Five-fold knowledge (Systematics)

Meaning and potentiality must be added to activity if the significance of a structure for itself (and for the totality that contains it) is to be experienced. Potentiality is therefore experienced when at least two similar sets of relationships share a common initiating element and thus requires a system of not less than five independent elements. Potentiality endows experience with that which is lacking in the earlier forms of knowledge. Everything that exists has potentialities for actualization that outstrip the relationships that it can sustain within any concrete situation. In this fifth gradation of knowledge the individual opens himself to what might be. It is thus a form of sensitivity to the given as well as to the ungiven. The polarity of actual and potential produces a force which, because the knowledge is objective, makes the resulting action effectual. Potentialities thus become as apparent as actualities. But since some have to be sacrificed to allow the actualization of one, this knowledge is associated with maximum tension.

The fifth in a sequence of twelve modes of knowledge, identified by J G Bennett, inspired by G Gurdjieff.