I AM THE OPPOSITE OF THE OPPOSITE I AM

THE

OPPOSITE OF OPPOSITE

IS

THE

AM I AM

TOTAL MAN

Stan Gooch 1972

Page 258

THE ANCIENT ADVERSARY

When a person looks in a mirror he finds that his left hand has become his right, and his right his left.

The opposites, one could say have changed places.

Page 60

"The central message of magic is that wishing will make it so."

THE TWO HANDS OF GOD

Alan Watts 1963

Page 15

Introduction

"If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, / Page16 / Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could sweep it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, - And shed a bitter tear.

By contrast, the :language of myth and poetry .is integrative, for the language of the image is organic language. Thus it expresses a point of view in which the dark side of things has its place, or rather, in which the light and the dark. are transcended through being seen in the terms of a dramatic unity. This is the catharsis, or soul-cleansing function, of the tragic drama.
It is for this reason that I am taking as the theme of this volume the myths of polarity, myths which deal with the conflicting dualities of life and their reconciliation. And as a subordinate and logically connected motif I shall consider
some representative myths of the function of the Demon, of the principle of darkness and evil. As already indicated, the polar vision or, as it is often called, the ambivalence of the mythological image implies a coincidence or reconciliation of opposites which, in the factual and pra~tical world, would seem impossible or immoral. It is thus a theme which can hardly be introduced without some preliminary philosophicaf considerations.
For some reason profound and sensitive people are never content with such clear and drastic solutions to the problem of duality as that which is proposed in popular Christian orthodoxy: that the final goal of existence is the everlasting reward and perpetuation of goodness to the total exclusion of evil, and the everlasting punishment or annihilation of its perpetrators. This solution arouses the same sort of intuitive disquiet as all other forms of metaphysical dualism in that it leaves us with a picture of the world which, because it con­/ Page 17 / tains an element which is not integrated, fails to make sense as a whole. On the other hand, there is as much disquiet with the idea of a simple monism. We cannot quite swallow the second Isaiah's reaction to Zoroastrian dualism: "I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." The thought is morally and practically confusing. It is just the kind of sophistry which the Devil himself would employ to blind the conscience of his victims and to spread the confusion of the witches' spell, "Fair is foul and foul is fair."
A problem which has for centuries occupied the most subtle philosophers and theologians will not, of course, be settled here. But much of this discussion may be by-passed if we realize that the problem is not answerable in the terms in which it is proposed, simply because they confuse the map with the territory. Good and evil are abstract categories like up and down, and categories do not perform their function unless they are kept distinct. It is thus perfectly proper that the concepts of good and evil be distinct, dualistic, and irreconcilable, that they be as firm and clear as any other measure. The "problem of duality" arises only when the abstract is confused with the concrete, when it is thought that there are as clearly distinguishable entities in the natural universe. As we have seen, factual language, in which categories of this kind belong, is never more than a strictly limited symbolism for what is happening in nature. The image, poetic or mythic, is closer than linguistic categories to events themselves, or to
what I would rather call natural patterning. We pay for the exactitude of factual language with the price of being able to speak from only one point of view at a time. But the image / Page18 / is many-sided and many-dimensioned, and yet at the same time imprecise; here again, it is like nature itself.
The same must be said of such other duality problems as those of freedom and determinism, randomness and order, multiplicity and unity. By changing the point of view, what is actually happening may be seen as having now one aspect and now the other, and though this may be contradictory for the categories of formal thought, it is not so in actual exist­ence. It is thus that in Christian theology Christ and Satan are irreconcilably opposed; but in the imagery of Christian . mythology the Serpent does duty for both-"for as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also shall the Son of Man be lifted up."
What this means for practical action is that we accept the standards of logic and morals, not exactly with reservations, but with a certain humor. We will try to keep them, knowing that we shall not altogether succeed. We shall commit ourselves to positions and promises as best we may, know­ing always that there must be a hintergedanke-a thought far in the back of the mind which, like crossed fingers, gives us an "out" when pressed too far. We shall realize that behind our devotion to duty there is always a strong element of self- admiration, and that even in the most passionate love of others there is inevitably the aspect of personal gratification.
This attitude of gentle cynicism has always been charac­teristic of highly cultured and humane people, and in the fellowship of those who can "let their hair down" with each other and express the warmest friendship in such terms as, "Well, you old rascall" The whole possibility of loving affection between human beings depends upon the recogni­tion and acceptance of an element of irreducible rascality in oneself and others-though to parade it is just as much / Page19 /
hypocrisy as the advertisement of one's virtues. The power of fanaticism, "effective" as it may be, is always bought at the price of unconsciousness, and whether its cause be good or evil it is invariably destructive because it works against life: it denies the ambivalence of the natural world.
But the very fact that the name of the angel of evil is Lucifer, the light-bearer, suggests that there might be some­thing formative and creative in becoming conscious of one's own evil principle, or dark side, or innate rascality. Is it entirely a question of coming in with a bright light and a scrubbing brush to clean the darkness out? All contemporary work in psychotherapy suggests a very different attitude: to become so conscious of one's own selfishness that one begins to know what it is actually seeking, to penetrate the central core of self-love. It is the advice of the Arabian gnostic Monoimus: "Learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate all these things, thou wilt find God in thyself, one and many, just as the atom; thus finding from thyself a way out of thyself."9 For by the principle of polarity we should find far down at the roots of the love of self the love of the other. Not to, see that the two are inseparable is ignorance and unconsciousness, but in seeing this the opposi tion is transcended. Then it becomes clear that self and other are the terms in which love plays hide-and-seek with itself, and the wheel is set in modem of which Dante says:

My will and my desire were both revolved,
As is a wheel in even motion driven,
By Love, which moves the sun and other stars.l0

Page 20
I have said that the historical approach to mythology has been overemphasized. Furthermore, it seems that there are overwhelming difficulties in the way of learning very much about mythogenesis by means of this approach-simply because the peoples and cultures we are trying to study are no longer with us, and we have therefore no direct way of studying the motivations and meanings behind their images. Nor is it safe to assume that existing "primitive" cultures are truly representative of human life in its earlier beginnings,
plausible as the idea may be. Nor, alas, can we be quite sure that ontogeny repeats the patterns of phylogeny, that as the foetus seems to rehearse the stages of man's biological evolulution, the growth of the child's mind rehearses the intellectual maturation of the race.
But the problem of mythogenesis is not simply a prob­lem of the past. Today as yesterday men are still eating and breeding, and our study of digestion and reproduction is based on materials that are with us in the present. Likewise, men are still poetizing and creating myths. Perhaps, then, the most fruitful way for us to approach mythogenesis is through such disciplines as psychology, sociology, and literary and artistic criticism-keeping, however, an open mind toward all that historical evidence has to offer. As Aldous Huxley once remarked, no one would think of talking about a specifically mediaeval stomach-ache because stomach-aches are in a class of non-historical experiences. And if this is true of stomach­aches, may we not assume that the psychophysical proc­esses of perception have undergone relatively little change throughout the past three thousand years, and that what we know about them might thus provide a point of departure for thinking about the genesis of myth? It provides a founda-/ Page 21/ tion, on top of which sociological and thus historical factors come into play.
According to the Gestalt theory of perception, we are not aware of any figure-be it an image, sound, or tactile impression-except in relation to a background. No sound or form is recognizable save in contrast with relative silence or form­lessness. The reverse is also true. In experiments which attempt to expose perception to nothing but background, experiments in "sensory deprivation," the individual is compelled to supply the missing figuration by fantasy. What we perceive, then, is never a figure alone but a figure/ground relationship. The primary "unit" of perception is therefore neither the thing (figure) nor the space (ground) in which it appears: it is the field or relationship of the two. Thus it is simply impossible to conceive of a square, or other enclosed area, with nothing whatsoever outside its border.
Translating these observations into a kinesthetic lan­guage, we see that there is no awareness of motion except in relation to stillness, or of the freedom of motion except in relation to a degree of resistance. Our consciousness of the movement of the arm is precisely the sensation of muscular energy overcoming weight. Furthermore, the manifestation of any natural form whatsoever is a relationship of arrest and movement, of limited energy, and thus it might be said that consciousness is nothing other than the sensation of frustra­
tion and strife. As Heraclitus said at the dawn of Western thought, "War is both father and king of all. . . . It should be understood that war is the common condition, that strife is justice, and that all things come to pass through the com­pulsion of strife. Homer was wrong in saying, 'Would that strife might perish from amongst gods and men.' For if that were to occur, then all things would cease to exist."l1

Page 22
Once stated, all this seems to be completely obvious.Yet the Gestalt theory of perception was at its inception a revelation or discovery, and the experimental images with, which the Gestalt psychologists prove their points are peren­llially fascinating because they never fail to convey this obvious relationship without inducing in us a certain sense of shock or surprise. Consider this familiar image of a figure / ground constellation:

FIG. 1.(Double image interpretation omitted)
[f we attend to the enclosed white area, we see a chalice. But if we attend to the surrounding black area, we see two faces /Page 23 / in profile, about to kiss. The point of the experiment is that we cannot see both at once-or perhaps that we find it intensely difficult to do so. Nevertheless, a single glance at the image reveals all that is there: the black and white areas are perceived simultaneously. The difficulty is that we cannot entertain the two interpretations of the image simultaneously. For our linear, one-thing-at-a-time thinking process, the image is either a chalice or kissing faces; for the logic of thought the two images are mutually exclusive. (Though what happens if one thinks of the image as a loving cup?)
In other words, we think by ignoring-or by attending to one term of a relationship (the figure) and neglecting the other (the ground). Thus in the sensation of "free" move­ment what captures attention is the motion of the limb as distinct from the resisting weight. In looking at trees against the sky, what strikes us as significant is the area contained by the outline of the trees rather than the shape of the space containing them. Yet for the artist, whether painter or photographer, the shape of the ground is as important as that of the figure. He cannot ignore the ground without producing some unpleasing disproportion in his work. For the same reason the astronomer cannot for long study the stars without becoming preoccupied with the "properties" of space.
Surely it is now clear that this contrast between the figure/ground image, on the one hand, and our exclusive conceptual interpretations, on the other, is of the same kind which holds between the mythic image and factual language. Surely, too, our conscious ignoring of the ground is related to the psychological mechanism of repression. May not this be why myth and dream alike seem to proffer a kind of com­pensatory vision to that of conscious thought? They are / Page 24 / intimations of the ignored and repressed aspects of the perceptual field-aspects to which we respond organically but not consciously.
It is not surprising, &:herefore, that all forms of "depth psychology" seem in some way to "take sides with the Devil" by calling attention to the aspect of things which the con­scious orientation of a society ignores and devalues. For there is a point, not at all easy to determine, at which inattention and opposition to the essential ambivalence of nature becomes neurotic, becomes, in other words, an attitude against life-or life-and-death. Up to that point the selective function of consciousness, separating what is significant from what is not, is the creative and formative principle of all culture. But, needless to say, one must not go too far. If motion completely annihilates resistance, all form dissolves. If discipline altogether controls spontaneity, grace is entirely lost. This only goes to show that significant form in art and nature is not an encounter of two separate principles-motion on the one hand and resistance on the other. Form is motion/resistance. In nature they are never found apart; only in thought can they be distinguished. Hence the wisdom of the proverb, "Give the Devil his due." For the dark side of life, the principle of evil or of man's irreducible rascality, is to be "reckoned with" not merely because it may overwhelm the light, but rather because it is the condition of there being any light at all.
This recognition of the two-sidedness of the One is what makes the difference between the exoteric and esoteric aspects of a religion, and the latter is always guarded and is always mystical or "closed" (from the Greek (omitted) because of the danger that the opposites will be confused if their unity is made explicit. It is thus that mysticism is never quite ortho­/ Page 25 / dox, never wholly respectable. "Inside knowledge" of this kind is taboo in somewhat the same way as the exposure of the sexual organs. For as the latter is reserved for special occasions between special people, the former is reserved to an elite minority-to those who can be trusted not to spoil a game through the knowledge that it is, after all, just a game. "Don't give the show away" because "the show must go on." And "the show" here is all manifestation-the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, of God not letting his right hand know what his left is doing. Thus superb accomplishment in any art comes at the point where the beholder and the artist himself have the impression that the work is happening naturally, of itself. Though Voltaire said that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him, only those myths are convincing which "come to us" and are ito!: consciously devised. For a skill is mastered to the degree that it is "othered," that is, to the extent that it is handed over to unconscious functioning and does not appear to be some­thing that "I" am doing. So also, in mystical traditions, God "others" himself in creating the world, in creating the appearance of innumerable creatures acting on their own. Yet in his own "secret counsels" the Lord knows very well that there are no others, for "I am the Lord, and there is none beside me." Brahma, too, is "one without a second" and the appearance of the world of multiplicity is maya, which, among its numerous meanings, denotes art or skill.
Initiation into the mysteries always represents an expansion of consciousness and an overcoming of ignorance, of the maya-illusion into which the Godhead plunges to give the appearance of otherness and multiplicity. The initiate thus transcends himself, as the ego-subject, by becoming conscious of the ignored aspect of his own nature: the whole / Page 26 /world of others which had seemed to confront him as an alien object, including also the disowned or unconscious aspects of his own organism. At this moment he sees through the game and is, one might almost say, tempted to stop playing because the possibility of desiring or choosing the good rather than the bad appears to be quite unreal. As the Buddha is reported to have exclaimed in the moment of his Awakening

:
Through birth and rebirth's endless round,
Seeking in vain, I hastened on,
To find who framed this edifice. . . .
0 builder, I have discovered thee,l
Never shalt thou rebuild this fabric!
Now the rafters are all shattered,
And the ridge-pole lies broken!
The mind has attained Nirvana,
Knowing the end of all desire! 12

This moment corresponds to the pralaya of Hindu cosmology, to Brahma's periodic withdrawal of the manifested world
into his own undifferentiated essence. Correspondingly, the illuminated or awakened sage withdraws into silent contem-plation.
, "In the space within the heart lies the controller of all. the lord of all, the ruler of all. He does not become greater by good works nor smaller by evil works. He is the bridge that serves as the boundary to keep the: different worlds apart. . . . Verily, because they know this, the ancient (sages) did not wish for offspring. What shall we do with offspring (they said) , we who have attained this Self, this world. They, having risen above the desire for sons, the desire for wealth, the desire for worlds, led the life of a mendicant. . . . This Self is (that which has - been described as) not this, not this.. He is incomprehensible for He / Page 27 / is never comprehended. He is indestructible for He cannot be destroyed. He is unattached for He does not attach Himself. He is unfettered, He does not suffer, He is not injured. These two thoughts do not overcome him who knows this: for some reason he has done evil or for some reason he has done good. He overcomes both. What he has done or what he has not done does not burn him."13
But the Indian mind grasped a deeper solution to the problem of life than mere withdrawal. On the one hand, to withdraw is a separative and thus essentially selfish position. On the other, to choose not to play rather than to play is still to choose, and thus to remain in duality. Therefore the most truly awakened sages are represented as coming back to participate in the life of the world out of "compassion for all sentient beings," playing the game of good against evil, success against failure, in the full knowledge that it is a game (lila). In this sense the sage is "two-faced" like Brahma himself, for there is the saguna aspect of Brahma which is involved in the world and the nirguna aspect which remains uninvolved, the face looking outward toward the world of
duality and multiplicity, and the face looking inward to the ' undifferentiated center.
It is not surprising, then, that various mythologies recognize a curious analogy between the divine ambivalence of God or of the savior-sage and the less respectable ambiv­alence of the Trickster, Joker, Conjurer, and Player. The analogy was by no means repugnant to so devout a Christian as G. K. Chesterton, who used it in his poem, "The Skeleton."

Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best; / Page 28 / Surely friends Imight have guessed Death was but the good King's jest, It was hid so carefully,"

Page note

*Note *The formula neti, neti, indicating that because the supreme Self is beyond all duality, no "this" can: be predicated of it, for every "this" is a defining class which must have an outside as well as an inside, i.e., an opposite.

THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

Joseph Campbell 1949

THE HERO AND THE GOD

Page 39
"The cosmogonic cycle is presented with astonishing consistency in the sacred writings of all the continents,43 and it gives to the adventure of the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the 'hero all the time. He is "the king's son" who has come to know who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power-"God's son," who has learned to know how much that title means. From this point of view the hero is symbolical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life.
"For the One who has become many, remains the One undivided, but each part is all of Christ," we read in the writings of Saint Symeon. the younger (949-1022 A.D.). "I saw Him in my house," the saint goes on. "Among all those everyday things He
appeared unexpectedly and became unutterably united and merged with me, and leaped over to me without anything in be­tween, as fire to iron, as the light to glass. And He made me like fire and like light. And I became that which I saw before and be­held from afar. I do not know how to relate this miracle to you. . . . I am man by nature, and God by the grace of God." 44
A comparable vision is described in the apocryphal Gospel of Eve. '''I stood on a loftly mountain and saw a gigantic man and another a dwarf; and I heard as it were a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am thou, / Page 40 / and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be I am there. In all am I,scattered, andwhensoever thou wilIest, thou gatherest Me; aIld gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself~" 45
The two-the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the found-are thus;understood as the outside andJpside of a single, self-mirrored 1!lystet:y, which is identical with the mystery of the
. manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make itknown

The World Navel

THE effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world. The miracle of this flow may be represented in physical terms as a circulation of food substance, dynamically as a streaming of energy, or spiritually asa manifestation of grace. Such varieties of image alternate easily, representing three degrees of condensation. of the one life force. An abundant harvest is the sign of God's grace; God's grace is the food of the soul; the lightning bolt is the harbinger of fertilizing rain, and at the same time the manifestation of the released energy of God. Grace, food substance, energy: these pour into the living world, and wherever. they fail, life decomposes into death.
The torrent pours from an invisible source, the point of entry being the center of the symbolic circle of the universe,-the Im­/ Page 41 / movable Spot of the Buddha legend,46 around which the world may be said to revolve. Beneath this spot is the earth-supporting head of the cosmic serpent, the dragon, symbolical of the waters of the abyss, which are the divi!le life-creative energy and sub­stance of the demiurge, the world-generative aspect of immortal being.47 The tree of life, i.e., the universe itself, grows from this point. It is rooted in the supporting darkness; the golden sun bird perches on its peak; a spring, the inexhaustible well, bubbles at its foot. Or the figure may be that of a cosmic mountain, with the city of the gods, like a lotus of light, upon its summit, and in its hollow the cities of the demons, illuminated by precious stones. Again, the figure may be that of the cosmic man or woman (for example the Buddha himself, or the dancing Hindu goddess Kali) seated or standing on this spot, or even fixed to the tree (Attis, Jesus, Wotan); for the hero as the incarnation of God is himself the navel of the world, the umbilical point through which the energies of eternity break into time. Thus the World Navel is the symbol of the continuous creation: the mystery of the main­tenance of the world through that continuous miracle of vivification which wells within all things.

Page 39 Notes

43 The present volume is ,not concerned with the historical discussion of this circumstance. That task is reserved for a work now under preparation. The present volume is a comparative, not genetic, study. Its purpose is to show that essential parallels exist in the myths themselves as well as in the inteJ;pretations and applications that the sages have announced for them.

Page 40 Note 45 Quoted by Epiphanius, Adversus haereses, xxvi, 3.