Consciousness in an Undivided Cosmos: David Bohm's Tripartite Vision of Wholeness

Abstract

In this article, Schneider and Bailey's prototime interpretation of quantum mechanics is explored in relation to David Bohm's deterministic non-local hidden variables theory, and his later conceptualization of an implicate order, which is a theory of complementarity rather than determinism. Schneider and Bailey argue that quantum entanglement occurs not in space-time but in a fundamental aspatial domain known as prototime, which bridges ordinary time and timeless reality. It is causal but unorthodox in the sense that causality does not occur in space-time. This notion has some connections to Bohm's quantum mechanics (hidden variable) but not with his theory of implicate-explicate orders per se, where the material and mental phenomena are projections of a third, unified source. The article discusses the implications of dual-aspect monism and elaborations of the concept of entanglement which both interpretations (the implicate order and prototime) argue could reconcile inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and relativity theory. While consciousness in both cases emerges from an holistically entangled structure beyond space and time, the latter does not recognize a neutral third as such — a key feature of dual-aspect monism — but there is a super-entangled object (a 'megaobject').