Creation and the Two Forces

Chapter 32: The Process of Creation

¹ The Tao or True Nature, considered as unchanging, has no name.

² In its primordial simplicity it may be small. Yet the whole world dares not deal with (one embodying) it as a minister. If a king could guard and hold the Tao, everything would spontaneously submit themselves to him.

³ Heaven and Earth (under its guidance) unite together and send down the sweet dew, which, without the directions of men, reaches equally everywhere as of its own accord.

⁴ As soon as it proceeds to action, it has a name as the tao. Men can then know it. After they know it, they can be free from all risk of failure and error.

⁵ The relation of the Tao to all the world is like that of the great rivers and seas to the streams from the valleys.

Chapter 6: Creation of the tao from the Tao

The Tao becomes the tao through the spirit of the female mystery [yin]. From this root, came creation. This sprit continues eternally acting gradually and gently, and without the touch of pain.

Chapter 22: The Two Forces of the Tao

From the Tao comes the grandest forms of active force.

These forces lead to the tao which we perceive with our eyes and touch.

Yet the Tao, True Nature, Itself is hidden, though it shows Itself through the tao or nature which resembles It.

This makes the Tao obscure while it is in the essences that endure.

Those essences have the truth for those who can see it, whether in the distant past, present, or future.

These forces work in sequence to create existence that continues forever.

I know these things from knowing the Tao or True Nature of existence.

Chapter 22: The Positive Force or Male Yang Unifies

¹ The Positive Force makes:

• the partial complete
• the crooked straight
• the empty full
• the worn out new

He whose desires are few gets them. He whose desires are many goes astray.

² Therefore the sage holds one thing–humility–and manifests it to all the world.

He is free from:

• self-display, and therefore he shines
• self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished
• self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged
• self-complacency, and therefore he acquires superiority.

It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him.

³ That saying of the ancients that ’the partial becomes complete’ was not vainly spoken–all real completion is comprehended under it.

Chapter 28: Yin and Yang or Female and Male Force

The male force has the female force in it.

Who knows his manhood’s strength,

Yet still his female feebleness maintains;

As to one channel flow the many drains,

All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky.

Thus he keeps his nearness to the Tao or True Nature constantly. The simple child again, free from all stains.

The white male yang force attracts, yet stays within the shade of the black female force. This forms a pattern of humility in the universe.

The sequence of creation, that is in line with the Tao or True Nature, returns endlessly to its first state.

Through this, the glory of the Tao shines. Yet this glory loves disgrace as to lower itself to the bottom of creation from which everything rises up.

The unchanging nearness to the Tao completes its story. We hail in such a mind the simple infant mind inside it.

² Raw clay when divided and distributed, forms vessels.

The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the officers of government. In his greatest regulations, he employs no violent measures.

Chapter 10: Life

¹ When the intelligent and animal souls are held together in one embrace by the tao, they can be kept from separating.

• When the soul gives undivided attention to the vital breath [pranah], and brings it to the utmost degree of pliancy then he can become born*.
• When the soul has cleansed its imagination, it can become flawless [and die and leave the physical dimension].

*Pranah is the glue that holds the soul to the body

² The tao can only begin and end creation as the female spirit [yin].

• The tao’s intelligence reaches every direction only because it has no knowledge.
• The tao can only love the people and rule the state through physical action.

³ The tao produces all things and nourishes them, without claim them as its own.

• It does all, and yet does not boast of it.
• It presides over all, and yet does not control them.

This is ‘The mysterious Quality’ of the tao.