Quantum dialogue - incognito ergo sum! (c)

by Ern Jacoby PhD

Not being a good speaker generally results in not to be. Thousands and thousands of men and women worldwide communicate. When you ask them, they reply, yes, we had a good talk. This is understandable: to survive in life, and possibly be successful, a rather complete conviction must exist about the own presence as a human being. Since my early years I found discussions a rather confusing business. A lot of it is speculative, absolute, not logic, emotional and absurd. For myself a better and adequate way for this is dialogue. This form of communication is not overwhelmed by the reality of egoism. Dialogue is definitely not comparable with discussion far from that.

Dialogue is like wisdom: A pathless landscape, without any ideology, any leader, without any approach. "If you stick to your opinion, to your knowledge, and I stick to mine, then there can be no real dialogue, because neither of us is free to inquire." (J. Krishnamurti 1895-1986).

For most philosophers there are three different ways of feeling, seeing and interpreting the world. World zero as-it-is-ness: perhaps by contemplation. World one: by sensations, emotions, perceptions, awareness. World two: Biographie experience, interpretations, constructions, ideas, culture, religions und wars. And this happens in world two: Earth is flat, pigs can fly and nuclear power is safe (Greenpeace)! After 2400 years of philosophical reflections, from Socrates to Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994), an ordinary ignorant human being has nothing left to do, like confessing one’s philosophical impotence. The twentieth century philosopher Popper has added to Socrates „I know that I know nothing“ - „and not even that“.

Where to start a fair dialogue? Analyses paralyses, a neverending quotation by J. Krishnamurti. Is there something beyond logos, dialogos, beyond biographical experiences, meanings and ideologies? Perhaps a strange energy? Let's find out by Quantum Dialogging! David Bohm (1917-1992), a distinguished theoretical physicists, remembered for two radical scientific theories: the causal interpretation of quantum physics, and the theory of the implicate order and undivided wholeness. He suggests that there is a "proto-intelligence" in matter and this ground is always one. Master Eckhart (1260 - 1328) called it as-it-is-I-ness. In a logical approach of radical subjectivity the world two is just a construction in our brain. The world you see is yourself: You are the world!

All life is simply a form of energy that we give names to. Where do I come from? You can say atoms but where do atoms come from? But if all comes from nothingness, love, light? No need to focus on an intention. Where does your will, your desire come from? A central figure of the so-called Kyoto School of philosophy, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important philosophers of modern Japan. His philosophy of ;Metanoesis; is self-deconstruction and a radical self-transformation. This, in turn, necessitates an emptying of the self. Instead the " Other" is what Tanabe calls absolute nothingness, characterized as negation and transformation in a process of mutual mediation: Through negation to affirmation!

The first thing in Quantum Dialogue is to accept the fullness that is beyond ones ego. In this state the dialogue partners will start to feel relaxed because of the deep rest that accompanies the Dialogging process. In dialogue groups we are not going to decide what to do about anything. There is empty space where we are not obliged to do anything nor to come to any conclusions. Space is empty and free, not to say and to say anything is open and free. And after we finish we are not trying to accumulate anything by knowledge. Following the critique of reason each standpoint is a conceptual construct that reintroduces metaphysical speculation. However, even thought can allow human beings to enter into a mediatory self-consciousness beyond our dualistic point of view.

The attention and perception that emerges in dialogue is not the province of any individual rather it belongs to the group as a whole. It is shared meaning, not individual understanding". By seeing one s desire to search, to know, to exist, observing oneself as an ignorant being, maybe a person encounters a marvellous transformation.

Co-author Ern Jacoby Ph.D. of „Dialogging“ © with Dorothee Jacoby-Urban. Facilitator of "Quantum Dialogue“, participated at the Saanen Krishnamurti Gatherings during the years 1972 -1985, when Krishnamurti was alive.