One Of The Things I Want To Distinguish In All My Work Is The Difference Between The Subtle And The Manifest.

One of the things I want to distinguish in all my work is the difference between the subtle and the manifest. The manifest is what can be held in the hand, in the eye or in the head; this is the explicate order. The other side of this is the subtle. To define something means to ‘grasp’ it, so that which cannot be grasped is undefinable, and whatever is beyond such limits has to be subtle. Infinity does not really mean more and more space, or more and more time – these are rather crude conceptions of it – but rather, it means more and more subtlety. The nature of the implicate order is that it is subtle, and within it there are many different levels of subtlety. These deeper things could be like vibrations that we can sense, as we might sense more and more subtle feelings, pointing to something out of which ideas and images emerge.

David Bohm, Wholeness, Timelessness and Unfolding Meaning, interview with Jane Clark and Michael Cohen, Beshara Magazine, Issue 14, 2020