The late physicist David Bohm believed that no single cause and effect relationship is ever really separate from the universe. In essence, everything interpenetrates everything else. To put it another way, we are all responsible for the well being of the planet. No one is to blame, for we are all co-creators of the world we live in.
For instance, who is responsible for killing President Kennedy? Even if Oswald did act alone, you can’t single him out as the only cause in the death of JFK. You would have to include those who influenced the frame of mind of Oswald. What if Oswald grew up in a happy home and had good social skills? You would also have to include the reasoning of JFK to insist on a convertible for his motorcade. You would have to examine what caused the political necessity for JFK to visit Texas? What if it was raining on that Friday? You could even go all the way back into the history of evolution to what factors led to the development of fingers in the human hand which made it possible for someone to pull a trigger on a gun.
Am I trying to absolve the guilt of JFK’s killer or killers? No, not at all. I am just trying to stress how we are all connected. Humanity, in a sense, is a totality of one consciousness, evolving to a more conscious and harmonious whole.
David Bohm saw this first hand in his work as a physicist. At the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, he investigated plasmas, a gas containing a high density of electrons and positive ions, atoms that have a positive charge. Here is how Michael Talbot, in The Holographic Universe, explained Bohm’s work:
To his amazement he found that once they were in a plasma, electrons stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving as if they were part of a larger and interconnected whole. Although their individual movement appeared random, vast numbers of electrons were able to produce effects that were surprisingly well-organized. Like some amoeboid creature, the plasma constantly regenerated itself and enclosed all impurities in a wall in the same way that biological organism might encase a foreign substance in a cyst.
It gave the impression to Bohm that the electrons were alive. It was as each electron was governed by a collective consciousness.
Could that be the case for humanity as well? That as a collective entity, are we evolving to higher states of being, to a higher vibration of consciousness?
From that perspective, we all have a responsibility towards the ultimate well being of humanity. For, like the electrons, we are all one.
As I mentioned in a post several months ago quoting the book, Power vs. Force, the rise in consciousness of one person has an uplifting effect on many people. For instance, if humanity was attuned to a significantly higher vibration of consciousness in 1963, Oswald (or the conspiracy) would not have been motivated to kill JFK, for a rising tide lifts all boats. So in that since, everyone on the planet had some responsibility in that assassination, as in every other incidence of violence.
What does this mean for you and me? It means that we need to stop blaming others and take responsibility; we need to see that we are all interconnected. We need to see that when we harm another person in thought, word or deed, that we are ultimately harming our own lives.
I like the approach of Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len in the book Zero Limits:
My job here on earth is twofold. My job is first of all to make amends. My second job is to awaken people who might be asleep. Almost everyone is asleep! The way I can awaken them is to work on myself.
That sounds like sane advice to me.
You can discuss this post at Personal Development Partners, or in the comments of this blog.
