In an article in Elsevier last week, it is described that scientific research into the cure of cancer is no longer primarily led by doctors and oncologists or surgeons, but by molecular biologists. Instead of seeing cancer as a whole, a tumor that needs to be cut out or bombarded with radiation or chemotherapy, they dive deep into the DNA and genes in the laboratory and look for what exactly is happening there. They move, as it were, in the DNA molecule and have discovered that a defect in the molecule creates an enzyme that makes that tumor cell, which is a direct mirror of our healthy cells, run wild. That enzyme must then be combated with highly targeted therapy to stop the growth of the tumor cells. In about 25 years, 90% healing should be possible.
The essence of this story is: by looking from the inside at the smallest level, a dynamic and coherent picture of the total is created and the solution is hidden in it.
What happens to us when we switch from looking at situations from the outside to really diving in? And what exactly do we mean by that?
We also really empathize in social traffic. Examples include: listening to the real-life quotes of patients instead of reading the conclusions of the researchers, who just completed a gutter patient satisfaction survey. Walk around the company full of attention and listen to the stories on the work floor of the organization instead of reading a report from the personnel director.
When we make the switch from’ watching ‘to’ seeing', our attention consciousness shifts from being busy in our own head with fixed thought patterns to what is really happening in the field. We notice that shift in ourselves when suddenly the realization penetrates that we ourselves are part of that situation, contribute to it ourselves, often a situation that we first looked at and complained about. We recognize ourselves to be part of the problem. We deepen this awareness when, for example, we say in ourselves: ‘in my heart I actually knew it’.
Scientists like Goethe, David Bohm and later Henri Bortoft, with his excellent book ‘The Wholeness of Nature’, point us to the importance of science companies by acting as observers in to crawl the phenomenon and actively poke around it in order to build insight from there. Bohm uses the hologram as a model to understand the’ whole'. A hologram shows that the’ whole ' is present in each of the parts.
Bortoft, who admires both Goethe and Bohm, distinguishes two types of ‘whole’: the ‘counterfeit whole’ and the ‘authentic whole’. Both are based on different types of attentional awareness. The 'counterfeit whole' is based on the abstracting intellect. When our brain is in that mode, it moves away from the concrete part to get the overview. The result is an abstract and non-dynamic picture of the whole. We call that generalizing and that rarely leads to correct solutions.
In contrast, the ‘authentic whole’ is based on a completely different capacity for consciousness, the ‘intuitive’ intellect, which moves towards the concrete parts in order to get to know the ‘living whole’.
The way to the 'whole' is then my deep journey in and through the parts. I settle in and look around. Again, I will not be able to fathom the "whole" by distancing myself and trying to overlook it, as if it were an all-encompassing, generalizing unity. The’ whole ' can only be discovered by diving into the parts and experiencing the interconnectedness.
Goethe calls this sensory imagination. He was master of it. He cultivated this special ability of sensory perception into a real scientific approach. For example, he studied a leaf of a plant and followed it in his imagination to the smallest detail, deeper and deeper, and in his brain, as it were, an animated film of the dynamic whole arose at the molecular level, and perhaps even smaller. The magazine became a dynamic movement. Thus, he studied photosynthesis.
We then go into the heart of the heart, of the heart. That is not a single point, but that is seeing movement and coherence. That is where the authentic whole can be found, that is the reality. This cognitive ability, different from the abstracting intellect, derives from the intelligence of the heart. We can activate and sharpen this cognitive ability, this intuitive intellect. That requires practice from us.
We cannot leave Plato's cave by getting stuck in our abstractions, by holding on to the shadows, which are our mental projections. We also cannot leave the cave on someone else's back, like the upper kitten of Varela. We have to do it ourselves. The only way is to activate our own senses. We then see unrestrained with our heart in the heart of the whole. We empathize. From there, the new answers can then come in silence and after careful reflection.
This approach, I think, offers the best prospects, as we are now seeing happen in medical science by moving us into our genes to fight the most common disease. This also applies to social traffic. Perhaps by deepening our eyesight and by making more use of the intuitive intellect, we can also effectively combat the ‘tumors’ in our society.
Boy Van Droffelaar, PhD
