Bohmian Mechanics and the Kabbalah

Abstract

The last century has witnessed a remarkable conflation of thought between contemporary physics and the Jewish mystical tradition or Kabbalah. Nowhere does this merger resonate more cogently than with ideas promulgated by the influential and iconoclastic physicist, David Bohm. Notwithstanding the radically different lexicons invoked, there exist striking conceptual parallels between the ‘implicate???explicate orders’ and ‘holographic universe’ of Bohmian mechanics and the fundamental Kabbalistic principles of Enclothement, Interinclusion, and Interpenetration. In this confluence of Bohmian mechanics and Jewish mysticism, and drawing on additional insights derived from mainstream quantum and relativistic physics, a Kabbalistic ontology of consciousness incorporating the tenets of panpsychism and panentheism is presented. The phenomenon of synchronicities is analysed through the lenses of Kabbalistic panpsychism and Bohmian physics to underscore further the conceptual homologies that exist between these disparate disciplines. Potential implications of this exercise for epistemology, science, and religion are briefly considered.