NO PROGRESSION WITHOUT CONTRARIES: DEATH LIFE'S GLORIFIER
by Paul Hourihan

The Contraries are equally true. All are necessary. The Tiger completes the Lamb, and Being proceeds beyond both. Yin and Yang make up the Tao, the Way, the Reality, the Godhead. Or, rather, the Godhead is perceived, manifested, made accessible through the Yin and Yang, through the Contraries. Being itself is beyond all Contraries. It is that which is. But is-ness is experienced through the play of the contraries, through overcoming them, passing through them, and then forgetting them in the light of Self-Realization.

We crave Life, but Death is not only part of life, but necessary to it. Death is the Poetry of life: Life’s Glorifier. How poor Life would be were it not for the dead who have pre-deceased us, leaving us, in their memory, a page of life indispensable and blessed. The “noble dead,” Tennyson said. The sacred past.

Life leads to Death, we know. But Death leads to more Life. Every death in Nature leads to a new Resurrection. Trees would perish if they did not shed their leaves every autumn. With every leaf that falls the way is made for the reappearance of new life in another spring.

So among humanity. Suppose no one died, and humans even in their bodies achieved deathlessness. How quickly the earth would be over-populated, and life would be unbearable. Death redeems life … indeed, makes it possible.

 Dylan Thomas wrote: “Do not go gently into that Good-Night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”

No, not rage. Acceptance. Socrates is the exemplar for humanity when he accepted the cup of hemlock, not Dylan Thomas. Thomas’ view of death reflected his limited vision of life. He died as an alcoholic at the age of 39 in New York City.

From Life to Death—to Life again. And so on forever … or for as long as forever is. Opposites breed each other, and if we move with the flow of their interplay and tidal recurrence we ascend on ever-higher rungs of growth, development, evolution, and Self-knowledge.

Meanwhile, see yourself as representative of humanity itself. If you have achieved spirituality, then the way you have done so is the way others will eventually do so. If you are failing to achieve your spiritual goal, or failing even to understand why you are living, take that as the natural condition of man at a certain stage, accept that as your cross—the anxiety, the depression, the addiction, the cravings, the weakness, the bad temper—or whatever—take that as the cross to be borne. Precisely that!

It’s a process until the day of Realization of Truth. The Day of Attainment, when Perfection transcends the Process, having fulfilled it.

As far down as you have gone, so far will you go up. All is purposeful in this world. Not only the planets, the stars, the seasons, the courses of Nature, but the courses of the soul’s development were also designed for maximum effectiveness.

Satan is the potentiality in us for self-will carried to its ultimate end—that is all. Christ precisely the opposite.

The effort to dislodge the satanic element in the personality will produce the Christ consciousness. If the effort is strong, sustained, determined and desperate enough, saintliness will result.

The wildness and violence of the ego become, in this mysterious but fated process, converted into tremendous power of spiritual willing and discriminative knowledge, which make a person invincible, a hero.

No progression without contraries.

 

See also Words of Wisdom: Truth, Spiritual Life

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