If we let a drop of ink fall into a glass filled with glycerin and then stir the glycerin, the drop of ink will become increasingly diluted, until it is no longer visible. It is now “enfolded” in the liquid. If we stir the mixture in the reverse direction, it reappears. 

When the drop of ink is enfolded in the glycerin it is present, but only in an implicate state. When we see it, it is explicate. The drop of ink is always there; it has simply altered its state.

This is how we can describe the fundamental order of things out of which the perceptible world with its fabric of things and appearances emerges through One Movement of unfolding.

“Implicate order” is the term with which Physicist David Bohm signified the order that is contained invisibly within the whole (tao; brahman; absolute truth).

The external world is the unfolded, or explicate order (atman, relative truth). And the primary aspect of being is that One Movement of endless enfolding and unfolding, enfolding and unfolding, enfolding and unfolding …

Within the implicate order everything is enfolded in everything else. This means that the entire universe is actively enfolded in each and every one of its parts through the One Movement. The dynamic activity of enfolding and unfolding thus provides every part of the whole with an inner aspect of wholeness and an outer aspect of individual form – with the consequence that even in this One Movement the whole and therefore all other parts are implicate!

In the domain of the implicate we are all parts of each other and of the whole, we permeate each other and are interwoven with each other. But in the domain of the explicate we are separate entities. Thus matter unfolds itself and then enfolds itself into its background again.

This is the foundation of the existence of everything, ourselves included. The things that appear to our senses are derivatives, and their true meaning only becomes visible when we observe the plenum in which they are generated and maintained, and in which they must also ultimately disappear.