There are many ways of knowing – an introduction to holonistic knowledge

We can know something from sense perception, like things you know you see or hear or touch etc. (Read more about the different senses here).
One of the most accepted ways is through reason. It could be scientific, statistic or logic.
For you as a person you also know from your emotions; it made me angry or sad etc. I know I like this person, I know we can have a good time together etc.
Another personal and spiritual way of knowledge is faith, the person believing knows there is a God or angels etc.
Reading this you learn to know different ways of knowledge through written language. Sometimes you know things that you remember (memory). It can even be that you suddenly realize, see, understand or get a clarification through what we call intuition.  Even imagination can be regarded a source. To use the words of Albert Einstein;

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

When we do research we try to find two representative groups of people to compare, each group should be as similar as possible but also represent the “norm”. You need a certain amount of people to get that. Also if you want to do qualitative research you have to interview a certain amount of people before you can say you know something about how people experience a certain setting.

When we get enough individuals we start to perceive what the bigger group has in common.

From the beginning of 2008 we have performed experiments in a group of 10-20 people. Ten times a year we have gathered to focus on one new way of knowledge. And we have established the experienced certainty that we can gain knowledge this way, that we can get knowledge from extracting the common denominator of our collective experiences. This common core is an analogy to the mathematical ∩ of the group, the common tags in the qualitative approach based on grounded theory, or the theme or essence running in the group when we see the group as one person. It is a higher holon than each individual in the group. It is very similar to what happens in a homeopathic proving, seeing all the participants as one person.

The main source of solid knowledge today is called RCT or randomized controlled trials and has turned into the golden calf of the new millennium, but it will not last, because it has major weaknesses. Since this is not a critique of RCT, we will explore that later in a different post. Here we will only make an analogy to clarify a central point.

Let us go down a holon and imagine we were cells in the heart or the liver. We had a project, with the aim to find out if a certain influence, medication, or diet would benefit us. We had randomly chosen two groups of cells in our organ to be able to compare them and one of the groups got the active substance, the other just placebo.

Would we not then consider the heart or liver being one connected organ, that the effect on that one group also would influence the other, since what happens in one part of the organ would influence the other parts as well? And since both would get an effect, the difference between the groups would be very little or non. In such a case the conclusion would be this substance has no effect. The fact is the opposite.
To make it even easier to understand you can imagine to groups of fish living in a pool, you shower one of the groups and test if there is any difference in the wetness of the fishes in the two groups of the pool. The wetness of the pool is common to both groups, so the experiment is not a good set up. The problem is that the method is inadequate.

So let us come back to our ordinary perspective, but ad the option of us as individuals not being as separated as we normally presume. What if we can pic up on others peoples thoughts, feelings, intentions or general well being? What if we swim in the same pool? What if we have a field like Rupert Sheldrakes morphic field connecting us together as one organism? If that is the case, our blind belief in RCT being a good way of comparing two independent groups, is biased.

Then all the things that influence us in a way that also does good to the surroundings or close persons, all things that not only influence us in an isolated way, all those would be effects we would loose. These effects would come out with the least results in our test. Those factors alone that influenced only the single individual would turn out as effective or significant.

With that question at the back of our heads we decided to test the possibility of blinding. Can we blind at all?

When humans started to test medicines, they soon discovered that the attitude or knowledge of the prescribing doctor or the nurse could influence the patient. If they thought they gave something that worked it could work and opposite.

Let us just stop a minute here, and question ourselves; how much have we investigated that particular effect? How does it work? Does it work just from knowing, from intentions, from an energy field, from unconscious mimics or other factors? It was actually homeopaths that first started blinding in their remedy tests, what they call provings. They soon also realized they even needed to double blind. With simple blinding the patients did not know what they got, with double blinding the persons involved in the research did not know either. It soon became the criteria of all medical research of medicines and other therapeutic interventions. But if the two groups that we think are blinded are in the same morphic field as the persons designing and having the code, can they “see” or “know” the answer? And even if that should not be possible, can the two groups be so involved or rooted in the same fields by being under the same project that they are inseparable or influence each other?

If that is the case, could we triple blind or quadruple blind? Could we blind so much that we lost any possible transmission or any effect? These were some of the questions we had when we started our journey of exploration together as a group.

We decided never to take any substance as the first quantum leap of blinding. Can you get any effect at all if you do not ingest something? We just had the substance (a solid) in the room, covered so that nobody would see it. We made sure to select substances that were previously tested to have something to compare with. This primarily investigation suggested that our theory might be right.

Already the first year we went from a blinded substance, to a blinded intention. We even experimented with allocation of substance after the intention was performed, collected and assessed as to its effect. This way of getting knowledge of a substance, an intention, a concept or anything, not limited to being either material, energetic, conceptual or spiritual, we will share here under the category of holonistic knowledge. We have decided to call this way of gaining knowledge holonistic knowledge because it is coming from getting a higher holon and extracting the holonity of that group holon, we get this insight.

It is not one person, it is the group, or collective unity that makes the way to knowledge. It is the unity or coherence in the information from the whole group that emerges like a unit, a holon it is holonistic knowledge.

Read more of our experience with holonistic knowledge here.