There is a passage that I could not possibly regard as anything other than intriguing in David Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", and I would like to share it with the esteemed readers of this forum. The passage occurs in the chapter "Fragmentation and Wholeness" and goes
"Now, in the East the notion of measure has not played nearly so fundamental a role. Rather, in the prevailing philosophy in the Orient, the immeasurable (i.e. that which cannot be named, described, or understood through any form of reason) is regarded as the primary reality. Thus, in Sanskrit (which has an origin common to the Indo-European language group) there is a word 'matra' meaning 'measure', in the musical sense, which is evidently close to the Greek 'metron'. But then there is another word 'maya' obtained from the same root, which means 'illusion'. This is an extraordinarily significant point. Whereas to Western society, as it derives from the Greeks, measure, with all that this word implies, is the very essence of reality, or at least the key to this essence, in the East measure has now come to be regarded commonly as being in some way false and deceitful. In this view the entire structure and order of forms, proportions, and 'ratios' that present themselves to ordinary perception and reason are regarded as a sort of veil, covering the true reality, which cannot be perceived by the senses and of which nothing can be said or thought."
The word "matra" is मात्रा and the word "maya" is माया.
I just want to say for the record that I have great respect for both views espoused in the above quote. I found it particularly intriguing and hopefully the readers of this forum might have reason to think likewise, if only fractionally. There are many questions which could be made from the above quote, such as:
1) Its accurracy as a true description of Western/Eastern philosophy in the first place.
2) Whether the etymological statements in the quote are accurate.
3) How one might think of this whole idea of a philosophy seemingly opposed to quantisation.
4) And finally of course, how one might even begin to think of a primordial reality about which nothing could be said or thought!
What could one say about the above quote? Thank you very much.
