “flux is the primary reality of the cosmos” (Combs & Holland, 1996p. 18).
Finally, the implicate order of the psyche might be seen as the organizing patterns of the archetypes, while the explicate order as the expression of the archetypal in the particular. Combs and Holland say explicate order is, “no more than the surface of the implicate order as it enfolds” (p. 19). So too, the archetypes as we experience them in the psyche through dreams, complexes, etc. are the surface experience of the deeper movement of the nonpersonal, transpersonal psyche.
Combs, A. & Holland, M. (2001). Synchronicity: Through the eyes of science, myth, and the trickster. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Capra, F. (1983). The turning point: Science, society, and the rising culture. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Jung, C. G. (2010). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hillman, J. (1977). An inquiry into image. Spring, 1977, 62-88.
jenniewiley.com 