Concept
One ground
Why the search for hidden depth keeps returning
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The world appears to be made of separate things: this body, that mind, one object beside another. Yet philosophers, psychologists, and mystical traditions have repeatedly asked whether separation tells the whole story. Their answers differ, but the movement beneath them keeps returning: from what appears divided toward a deeper order.
Spinoza argued that God, or Nature, is one infinite substance. Plotinus described the One as the source from which reality proceeds. Kabbalah speaks of Ein Sof, the infinite God, while Advaita Vedanta speaks of Brahman as ultimate reality. Each begins in a different history and develops a different vision, yet all refuse to treat separate things as the deepest account of what is.
A comparable movement appears in accounts of hidden order. Carl Jung’s collective unconscious proposes shared psychic forms expressed through archetypes in dreams, myths, and symptoms. David Bohm, writing philosophically about physics, proposed an implicate order in which apparent fragments unfold from a deeper wholeness. Together they show how the language of hidden order can arise in psychology and in a physicist’s philosophical interpretation.
Quantum mechanics is the physical theory used to predict behavior at atomic and subatomic scales. Effects such as interference and entanglement challenge classical expectations that physical objects always behave as wholly independent units, while physicists continue to disagree about how the theory should be interpreted. They do not, by themselves, establish that consciousness creates reality. Nor do they provide evidence for a metaphysical one ground; Bohm’s implicate order remains his interpretation of physics rather than an experimentally established deeper layer.
What makes the comparison worthwhile is the question it preserves. Why do such different forms of inquiry keep moving from visible fragments toward some wider order, and what changes when that order is understood as physical, psychological, philosophical, or divine?
Words used here
Plain meanings for words on this page.
quantum field theory
The mathematical framework in modern physics that treats particles as excitations of fields. It is a precise, tested account of forces and matter at small scales. It is not a spiritual “quantum field” that fulfills wishes, and it does not by itself confirm that consciousness creates reality.
implicate order
David Bohm’s name for a proposed deeper order in which what we see as separate things is folded together, later unfolding as the explicate world of ordinary objects. It is his interpretation of physics and wholeness—not a laboratory proof that mystics were right, and not Spinoza’s substance under a new label.
collective unconscious
In Carl Jung’s psychology, a proposed layer of the psyche shared across people, carrying typical forms (archetypes) that show up in dreams, myths, and symptoms. It is a psychological hypothesis, not a physical field and not God.
pantheism
The view that God and the universe are, in some sense, identical—God as the whole rather than a separate creator standing outside the world. The label is often applied to Spinoza, though scholars debate whether it fits his actual teaching.
A little deeper
“Pan” means all; “theism” suggests God. Pantheism is one philosophical option among many. Christian creation theology, Advaita Brahman, and ordinary poetic language that calls nature “divine” sit nearby as neighbors.
the One (Plotinus)
In the philosophy of Plotinus, the One is the source of all that is—beyond ordinary naming, not a person among persons, and not a pile of things. Everything else, in this school, flows from it without emptying it.
Featured connections
Where One ground meets other voices
One groundDavid Bohm
shared concept
Enfolding as one model of hidden order
Bohm contributes a specific image to the one-ground comparison: apparent fragments unfold from an implicate order in which they are enfolded. This remains his interpretation of physics, not an experimentally established hidden layer.
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David Bohm
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Baruch Spinoza
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Carl Jung
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Plotinus
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Sources
What this reading rests on
Quantum Mechanics – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (interpretations)
encyclopedia
Scholarly guidance on quantum mechanics and its competing interpretations; it supports neither a quantum-field-theory claim nor evidence for a metaphysical one ground.
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
original work
Bohm’s own account of implicate order as a proposed reading of wholeness in physics.
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
original work
Jung’s psychological account of archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Ethics (Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata)
original work
Spinoza’s philosophical argument for God, or Nature, as one infinite substance.