Three-fold knowledge (Systematics)

All real relationships are experienced as reducible to a combination of three independent elements standing to one another as affirming, denying and reconciling influences. A relationship is not itself a whole, nor is it a property of the wholes which it relates. Hence no principle of relatedness can be reached merely by combining wholeness and polarity. Relatedness goes beyond logic. The appearance of relational knowledge coincides with the birth of understanding. It can only arise through experience, which enables one inner functional order to reconcile two others, whether outer or inner. Otherwise unrelated facts can then be welded together into a coherent system. The triadic relationship breaks through the polar barrier that separates the subjective and objective experiences of the individual.

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