The collection of papers composing the book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm, provides an introduction to the idea of holomovement and the implicate order of the universe. In other words, the entire known and un-known universe exists as a single inseparable flow. All parts are contained in any specified part, just as in a hologram. And all that humans observe with their biological and technological sensory apparatus are sub-regions of explicate order which form from within this whole.

As a metaphor, Bohm takes the experiment introduced by John Heller, shown below, and explains that the original oval shape drops of dye can be thought of as an explicate ordering of color and structure in time and space. After the experiment proceeds, this explicate order mixes into the glycerin system. Now, imagine the implicate order as consisting of the glycerin and dye system modified via the rotation. The system contains the original explicate ordering of the drops, in other words the existence of the dye as drops of individual colors is encoded by the glycerin system.

BUT, up to now the metaphor has been like a “time-reversal.” The real point of Bohm is that if the system is now rotated in the opposite direction, the dye will condense out of the system as an explicate order of color and shape identical to the original. This is how he suggests that the universe, i.e. the implicate order of the holomovement forms all explicate orders, including consciousness, observed by humans.