Michael is an educational and documentary filmmaker; writer, photographer and co-founder of Touch the Future.

Each challenged the other, not to prove a point but to encourage this adventure they were sharing. They watched themselves as they watched the other, listening, fully present, with great respect and friendship. There was intensity, a seriousness that filled the air. It often left them drained, yet they came together many times and over many years to explore this state.

Consider what takes place when we think we know something - anything. What happens to this magical state to which David and Krishnamurti were so drawn? Our attention collapses. It contracts into a comfortable sphere floating somewhere between our ears and waits, like a genie in a bottle, for some challenge, some question, some ounce of true curiosity to free it again. This is what knowledge does to the natural - expansive inquisitiveness of the human mind. Somewhere, sometime, long-long ago, we got stuck and became enchanted with all the things we already know, leaving little or no energy to venture into the mystery.

Most of us are brimming with data and possessed by the past. Some of what we know came from books, newspapers or the evening news, perhaps from a friend, our mother or a well -intended teacher. The vast majority of all knowledge, some say as much as 95%, was not learned in school or on the job, it came from direct participation and intimate contact with the world. True or false, everything we have ever experienced is there, sloshing around, creating its own relative order and meaning. This knowledge then superimposes its collection of past feelings and images over the immediate sensory experience pouring in from the here and now.

Reality is the distant past which we inherited, our own past with its projected future, all the information and misinformation we absorb from media, the impressions we feel from others, plus everything they tried to teach us in school, not to mention our dreams, the sounds, colors, our breath, heart beat, all blending into a single, fluid perception, moment by moment. No wonder we are so confused!

While speaking in 1981 David Bohm said, "We are faced with a breakdown of general social order and human values that threatens stability throughout the world. I suggest that existing knowledge cannot meet this challenge. Something much deeper is needed, a completely new approach... the very means by which we try to solve our problems, is the problem. The source is within the structure of thought itself."

Dialogue does two things. It reveals the flawed structure which causes our thoughts, feelings and behavior to be so confused and with this revelation comes a quality of attention and perception which is clear, true. Dialogue brings us to the edge of the unknown, closer to the mystery and it opens the door.

While Professor David Bohm is best known as a theoretical physicist, he has also held a long interest in the nature of thought & consciousness and how they affect both the individual and society. His published works include: Quantum Theory, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Science Order and Creativity, Changing Consciousness and Thought as a System.

I am most interested in Dialogue because it holds open the possibility of creating a completely new relationship with knowledge itself. It reveals the limitations, prejudices and inevitable conflicts implicit in what we know and simultaneously points to a quality of attention and awareness which is not limited, not confined to the known, and this opens the door to something new. It opens the door to a state of perception which may actually discover lasting solutions the challenges we all face. All of this, and more, much more, is implied in Dialogue as proposed by David Bohm.

Why did Bohm, a world class scientist, give so much energy to this process?

Many people, in different parts of the world, are working with group processes they call dialogue. They do it differently and have different ideas about it. David Bohm however, made a series of observations into the nature of thought and the active quality of knowledge. He suggested that both the structure and the content of thought is not, as most of us feel, individual. Rather he saw it as a collective process which we inherit from our culture. He felt the underlying structure of thought was universal, and causes humanity to think and behave in rather limited, often incoherent, conflicting ways. The difficulty he felt was that this underlying structure of thought was hidden by a subtle, yet powerful defensive system, which prevents our seeing the flaws and limitations of our own thinking.

Dialogue, as he proposed, is a way to reveal these limitations and lessen their impact on our individual and collective behavior. It is this change in consciousness that makes Bohm's approach so unique, challenging and powerful.

At one level, the content of a Dialogue is irrelevant. What matters is how this hidden infrastructure is being expressed and revealed by each person, each moment. For this reason there is no fixed agenda. No problem to be solved. There are no fixed time limits, no set number of people, though experience suggests that between 15 and 35 may be an optimum number. To limit the group to a pre-selected topic, or to try to find a solution to a given challenge implies a set of assumptions and habits of mind, which Bohm hoped to call into question.