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David Bohm and Jiddo Krishnamurti
Skeptical Inquirer, July, 2000 by Martin Gardner
My previous column was about the guided wave theory of David Bohm, and its growing acceptance by many of today's quantum theorists. In this issue I will sketch Bohm's sad life and his strange relationship with the Indian guru Jiddo Krishnamurti.
Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1917. When he obtained his doctorate in physics under J. Robert Oppenheimer, at the University of California, Berkeley, Bohm was a dedicated Marxist and a strong admirer of Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet system. These opinions drew the fire of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Bohm's refusal to name names resulted in his indictment for contempt of Congress. Princeton University, which had hired him, let him go. No other university in America wanted him. After brief periods of teaching in Brazil, Israel, and England, he finally became a professor at London's Birkbeck College where he remained until he retired.
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As Bohm grew older, he became increasingly preoccupied with Eastern mysticism and parapsychology. The Indian philosopher Krishnamurti became a good friend. The "All is One" aspect of Buddhism and Hinduism, and the pantheism of Hegel and Alfred North Whitehead, strongly influenced Bohm's view of the universe. He became convinced that being is multidimensional, with infinite levels in both directions--levels far beyond our comprehension. On Newton's level the universe is deterministic and mind independent. On the quantum level it rests on uncertainty and chance, with tinges of solipsism. Below the quantum level, Bohm believed, is a subquantum world in which determinism and reality return. And below that? The levels are endless. Ultimate truths are forever beyond our grasp. I do not know whether Bohm believed in reincarnation or personified the Unknowable as the Hindu god Brahman, the ultimate ground of being about whom nothing can be said.
"If Bohm's physics, or one similar to it," Gary Zukav writes in his popular New Age book The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), "should become the main thrust of physics in the future, the dances of East and West could blend in exquisite harmony. Do not be surprised if physics curricula of the twenty-first century include classes in meditation."
For another typical example of how occult journalists have latched onto Bohm, see Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe (1991). Talbot buys just about everything on the paranormal landscape including palmistry, UFOs, poltergeists, and dermo-optical perception--the ability to see with fingers, nose, and armpits. His book's main theme is that Bohm's quantum potential field accounts for all paranormal wonders. Curiously, Talbot doesn't mention astrology, even though Bohm's quantum potential might offer a good basis for it.
Bohm's disenchantment with Soviet Communism did not come until 1956 when Nikita Krushchev delivered his blistering attack on Stalin, and the magnitude of Stalin's purges and the slave labor camps became widely known. It was a crushing blow that plunged Bohm into the second of his periodic depressions. (The first began when he was 26, and lasted two years.) For six months Bohm underwent intensive Freudian psychoanalysis before this second depression lifted.
Ex-Communists and fellow travelers have a habit of turning from Marxism to another ideology, often Catholicism or some other religion. In Bohm's case it was a bounce toward Buddhism and Hinduism, and the teachings of Krishnamurti. After decades of close friendship, with unbounded admiration largely on Bohm's side, the two had a bitter falling out. Krishnamurti always had a low opinion of physics, and Bohm's pilot wave theory in particular. He had a cruel way of treating Bohm as if he were a stupid child unable to fully appreciate his (Krishnamurti's) vast wisdom.
Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was one of the most peculiar gurus ever to come out of Mother India. In 1908, this thin, frail, shy lad, of Brahmin birth, was discovered by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, the most famous disciples of Madame Blavatsky. They became convinced that young Jiddo was the new messiah, or world teacher, and the incarnation of Lord Bodhisattva Maitreya, the fifth Buddha. Leadbeater, who claimed to be clairvoyant, saw all this when he viewed Jiddo's aura. Besant adopted him as her son and raised him as a theosophist. In 1910, Krishnamurti's first book, At the Feet of the Master, was published by England's Theosophical Society. It was said to have been written by Krishnamurti who used the pseudonym of Alcyone, when he was 15.
In 1911, Besant, then the international president of the Theosophical Society, founded the Order of the Star of the East. Krishnamurti was the rising Star. In 1922 Annie purchased six acres in Ojai, California, where Krishnamurti eventually settled, and which became the headquarters of the still-flourishing Krishnamurti Foundation.
Jiddo's father lost a lawsuit trying to regain custody of his son. His Lawsuit accused Leadbeater, who was probably gay, of having had sexual relations with Jiddo.
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