Beyond the World of Opposites

The Eastern mystics experience all things and events as manifestations of a basic oneness.

• This does not mean that all things to be equal.

They recognize the individuality of things.

• But at the same time, all differences are relative within an all-embracing unity.

In our normal state of consciousness, the following are extremely hard to accept:

• this unity of all contrasts
• especially the unity of opposites

This is one of the most puzzling features of Eastern philosophy.

Opposites are abstract concepts belonging to the realm of thought.

• As such they are relative.

By the very act of focusing our attention on any one concept we create its opposite.

The mystic transcends this realm of intellectual concepts, and so becomes aware of the relativity and polar relationship of all opposites.

Good and bad, pleasure and pain, life and death, are not absolute experiences belonging to different categories, but are merely 2 sides of the same reality, extreme parts of a single whole.

The awareness that all opposites are polar, and thus a unity, is seen as one of the highest aims of man in the spiritual traditions of the East.

D. T. Suzuki writes

The whole of Buddhist teaching and Eastern mysticism revolves around this absolute point of view which is reached in the world of acintya, or ‘no-thought’ where the unity of all opposites becomes a vivid experience.

The notion that all opposites are polar-that light and dark, winning and losing, good and evil, are merely different aspects of the same phenomenon-is one of the basic principles of the Eastern way of life.

Since all opposites are interdependent, their conflict can never result in the total victory of one side, but will always be a manifestation of the interplay between the two sides.

In the East, a virtuous person is therefore not one who undertakes the impossible task of striving for the good and eliminating the bad, but rather one who is able to maintain a dynamic balance between good and bad.

This notion of dynamic balance is essential to the way in which the unity of opposites is experienced in Eastern mysticism. It is never a static identity, but always a dynamic interplay between two extremes.

This point has been emphasized most extensively by the Chinese sages in their symbolism of the archetypal poles yin and yang.

They called the unity lying behind yin and yang the Tao and saw it as a process which brings about their interplay: That which lets now the dark, now the light appear is Tao.‘4

The dynamic unity of polar opposites can be illustrated with the simple example of a circular motion and its projection.

Suppose you have a ball going round a circle. If this movement is projected on to a screen, it becomes an oscillation between two extreme points. CTo keep the analogy with Chinese thought, I have written TAO in the circle and have marked the extreme points of the oscillation with YIN and YANG.)

The ball goes round the circle with constant speed, but in the projection it slows down as it reaches the edge, turns around, and then accelerates again only to slow down once more-and so on, dynamic unity of polar opposites in endless cycles. In any projection of that kind, the circular movement will appear as an oscillation between two opposite points, but in the movement itself the opposites are unified and transcended. This image of a dynamic unification of opposites was indeed very much in the minds of the Chinese thinkers, as can be seen from the passage in the Chuang-tzu quoted previously :*

That the ‘that’ and the ‘this’ cease to be opposites is the very essence of Tao. Only the essence, an axis as it were, is the centre of the circle responding to the endless changes.

One of the principal polarities in life is the one between the male and female sides of human nature. As with the polarity of good and bad, or of life and death, we tend to feel uncomfortable with the male/female polarity in ourselves, and therefore we bring one or the other side into prominence.

Western society has traditionally favoured the male side rather than the female. Instead of recognizing that the personality of each man and of each woman is the result of an interplay between female and male elements, it has established a static order where all men are supposed to be masculine and all women feminine, and it has given men the leading roles and most of society’s privileges.

This attitude has resulted in an over-emphasis of all the yang-or male-aspects of human nature: activity, rational thinking, competition, aggressiveness, and so on.

The yin-or female-modes of consciousness, which can be described by words like intuitive, religious, mystical, occult or psychic, have constantly been suppressed in our male-oriented society.

In Eastern mysticism, these female modes are developed and a unity between the two aspects of human nature is sought.

A fully realized human being is one who, in the words of Lao Tzu, ‘knows the masculine and yet keeps to the feminine’.

In many Eastern traditions the dynamic balance between the male and female modes of consciousness is the principal aim of meditation, and is often illustrated in works of art.

A superb sculpture of Shiva in the Hindu temple of Elephanta shows 3 faces of the god: on the right, his male profile displaying virility and will-power; on the left, his female aspect-gentle, charming, seductive-and in the centre the sublime union of the 2 aspects in the magnificent head of Shiva Mahesvara, the Great Lord, radiating serene tranquillity and transcendental aloofness.

In the same temple, Shiva is also represented in androgynous form-half male, half female-the flowing movement of the gods body and the serene detachment of his/her face symbolizing, again, the dynamic unification of the male and female.