“One yin and one yang constitute what is known as Tao.” (I Ching) In “The Lau Tzu” (Tao Te Ching) the two forms of yin and yang refer to heaven and earth. This directly correlates with the concept of the Taoist trilogy, the San Ti, which postulates man is the same as heaven and earth.
1.. In Taoism, the basic, eternal principle of the universe that transcends reality and is the source of being, non-being, and change.
2.. In Confucianism, the right manner of human activity and virtuous conduct seen as stemming from universal criteria and ideals governing right, wrong, and other categories of existence. (American Heritage)
“Wu Chi creates Tai Chi, Tai Chi is the one Chi. One Chi generates Yin and Yang, and Yin and Yang can change in infinite ways.” This is also stated allegorically in the “Lau Tzu,” (”Tao Te Ching”). ” Tao produced oneness. Oneness produced duality, Duality evolved into the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things support the yin, and embrace the yang. It is the blending of the breaths (of yin and yang) that their harmony depends.”
Now compare this idea with the description of the monad from the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster….
This sequence of from the “Oracles,” reflects a parallel to the monad and Tai Chi that is unmistakable..
25. The Monad first existed, and the Paternal Monad still subsists.
26. When the Monad is extended, the Dyad is generated.
27. And beside Him is seated the Dyad which glitters with intellectual sections,
to govern all things and to order everything not ordered.
28. The Mind of the Father said that all things should be cut into Three, whose
Will assented, and immediately all things were so divided.
29. The Mind of the Eternal Father said into Three, governing all things by Mind.
30. The Father mingled every Spirit from this Triad.
31. All things are supplied from the bosom of this Triad.
32. All things are governed and subsist in this Triad
33. For thou must know that all things bow before the Three Supernals.
34. From thence floweth forth the Form of the Triad, being preexistent; not the
first Essence, but that whereby all things are measured.
35. And there appeared in it Virtue and Wisdom, and multiscient Truth.
36. For in each World shineth the Triad, over which the Monad ruleth.”
As you can figure the two concepts are the same, although they may be stated somewhat differently. We do not have to achieve Tao, we are already part of it. All we need to do is realize its potential.
Tom Saunders
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Come and behold: There is a dress that is visible to everyone. The simple people, when they see a person dressed beautifully, WHO APPEARS TO THEM DISTINGUISHED BY HIS CLOTHING, do not observe any further. THEY MAKE THEIR JUDGMENTS ABOUT HIM ACCORDING TO HIS DISTINGUISHED APPAREL and they consider the dress as the body OF MAN, and the body OF THE PERSON LIKE his soul.
Similar to this is the Torah. It has a body, which is composed of the commandments of the Torah that are called the ‘body of the Torah’. This body is clothed with garments, which are stories of this world. The ignorant of the world look only at that dress, which is the story in the Torah, and are not aware of anything more. They do not look at what lies beneath that dress. Those who know more do not look at the dress, but rather at the body beneath that dress. The wise, the sages, the servants of the Loftiest King, those that stood at Mount Sinai, look only at the soul OF THE TORAH, which is the essence of everything, the real Torah. In the destiny to come, they are destined to look at the soul, the soul of the Torah.
–the Zohar
A slave seeks only to be free and does not seek the master’s estate.
For a child it is not enough to be a child, but a child claims the
father’s inheritance.
Heirs to the dead are dead, and what they inherit is dead. Heirs to
the living are alive, and they inherit both the living and the dead.
The dead inherit nothing, for how could a dead person inherit? If a
dead person inherits the living, the living will not die and the dead
will come to life.
–Philip (Meyer translation)
We do not see things as they, are but as we are
—-kahlil Gilbran
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Salvation comes not from the self, but from the true self.
The Christ.
The I before is I and WE, the I after is I, as there is no WE….
Thomas Aquinas stated that there are ONLY 3 movements in the universe….
straight line….. masculine..the penis…the rod..the sword..air and fire
circular…vagina…womb…cup..shield…water and earth
and obtuse…..a unification of male and female…changing direction mid-flow…serpentine….the kabalistic lightning flash..the chord…quintessence…aether..the Christ…..
SO we see the idea of the alchemical unity…..
A “chemical wedding” (the Rosicrucian term)…a marriage of opposites to form a new whole…..
Dualism: God is the creator, “his” creation is not “him”
Exoteric Christianity perceives otherwise. It likes to insist that the Father is not the creation. Or the father is not the mother/daughter. This is a stance reliant on doctrin,
and logic that proclaims separation. Thus God is not creation, everything is not holy. This helps keep the divine lofty, far away and beyond reach. Through interaction in prayer we see that we can communicate…with the seperate “being.”
God is not man. Man is not God. Rocks are not God, God is not Satan, Satan is not God.
Non duality: We see that everything is interconnected. All is one. A simple way is to think of a spider’s thread, an ecosystem of just the human body. In science we find the old Chestnut; one cannot separate the observer from the observed. In Shakespeare we find in the merchant of Venice, the declaration that one needs a pound of flesh and yet not one drop of blood, illustrates how things are inseparable. In physics and in Kabbalah we find the principle that “nothing can exist in a vacuum.” Try as you might nothing can truly be separate from anything else.
There is nothing that is not God. All is one.
Duality is a product of the intellect, or episteme. One looks at a tree and thinks, I think therefore I am. Thus I am not a tree. Thus this means God is the creator and not the creation. I can plainly see and think using my intellect that I am not God, nor is that tree over there.
Non Duality is a product of the intellect and experience. Experiential knowledge (if anyone knows the two Buddhist terms for both types of knowledge please do say, this idea of two types of knowledge is found in many “cultures”) as opposed to intellectual knowledge or Gnosis is how we can actually experience and KNOW non duality. This requires more than just thinking about something. This requires interaction. This requires, arguably, actually becoming.
This is the difference between one who writes about apples, and one who just eats them. One can compose great sonnets to apples; discuss its skin…how joyous they are. However eating an apple is a totally different thing.
So dualism deals with beginning and end. God is here, and ends there. A tree is here and is not there. Thus we have clearly defined boundaries. This is intellectually sound and helps us to cope with the paradoxical nature of the reality. Indeed it is “few” who have really experienced this unity beyond the intellect.
Dualism is faced with saying this is the end, this is the beginning. The problem is that if one delves beneath the surface one finds that the beginning is the end.
2 polar opposites…let say crown and Kingdom…..let’s call them past (crown) and future (kingdom)….
now if these were 2 imaginary points…polar opposites…that stretch out for infinity in opposite directions…Math/Science states they reach a point of infinity…and eventually come back upon them selves.. Thus the end is the beginning is the end……
This fits in nicely with many ideas such a Hindu and Buddhist thought that states the end is indeed the beginning…..a cycle of birth and death for all existence…
We can also see this in western esoteric thought….the divine trinity of creation destruction and redemption…..which is the same as the Rosicrucian trinity (from the Bible) of
“Ex Deo nascimur.
In Jesu Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.”
We are born in God…we die in Christ and are reborn in the Holy Spirit…….
Creation destruction redemption is again much like the kabbalist (and many others) idea of a return to a better state…..the end is the beginning is the end….
So dualism like Newtonian Physics is great for the surface, but you require a deeper and different focus below the surface. This does not make duality wrong; it just shows it is a map not the territory. But then you could argue if the end is the beginning then there is no end OR beginning. In Gnosticism this is precisely what we find. Thus there is no need to return to a better state as we are already in it. Gnosticism argues we just have to open our eyes to this “fact.”
Ultimately the divine is beyond words, thus any concept such as duality, pantheistic are all wrong; as they are concepts. The divine is beyond any concept.
“The Creator has no body, physical stature, image, or form at all…..The glory is an appearance of the resplendent light, which is called Shechinah , and the will of the Creator shows and images that very light to the prophets according to the hour, to this one as that [form] and to the other as that…..From the resplendent light He created His glory…..the appearance of the vision is in the heart of the one who sees…..The Creator is one and makes the glory appear according to His will…..The appearance of His splendor, which is His glory, is like a consuming fire, and they called it Shechinah …..According to the will of the Creator is the appearance of His glory. Moses saw the splendor of the glory, the great resplendence, more than all the prophets. Within the vision are images, [as it is written] ‘and through the prophets I was imaged’ (Hosea 12:11 )…..The appearance of the images is according to the desire of His decrees, sometimes in the image of an anthropos and sometimes in another image, in accordance with His will He shows His glory in the place that He wills.”
- Eleazar of Worms (Sha’arei ha-Sod ha-Yichud v’ha-Emunah )
Polarity….
left is right, right is left.
The key to polarity is to realize that opposites are the same thing. A Kaplan explains this well early on in his version of the safer yetzirah.
Opposites if stretched out forever…will bend in upon themselves and meet.
However beyond opposites is the 3rd…
The sperm and the egg form a zygote
a chemical wedding…marriage of opposites to create a 3rd
Thus a child is of the mother and the father, both and yet neither.
Thus Christ is of the father and the world (the mother), both, and yet neither
The line (father) and the circle (mother) when joined form the serpent (child), which is the circle and the line, yet neither.
the end is in the beginning, kether is in malkuth, kether is closer to malkuth than it is to chockmah.
When united, there is no kether or malkuth………there just is
“Tarry a little; there is something else. This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh:’ Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate unto the state of Venice.
Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more but just a pound of flesh: if thou cut’st more or less than a just pound, be it but so much as makes it light or heavy in the substance, or the division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn but in the estimation of a hair, thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate.”
–the merchant of venice, the bard
So we see, nothing exists in isolation. Blood is inseparable from flesh. Good is inseparable from evil.
“Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin. But those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble, eternal.”
–gospel of Philip
good is not good, evil is not evil. Christ is not the father or the mother.
This is dualism…..
OM…
He who has known that all beings have become one with his own self, and he who has seen the oneness of existence, what sorrow and what delusion can overwhelm him?
He has occupied all. He is radiant, without body (incorporeal), without injury, without muscles, pure, untouched by evil. He is the seer, thinker, all pervading, self-existent, has distributed various objects, through endless years, each according to it’s inherent nature.
–Isa Upanishad
of course concepts are concepts. Concepts by their very nature are inherently wrong. The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao. But concepts “help”, the greatest thing you can say is however, to remain silent.
