Quest Magazine

by Corinne McLaughlin with Gordon Davidson

Originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: McLaughlin, Corinne; Davidson, Gordon. "The Age of Synthesis." Quest  98. 4 (Fall 2010): 144-146. 

 

Today many disparate things are blending, fusing and synthesizing. Races, religions, cultures, nations, genders, and styles no longer seem as separate as they did in past times. The walls between opposites are beginning to dissolve, and dualities are transforming into a higher synthesis.

The cutting edge in every field is fusion and synthesis: holistic, hybrid, integral, multiracial, multicultural, multinational, interfaith, transpartisan. These reflect many aspects of the Age of Synthesis, described by scientists such as Dr. Carl W. Hall, that we're now entering.

Synthesis is a process of reconciling apparent diversity. It is a dynamic dance that transforms separateness and brings diverse parts into right relationships with one another and with the whole, resulting in something creative and enriching. It sounds a whole tone that tunes and harmonizes all other frequencies within its range of influence. Embodying synthesis fosters the ability to perceive the highest, the light in everything. Synthesis takes the best from the past and what is relevant and useful from the future, and applies it in the present. Life is loving synthesis in action.

Synthesis dictates the trend of all the evolutionary processes today. Everything is working toward larger unified blocs, toward amalgamations, international relationships, global planning, economic fusion, interdependence, interfaith movements and ideological concepts that deal with wholes rather than isolated parts. Now humanity is gradually building a synthesis in time and space through our modern, interconnected civilization and technology such as the Internet and jet travel.

An immensely popular holistic health industry, for example, unites mind and body. Hybrid cars blend gasoline and electric energy. Fusion music blends diverse styles and cultures. Social-benefit corporations fuse entrepreneurship and philanthropy. "Third way" politics synthesize the best of the left and right. New religions teach that Spirit and matter are no longer separate, as Spirit infuses matter. Spirituality is becoming more practical and applied to everyday life, which is attested by the new movements that bring together seeming opposites: Spirit in Business, Spirituality and Science, the Soul of Education and Spiritual Politics,. The signs are everywhere.

Van Jones, a practical visionary and the former director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, says today is the age of hybridity, when things are coming together in new ways. He says that the new generation doesn't want to be limited by binary thinking—either/or—that they want both/and. They want whole systems change—transforming the world at multiple levels simultaneously.

In this new Age of Synthesis, it's notable that the United States elected a president, Barack Obama, who embodies synthesis in his multiracial makeup, multicountry residences, multifocus career and transpartisan politics.

The spirit of synthesis is emerging in every field today, as interdisciplinary approaches by practical visionaries become the leading edge in academia, government and business. Disruptive, breakthrough innovations usually come about when you mash together different disciplines, says Salim Ismail, a former executive with Yahoo!, who directs the new Singularity University on the NASA Ames base in California. The university's mission is to solve the world's biggest problems by synthesizing academic disciplines.

The movement toward fusion and synthesis is even reflected  in  the way mainstream refers to holistic approaches of health care. At first, it was called "alternative medicine" because it was an alternative to mainstream, allopathic medicine. As it became more popular, it was called "complementary medicine," and now that it's accepted by many people in the mainstream medical profession, it's referred to as "integrative medicine."

The trend toward synthesis reflects the truth of the  Ageless Wisdom teaches that Spirit and matter aren't separate but are merely different frequencies along the same spectrum of energy. Spirit is matter at its highest frequency; matter is Spirit at its lowest frequency. You could say that matter is Spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.

Integral philosopher Ken Wilber says that "spirit is unfolding in this world and as this world." He goes on to note that in the nondual spiritual traditions, the absolute (spirit) and the relative (form) are not two but one: "In order to have a full realization of Spirit, you have to realize formlessness, this pure unmanifest presence, and you have to realize Spirit
in action in the manifest world of form. Spirit is present—immanent—everywhere in the world. Today, spirit of systhesis is about recognizing what already is present—seeing reality more clearly.

While many spiritual people like to hang out only in the realm of spirit, they need to move back and forth between spirit and matter to grow and to generate energy, just as energy is generated in a battery or an electrical system. True synthesis is a state of being that you can learn to recognize and identify with. The secret is aligning your personal will with a higher spiritual purpose. Psychologist Roberto Assagilli noted that "synthesis is brought about by a higher element or principle which transforms, sublimates ansd reabsorbs the two poles into a higher reality…The method of synthesis which is analogous in a certain sense to a chemical combination, includes and absorbs the two elements into higher unity endowed with qualities differing from those of either of them. "It's like individual musical instruments playing together to create the wonderful harmonies of a  symphony—without a conductor to orchestrate it.

The new integral approaches to life,  which address both the inner and outer and the personal and collective aspects of every issue, are key methods for creating unity. The "integral revolution" spearheaded by author Ken Wilber is an important example, as is the Spiral Dynamics work by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, which portrays civilization as an evolutionary spiral moving toward a more comprehensive and universal awareness.

The Ageless Wisdom teaches the importance of resolving duality: If your eye is single, all is light, as the Bible says. You  see how everything has purpose and goodness to it. You walk the razor's edge between the two great lines of force.

Your intuition can help you transcend polarity and binary thinking, such as either/or and us versus them, and focus instead on both/and thinking. Your inner light helps you embrace a higher synthesis of seeming opposites, such as mind and body, subject and object, form an emptiness, wave and particle, spirituality and science, rational and intuitive, Eastern and Western, traditional and innovative, personal and political, liberal and conservative, masculine and feminine, practical and visionary, and spirit and matter.

On a practical level, how can you work on transforming duality and bringing this energy of synthesis into your daily life? You learn to embody synthesis by looking for the right relationship between separated parts and gathering the parts into right relationship with the living whole. You can begin exploring the larger pattern or whole that includes the opposites.

For example, you can look for the grain of truth on each side of an argument to see how each contributes to the bigger picture. You can practice listening to someone who holds a different philosophical or political view from your own, and then look for points of agreement or common ground. You can also work on walking in someone else's shoes and seeing the world from his or her perspective. This seems simple, but it is incredibly profound and revealing. You can psychologically role-play someone who is different from you to develop empathy. Seeking out different cultural, racial and religious experiences can expand your perspective as you learn to harmonize with them. Another good technique is reading the literature of people with opposing views and trying to keep an open mind, looking for the grain of truth.

The questions for today are: How much can each of us synthesize in our consciousness? How many seemingly different realities and opposing views can we hold at once? To what degree can we identify with the whole? A good time to practice synthesizing is when we hear competing views from different political spokespeople. We highly recommend it—and it certainly makes the evening news more interesting!

Following are some examples.

In Politics the creation of "third way" and transpartisan approaches beyond left and right. the resolving of polarizing conflicts through mediation techniques. the building of regional unions among nations. the explosion of multi-sector partnerships—government, business, nonprofits. the intergenerational collaborative movement among young and old. the blending and intermarriage between races, cultures and sexes. In Religion the dialogue among different religions in the interfaith movement. the renewed emphasis on both contemplation and social action. the trend toward adopting beliefs and practices of several religions at once. the blending of religion with social activities and entertainment in modern mega churches. In Psychology the integration of the conscious, subconscious and superconscious. the fusing of Eastern and Western approaches. the emergence of somatic education, integrating mind and body. the integration of the whole field of the psyche in integral psychology. the blending of psychology and ecology in behavioral ecology. the popularity of cross-cultural studies, trainings, tours. In Business the new concern for doing well by doing good—profit and values. the harmonizing of environmental and economic concerns. the merging of for-profit with nonprofit mission in social benefit corporations and social entrepreneurship. the trend to support work/life balance in the workplace. the merging of economics with psychology in a new field called therapeutic economics. In Science the discovery of nuclear fusion which unifies atoms, rather than splitting them, as in nuclear fission. the massive hybridization of crops. the blending of physical science and social science; the merging of biology and ecology to create the new field of epigenetics. the teaming of science with religion in neurotheology to study the effects of prayer and meditation and prove the existence of the soul. In Technology the creation of hybrid cars, using gas and electricity. the open-source, free software collaboration among self-organizing communities such as Wikipedia. the hyperlinking and networking among diverse groups. the "mash-ups" that remake videos or music by splicing in diverse sequences from unusual sources. the blending of traditional journalism with citizen media, such as cell phone videos, Twitter feeds, video pods and use-news sites. the fusing of education and technology through "educasting" and online courses. the merging of real life and virtual life through online avatar games. In the Arts the trend toward fusion music and world music, blending styles and cultures, such as hip hop with Indian sitar. the widespread use of mixed media in works of art. the interactive, cross-platform entertainments. the profusion of political statements in art, music, film, literature. the transforming of two-dimensional figures into multidimensional scenes called "diorama." In Medicine the holistic approaches, which include body, emotions, mind, spirit. the complementary approaches of alternative and allopathic medicine. the integrative medicine of indigenous and contemporary modalities. the new "energy medicine" that relates the physical and etheric bodies.

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Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson are co-authors of  Spiritual Politics, and Builders of the Dawn. They are co-founders of The Center for Visionary Leadership, based in California and North Carolina, of Sirius, a spiritual and ecological community in Massachusetts. Corinne coordinated a national task force for President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development. Gordon was the Founding Director of the Social Investment Forum and of Ceres, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies. They both are fellows of the World Business Academy and the Findhorn Foundation. This article is adapted from their book, The Practical Visionary (Unity House).

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by Stephen Karcher

Originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Karcher, Stephen. "The Power of Great and Small." Quest  98. 4 (Fall 2010): 139-143.  

I Ching, the "Classic of Change," is the world's oldest and most sophisticated system of wisdom divination, the fundamental source of China's philosophy, medicine, and spirituality. Change, as it is often called, aims at adding something crucial to our awareness that can connect us to what the old sages called the Dao (or Tao), the ongoing process of the Real. Its job is to make us deeply aware of the now, the present moment, and what is truly at play in the everyday events of our lives. It was put together in a time of troubles much like our own and can speak directly to our situation in the modern West. 

Myths of the Pair

 Among the basic units of Change are pairs, sets of two interconnected six-line figures or hexagrams. Each pair locates and describes a transformation, a specific paradigm with its own thematic concerns. These pairs reflect the creative power of the mythological imagination and its holographic capacity to produce dynamic models of complex realities.

A basic way of imagining these pairs is as a set of spindles on which an unbroken thread is wound back and forth like a Mbius strip, or as a great egg that turns itself inside out without breaking its shell. The thread is the thread of life itself as it passes back and forth across the spindles of "inspiration" and "realization," circulating in us through a series of hidden pathways that establish the deep background of a situation. The pair reflects the basic teaching in all Eastern thought: nothing stands alone; each thing can only truly exist when held in creative tension with its opposite.

 Gates of Change 

We are all familiar with the terms yin and yang and often use them to organize our own thinking about dualities and polarities. But these terms were created comparatively late in the written tradition of Change, which begins about 1100 BCE. Yin and yang came out of the synthesizing thought of the school of Cosmologists (c.300 BCE), who were attempting to organize the complexities of the old world of myth and ritual world into a conceptual system. A whole world of myth and image is hidden behind them.

The oldest example of the Chinese myth of the pair is probably the underworld Ghost River, which unites the Sun Tree and the Moon Tree in a constant interchange between light and dark, life and death, acting and being. These two powers were seen as Gates of Change. Everything that exists in the world we live in is created by passing through these gates. The yang pole was the Dragon Gate, qian, "inspiring force, dragon" (figure 1), which signifies spirit, creative energy, active transforming power and inspiration, the male sexual organ, and the masculine drive. It activates, animates, commands, and guides. It is strong, tenacious, untiring, and firm.  

Figure 1. The ancient Chinese ideogram for qian, composed of yan, lush hanging vegetation, jungle (1); dan, dawn, the sun just above the horizon (2); and yi, animating vapors or breath that spread to nourish the All under Heaven, the world we live in (3, 4). 

The yin gate was the Earth Gate: kun, the field, the dark animal goddess (figure 2). Kun is the earth, the world, space, concrete existence, moon, mother, wife, servants, ministers; she is all that is supple, adaptable, receptive, yielding, and fertile.   

Figure 2. The ancient ideogram for kun, composed of tu, earth (1), and shen, spirit power, the primordial waters, the rhythm of birth and death (2).

 These gates established a pattern of interconnected opposites that permeates the oldest layers of Change. It is seen in the many sets of paired words that turn "either-or" into "both-and": strong and supple, sun and moon, transformation and continuity, above and below, inside and outside, life and death, me and you. All the changes in the world we live in were seen as a product of the mysterious doubling embodied in the Gates of Change.

 Great and Small

 In the later evolution of philosophical thought, these old images became the well-known pair of yin and yang. But in the old mythic world, the two powers were directly embodied in two words that represent stances or qualities of the will. These are the oldest words for yin and yang. They are personal processes, not abstract qualities:

Da, "Great," calls upon you to be great and strong. It means to collect your strength, organize yourself around a central idea or purpose, impose your will, and act to help and protect others. The Great Person is someone who has done this, who has acquired this power. The Great People are ancestor spirits and those through whom they manifest blessings: great rulers, sages, ritual experts and diviners, people in contact with the bright spirit that offers great insight and the power to manifest it.

Xiao, "Small," calls upon you to be flexible and supple, to adapt to whatever crosses your path. It means letting go of your sense of self-importance and yielding in a spontaneous and flexible way. The Small Person is one who adapts to and follows what crosses his path, an important step in finding the Way. Traditionally, the Small People were nobles without lands who had to take service with a lord and were subject to his whims and commands. They could hope to influence their situation only through adaptation and inner work. The Small Person became a Daoist byword for those who could see the small beginnings of change, unencumbered by pride and complication.

 The Realizing Person

 These processes or orientations of the will were the tools of the Realizing Person (figure 3), the person whose goal is use Change to act in accord with the Way and accumulate the power and virtue to become who he or she was meant to be.

Figure 3. Junzi, the Noble One or Realizing Person, consists of jun, chief or lord, a hand holding a scepter and a mouth that speaks truth (left); and zi, son or sonhood, the figure for a child, indicating the reappearance of an ancestor spirit. It is the suffix meaning "sage" or "master" in names such as Lao-zi (or Lao-tzu), the "young-old master." 

The Ghosts and Spirits

 The world of the Realizing Person was populated not only by humans but by the ghosts and spirits, the guishen. As the tradition says: "Between heaven and earth there is no place the guishen do not exist." These spirits of heaven and earth are loosely divided into two types representing the two basic spirit forces that act on and in the heart-mind.

Gui, ghosts (yin), are spirits of the past who freeze things in place, stopping movement. Dark spirits who live in the tomb and the earth, they can be angered or offended by mistreatment and turn into furies, spirits of vengeance. The ghosts represent hidden traumas that prevent us from acting creatively and spontaneously, frozen negative emotions that can easily cause a paralysis of the personality. Metaphysically, they are the passion bodies or bodies of fate of departed beings that cannot find release. On a moral or collective level they represent a deep and fixed negativity, the embodied memory of fear, pain, and rage (figure 4). 

Figure 4. Gui, ghost, shows a person (male or female) with a fearsome or demonic head (1), someone who is possessed (2). 

Shen (figure 5), bright spirits (yang), are spirits of the future. They are transformative, potent, and mobile forces of nature that confer intensity, clarity, and depth on the soul. In the oldest thought, the bright spirits existed entirely outside the individual. Sages went through elaborate ceremonies to induce them to take up residence in within them as helping spirits or inner guides. The bright spirits are centered in the heart. They brighten and vivify, animating the Myriad Beings. They are stars, mountains, and rivers. They inspire awe and wonder, cut across boundaries, and combine categories. 

Figure 5. Shen, spirit or spirits, shows an altar and the sign for the One Above (1) along with a lightning bolt, representing sudden enlightenment (2).

 The Name of the Book

 The most important word in the divinatory tradition of Change is its name, yi or i. Philosophically, this is primordial change, the mutations or transformations that initiate the process of generation and transformation in all the Myriad Beings. It is inscribed in the actual order of things, the ongoing process of the Real.

Though it contains models of orderly change (hua), such as the round of the seasons and the stages of life, and models of transformation (bian)—like ice becoming water or life turning into death—yi or change is first of all experienced as destabilizing change, a challenge to all that is fixed, overdeveloped, oppressive, or outmoded. It evokes sudden storms, the times when the stable becomes fluid and structures fail. It is also the response to this kind of situation: openness, versatility, and imaginative mobility. The process is described in the part of the I Ching known as the Great Treatise: 

 One dark (yin), one light (yang), that's the Way. 

To follow this tells you what is good.

To completely identify with it shows you the essence.

If you want to be benevolent, see it as benevolence.

If you want to be wise, see it as wisdom.

People use this every day without knowing it.

Using it as a Realizing Person is what is rare.

It is the gift of life concealed in everything you do.

It does not share the philosopher's anxiety about imperfection. 

Now listen very carefully:

As the birth of all births, this Way is called Change.

Change is made of symbols.

What moves and completes the symbols is called the Dragon Gate.

What unfolds them into patterns of living is called the Earth Gate.

What shows our fate through these symbols is called divination.

Penetrating the transformations is called the work.

What we cannot understand in terms of the dark and the light is called spirit.

As we do the work, the spirit arrives. 

Accumulating Power and Virtue

 An old maxim—one dark yin, one light yang, that's Dao—is actually a choreography of the creation of meaning, a constant stepping back and forth between the opposites, always in motion, never putting both feet in the same place.

     As we have seen, the oldest terms for yin and yang were the paired terms "Great" and "Small." In Change we first meet the term "Small" in Hexagram 9: "Small Accumulates/Gathering in the Ghosts" (figure 6). Its circle of meanings include: accumulate the Small to accomplish the Great; nurture, raise, support, retain, hoard, shape; breeding animals, raising children; dealings with the ghost world, assembling the scattered parts of the soul; a festive procession, a protective shell or carapace like protection in the womb. The old characters show a river and three silk bundles on a planted field, dark and mysterious. This figure links the Small with inner alchemical operations that work with the ghosts, the yin world of the Earth Gate.   

 

Figure 6. Xiao, "Small," the character above left, shows three grains of rice or sand or a river between two banks (1). The character below left, chu or xu, "accumulate," is composed of silk bundles, si (2) and a field with plants, tian (3).

We first meet the term "Great" in Hexagram 26: "Great Accumulates/Gathering in the Spirits." Its meanings include: concentrate, focus on one central idea, bring everything together; support, nourish, train, gather, hoard; accumulate energy and wisdom by stepping out of the habitual; a great effort that brings great achievement; a protective shell or carapace, like protection in the womb. The old characters show the great people and their power to protect and shelter, and three silk bundles on a planted field, profound, dark, and mysterious.  

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 7. Da (left) shows the Great Person (1) and his ability to support and protect. As in figure 6, the character second from the left, chu or xu, "accumulate," is composed of silk bundles, si (2), and a field with plants, tian (3), which together form the ideogram xuan. Together the two figures at left form the ideogram da chu, "accumulating the Great."  This figure links the Great with alchemical operations that work with the bright spirits, the yang world of the Dragon Gate.

 The Jade in the Shade

The symbol that connects the Small and the Great, weaving the ghosts and the bright spirits together, is xu, "accumulate": to take care of, support, tolerate, encourage; help one another, overcome obstacles; tame, train; domesticate, raise, bring up; gather, collect, hoard, retain; seed, shell, carapace; the protection of a germ that is broken through in spring, protection in the womb.

In Early Old Chinese, the character xu has a hidden twin, the key term xuan, dark mystery. 

Figure 8. Xuan, dark mystery. 

Xuan is the center of a strange old family of terms that point at the "mystery infolding into mystery" that draws things back to the Source. It is represented as jade, which is the most precious of all gemstones because it is strong and supple at the same time. It symbolizes something profoundly hidden or covered, the fertile chaos of the origins. As the mother of all words indicating the fertile chaos, the term unites two completely disparate clusters of meanings: (1) mysterious, profound, hidden, subtle, silent, solitary, somber; obscure, distant, esoteric, mystic; calm, peaceful; penetrating, a profound discernment that itself cannot be penetrated; and (2) disordered, confused and/or confusing, troubled; false, fraudulent, cruel; extravagant, extraordinary.

A mysterious union of opposites, this symbol suggests a profound trickster quality, a kind of creative fraud that cannot be seized or understood but somehow penetrates all beings. It is the strange contradictory quality that permeates the practices and secrets of the inner life. It is represented as interconnected silk cocoons with an endless thread running through them rising from a plowed field, the circle of Heaven divided by the crossed lines of the square field of Earth (figure 8).

In acting through the constant alternation of the Great and the Small, the dark mystery becomes the alchemical accumulator of meaning and transformative energy, gathering in the voices of the ghosts and the bright spirits. This practice of gathering the light and the dark acts like a condenser or a capacitor in an electronic circuit, accumulating a specific charge within us that is spontaneously released as a carrying wave of new energy, a connection to the spirits that will carry you through. 

The Friendship of the Spirit 

Moving from the concepts of yin and yang to the psychoactive symbols that lie behind them opens a potent, mysterious, yet knowable world. It is a personal way to the spirit, a way of transformation allied to early practices of mediumship and spirit possession. The experience of this helping spirit can make you sage: clear-seeing, knowing death and birth, feeling the friendship of the spirit and compassion for fellow humans. In the words of C.G. Jung, it is the ground of the symbolic life; it reclaims the reality of the psyche.

Jung also remarked that the exclusion or repression of this old world of gods and spirits is actually quite illusory. In the words of one of his book titles, we are "modern men in search of a soul," who nonetheless are far from having left these gods and their sacred cosmos behind: 

Modern man has rejected only their verbal specters, not the psychic facts. The gods have become diseases, producing curious specimens for the doctor's consulting room or disordering the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world. 

Jung also maintained that recognition of this unseen world and the language it represents is the therapeutic act par excellence. It turns us away from the prisons of logical thought to the underworld of the psychic image, to what he called the "living units of the unconscious psyche that are the architects of dreams and symptoms."

This way of using Change as a process of spiritual transformation is what we are recovering from the later conceptual and philosophical systems that reduced it to verbal specters as opposed to the psychic facts. It is a radical reinvention of the oldest practices of talking with the spirits and responds directly to individual concerns, offering protection, insight, and self-realization. This way of the spirits is the most powerful and perennial appeal of Change, the thing that has drawn people to it for thousands of years.

In following this practice, we are imitating the early spirit intermediaries who could see and hear what is occulted, giving those above (shen, the light spirits) and those below (gui, the dark ghosts) what is due to them. This imaginative generosity causes a luminous spirit to descend. As it takes up its home within, we become daimonic and clear-seeing, profoundly connected to the invisible world. An early Daoist text called the Guanzi (c.400 bce) gives us a sense of this practice: 

When you life-energy is on the Way,

It vitalizes you.

When you are vitalized, you imagine.

When you imagine, you know.

When you know, you stop.

The hearts of all beings are shaped like this.

If your thirst for knowing seeks to go farther,

You will kill them.

There is a limit to knowing in the true sense, and that limit is imagination. Change puts you on the Way, vitalizes your imagining with its symbols, opens your heart—and that is enough. As the Guanzi says: 

Look, there is a spirit within your person.

Now it goes, now it comes.

No one can capture it,

But if you reverently clean its abode

It will return of itself.

You will recover your own true nature,

Fixed in you once and for all.

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Stephen Karcher, Ph.D., is one of today's most creative and controversial writers and practitioners in the field of I Ching studies, divination and myth. He is an internationally recognized scholar, translator, graphic artist and an initiated diviner, teaching, and lecturing on the I Ching and other divination systems internationally. His works include:

Total I Ching: Myths for Change; I Ching Plain and Simple; The Kuan Yin Oracle; Illustrated Encyclopedia of Divination; Ta Chuan: The Great Treatise; The Way of I Ching; and The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change. He lives in Ojai, California. 

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by Monte J. Zerger

Originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Zerger, Monte J.. "The Passion of Yin and Yang." Quest  98. 4 (Fall 2010): 135-138, 159.

The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.

                                           —Alan Watts (Tao, 26)

   In his beautiful masterpiece entitled Hsin Hsin Ming ("Faith Mind"), Seng Ts'an, a Buddhist philosopher of the sixth century C.E., teaches that when we "make the slightest distinction...heaven and earth are set infinitely apart."

Often a visual representation of a concept is more helpful and enlightening than words. The two bands in the accompanying diagram were formed by cutting two identical strips from an ordinary sheet of paper. On each strip "yin" was written on one side and "yang" on the other. The cylindrical band on the left was formed by taping the ends of one strip together in an ordinary manner. The other band was created in the same way except that one end was given a half-twist before being taped to the other end. This creates what is called a Mbius band, and most of us are familiar with this shape. Yet we probably find that no matter how many times we construct one or how well we comprehend the topology involved, something mysterious still remains.

   Obviously in the case of the cylindrical band, the yin and yang remain on opposite sides. With the Mbius band, however, if you fix your eyes on the yin and visually trace a path along the band, you will find you eventually reach the yang. If you continue to trace further, you will soon return to the yin again. The yin and yang are now on the same side of the strip, for it is now one-sided.

  Suppose now we think of the Mbius band as the "original condition," as the "underlying unity" of yin and yang. If we "make the slightest distinction" by cutting the band and taping it back without the twist, we have set yin and yang distinctly apart, even if not "infinitely apart." A simple alteration in the taping has created a distinct change. In both cases we return to where we began, but only in one situation do we return after "visiting" both the yin and the yang. We have moved from the appearance of two to the underlying unity of one.

   We live by polarities, as we must. If I think I am one with the door, I will end up with a bruised head. The joys of romantic love spring from the attraction of opposites, while the horrors of war spring from the clashes of opposites. Passion seems to fuel them both. But do opposites even exist?  This may seem like a silly question when we can look around us and see opposites everywhere. But we are looking at the visible world, the world of appearance and manifestation. What about the substratum beneath the visible? What about the mysterious quantum world of physics? Is the world of opposites merely an illusion, created by Mind in order to process information? Is it all a matter of vantage point, so that, with a more encompassing view, the opposites merge? Alan Watts, the renowned interpreter of Eastern philosophies, noted that the apparent conflicts of nature are "rooted in an underlying harmony," so there is "no serious conflict, no ultimate threat to the universal order, no possibility of final annihilation or non-being because as Lao-tzu said, ‘To be and not to be arise mutually'" (Watts, The Two Hands of God, 57).

    Nondualism, and the nondualistic state, are abstractions for nearly everyone. We try talking about these things, but when we do, we find that we're only grasping at metaphoric straws. If we're lucky, we may have brief moments in which we experience nondualism. Quickly we realize we cannot adequately explain the experience, because it transcends the rational mind and defies verbal description. There is no yin and yang at that point–only the Tao. In that moment we are in that matrix from which, as Lao-tzu said, "To be and not to be arise mutually."                                                      

Paradox and Complementarity 

   Closely intertwined with the concept of opposites is that of paradox. H.P. Blavatsky comments that although the manifested universe is "pervaded by duality...the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized" (Blavatsky, 1:15-16). Here she is simultaneously, and paradoxically, calling two poles both opposite and One. Isn't it in paradox that the deepest truths lay?

   When Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, was knighted in his country, he designed a coat of arms around the yin-yang symbol. He viewed this symbol as a striking visual representation of the principle of complementarity that he had formulated. Loosely interpreted, this principle states that it is possible for something to exhibit its nature in two different states that are apparently contradictory. The classic example of this is light, which is sometimes seen as a wave and sometimes as a stream of particles. In reality, as has been proven, light exists as both, but those two states can never be observed simultaneously. Compare this to those drawings we've all seen that seem to portray one thing (a duck, a candlestick), but if you blink your eyes, you suddenly see a different image (a rabbit, a pair of faces). Try as you may, you are never able to see both at once, and yet they are both there. 

   In view of Bohr's complementarity principle and his choice of the yin-yang symbol, it is not surprising that the following statement is attributed to him: "The opposite of a shallow truth is false, but the opposite of a deep truth is also true" (Keyes, 227). Whether or not these were his exact words is less important than that he held such a belief. The true-false polarity that is so obvious at a surface level can mysteriously dissolve into a singular truth at a deeper level. 

Nature's Quantum World 

   Richard Wilhelm, the eminent scholar of Chinese philosophy and cosmology, is best known for his seminal translation of the I Ching, one of the oldest books in civilization's library. In discussing the yin and yang, he wrote, "Among European scholars, some have turned first to sexual references for an explanation, but the characters refer to phenomena in nature" (Wilhelm, 12).

   Matter is formed from atoms, which in turn are formed from what physicists call particles. Particles are believed to be the smallest components of matter. In the 1930s physicists discovered that every particle in the universe has an antiparticle (although some particles, such as photons—light particles—include their own antiparticles).

   The bubble chamber portrayed in the accompanying photograph shows two spiral tracks, one produced by an electron (negatively charged), and one by its antiparticle, a positron (positively charged). The pair was created by a single high-energy photon (light particle) as it traveled through a magnetic field. The tracks spiral in opposite directions because their charges react in opposite ways to the magnetic field through which the photon is passing. Although the photon does not create a track, because it lacks a charge, we can detect where the "birthing" took place. The point where the two spirals touch marks the point where the photon transformed into the two oppositely charged particles. This genesis is called pair production, and physicists have compelling evidence that it occurred over and over again in the first two seconds after the Big Bang. We might say that the particle (yang) and the antiparticle (yin) arose mutually from the photon (Tao).

The most amazing part of this story is that a simple mathematical principle was at the heart of the discovery of antiparticles. In 1932 Paul Dirac, a quiet, unassuming physicist, developed an equation for which a solution was the electron, long an observed and studied particle. He was puzzled by the fact that the equation had another solution, a condition familiar to any high-school mathematics student. For a time this was ignored, but eventually Dirac boldly suggested that since mathematical equations don't "lie," the other solution must reflect a reality. He hypothesized that a particle opposite in charge to the electron must exist. Many of Dirac's fellow physicists scoffed at this idea, but eventually such a particle was discovered and named the positron. There is a beautiful parallelism here. Just as 0 is equivalent to the sum of two numbers equal in magnitude but opposite in sign (e.g. -2 and +2), likewise a particle with a 0 charge (photon) can give rise to two particles with equal magnitude, but carrying opposite charges (electron and positron).

One of the deepest mysteries of quantum mechanics is entanglement. This astounding phenomenon has been proven by experiments, and yet continues to elude explanation. Two particles can be "entangled" in the laboratory in such a way that makes them effectively two parts of the same entity. You can then separate them from each other as far as you like–the distance is irrelevant–and a change in one will be instantly reflected in the other. 

We used to think that a basic property of space is that it separates and distinguishes one object from another. But we now see that quantum mechanics radically challenges this view. Two things can be separated by an enormous amount of space and yet not have a fully independent existence....Space does not distinguish such entangled objects. Space cannot overcome their interconnection. Space, even a huge amount of space, does not weaken their quantum mechanical interdependence. (Greene, 122;  italics are the author's)  

   The parallelism exhibited by entanglement is not the result of a signal being sent, because nothing travels faster than light, the upper "speed limit" of our universe, and the response of entangled particles is instantaneous. In some as yet unexplained way, a random choice by one entangled particle is instantly echoed by its distant partner. The physicist Abner Shimony has humorously referred to entanglement as "passion at a distance" (Aczel, 252). Chinese philosophers many millennia ago might have referred to the passion of yin and yang.

Cosmos and Psyche

   Wilhelm wrote, "The psyche and the cosmos are to each other like the inner world and the outer world. Therefore man participates by nature in all cosmic events, and is inwardly as well as outwardly interwoven with them" (Wilhelm, 11).

The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was deeply influenced by his friendship with Wilhelm. He wrote the foreword to one of Wilhelm's books (a translation of the I Ching), a commentary on another (The Secret of the Golden Flower), and, after Wilhelm's death, delivered the principal address at his memorial service. If one were to choose a single word that most effectively exemplifies Jung's psychology, surely a leading candidate would be "polarity." Jung, whose significance and audience seem to be growing at an exponential rate, was intent on identifying and characterizing opposites, as well as on reconciling them. In this way, Theosophy and Jung share a common ground, suggested by the fact that he was born in July 1875, just four months before the Theosophical Society was created.

   In any case, we can easily see the common ground shared by Jung, who studied the psyche, and Bohr, whose work was with matter, by comparing the following statement from Jung with Bohr's remark that the opposite of a deep truth is also true. In an interview given late in his life, Jung said, as if summing up his life's work,  "Every psychological statement is also true when it is turned round to mean the opposite. That is complicated but that is Nature" (Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, 246).

   Particularly in his later years, Jung spoke extensively of an unus mundus ("unitary world") in which psyche and matter are undifferentiated. This term was first used by medieval philosophers, who identified it with Sophia, the ancient personification of wisdom. This concept of an unus mundus was at the core of Jung's theories of synchronicity, and was regarded by his colleague Marie-Louise von Franz as "one of the most important discoveries he made" (von Franz, 159). Jung saw the unus mundus as the "Western equivalent of the fundamental principle of classical Chinese philosophy, namely the union of yang and yin in Tao" (Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 464).

   Jung analyzed the dreams of the quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, and they corresponded extensively for several years. They even coauthored a book consisting of two essays, one from each of them. In discussing Bohr's complementarity principle, Pauli wrote, "It would be most satisfactory of all if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality" (Pauli and Jung, 210). Pauli felt so strongly about the yin and yang of physics and psyche that he would not allow his article to be translated into English unless it was published simultaneously with Jung's article on synchronicity (Laurikainen, 140).

   In his brilliant work Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas contrasts two worldviews, which he calls the primal and modern, and his sentiments echo those of Wilhelm and Jung. He laments that we have traded the holistic primal worldview, characteristic of traditional indigenous cultures, for a modern view, with its "fundamental tendency to assert and experience a radical separation between subject and object, a distinct division between the human self and the encompassing world." In this reality "the human psyche is embedded within a world psyche in which it completely participates and by which it is continuously defined" (Tarnas, 16-17). Sadly, modern humanity appears to be terminating this dialogue and overlaying it with an artificial construct of duality. Nevertheless, as Tarnas observes, "The relation of psyche and cosmos is a mysterious marriage, one that is still unfolding–at once a mutual interpenetration and a fertile tension of opposites....Our own marvelously complex nature depends upon and is embedded in the universe" (Tarnas, 491).                              

Biology and Psychology 

   Back in the '70s split-brain research created great excitement by revealing that the two hemispheres of the brain tended to divide processing tasks between them according to the nature of the task. The left hemisphere performed the analytic and verbal tasks, while the right hemisphere handled the nonverbal and spatial ones. Although this is still held to be true to some degree, later research has shown that there is extensive communication between these hemispheres through the corpus callosum, and different jobs are not so neatly parceled out. We could say the halves of the brain are two in form but one in function, evidence of an underlying unity.

   Another area in which Jung pioneered was the realm of the contrasexual. He introduced the terms anima and animus to represent the inner feminine in a man and the inner masculine in a woman respectively. These concepts are becoming increasingly common, accepted, and drawn upon in therapeutic work.  

   "Gender fluidity" seems to be increasingly visible in Western society today. This term is not to be conflated with same-sex sexual preference or transgenderism, but rather is to be seen as a continuum between the polarities of female and male. It can be viewed as the emerging desire to express outwardly the inner-dwelling yin and yang. There is ample anthropological evidence that this fluidity has been found in diverse cultures throughout time. In her book Androgyny, the Jungian analyst June Singer writes, "Androgyny may be the oldest archetype of which we have any experience. It derives from, and is second only to, the archetype of the Absolute, which is beyond the possibility of human experience and must remain forever unknowable" (Singer, 6).  

   What is the message of all this for us? Perhaps it is to function in the World of Two (because we must) but anchor in the World of One. Perhaps the most we can do is recognize, accept, and reconcile, but not attempt to dissolve, the opposites. As long as we walk the earth, yin and yang will be immanent and pervasive. But they don't have to war and wreak havoc in our lives. Our challenge is to stand midway between them, extending one hand to each and offering them a fulcrum on which to balance.

   The Taoist Chuang Tzu is often associated with his celebrated dream in which he dreamt he was a butterfly, and in the dream he didn't realize he was Chuang Tzu. However, when he awoke, he realized he was unmistakably Chuang Tzu. He was then faced with the dilemma of whether he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.

   At the core of being, is there truly a difference? Was there a separate butterfly and Chuang Tzu, or were they, and are they still, embedded in an underlying unity from which they arose mutually?

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References 

Aczel, Amir D. Entanglement. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001.

Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. Two volumes. Pasadena, Calif.: Thesosophical University Press, 1988.

Greene, Brian. The Fabric of the Cosmos. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Jung, C.G. C.G. Jung Speaking. Edited by William McGuire and R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

—— Mysterium Coniunctionis. 2d ed. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.

Keyes, Ralph. The Quote Verifier. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2006.

Laurikainen, Kalervo V. Beyond the Atom. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1988.

Pauli, Wolfgang, and C.G. Jung. The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Translated by Priscilla Sitz and R.F.C Hull.

New York: Pantheon, 1955.

Singer, June. Androgyny. New York: Anchor Books, 1977.

Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos and Psyche. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Von Franz, Marie-Louise. Psyche and Matter. Boston: Shambhala, 1991.

Watts, Alan. Tao: The Watercourse Way. New York: Pantheon, 1975.

—— The Two Hands of God. New York: Collier, 1963.

Wilhelm, Richard. The Secret of the Golden Flower. Translated by Cary F. Baynes. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962.

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Monte J. Zerger is a retired mathematics professor with interests that include the perennial philosophy, Carl Jung, the esoteric sciences, and particularly number symbolism. During his teaching career he published numerous aricles in professional mathematical journals, but has also published articles and poetry in other types of journals and magazines such as Word Ways, New Realities and The Mountain Astrologer. He lives in the Rocky Mountains with his partner, Susan, a counselor educator.

 

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 by John Algeo

Originally printed in the Fall 2010 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Algeo, John. "Blavatsky and Confucius." Quest  98. 4 (Fall 2010): 130-134.

     Yang and yin, the two great cosmological principles whose combination generates the ten thousand things of nature, may be associated, respectively, with the West and the East, the proactive and receptive cultural hemispheres. They may also be associated with two great teachers: Western Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Eastern Confucius. Yang and yin are not opposites, but complements. They merge together, each becoming the other, in the revolving diagram of the t'ai chi or absolute (). So also Blavatsky and Confucius, like West and East, interact, each articulating the same Ancient Wisdom, though with different accents. Theosophists know a lot about Blavatsky, but less about Confucius, though he greatly merits our attention.

     "Confucius" is a Latinized form for the name of the greatest Chinese philosopher and teacher, who lived for some seventy-two years (551—479 bc). The Chinese appellation from which the name "Confucius" comes is K'ung-fu-tzu or Kongfuzi (depending on the transliteration system one uses), which means "Master Kung." And a very great master he was. If we judge a teacher by the number of persons influenced by his teaching, Master Kung is arguably the greatest teacher ever to have lived on this planet. His teachings have deeply influenced the societies of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for two and a half millennia and thus have guided the lives of more human beings than any other system of beliefs.

     Although recognized by H. P. Blavatsky and her teachers as one of the Elder Brothers, Master Kung has been accorded relatively little attention by Theosophists. That is unfortunate, because his teachings are wisely Theosophical. Of all the great spiritual traditions of humanity, Confucianism is the closest to Theosophy in certain respects. Many religious traditions think of this world as a place to be escaped from. But Confucianism and Theosophy think of it as a place where self-realization can be achieved. One scholar of Confucianism put it this way:

The art of Confucian spirituality might be described as discovering one's cosmological being amidst daily affairs. For the Confucian the ordinary is the locus of the extraordinary; the secular is the sacred; the transcendent is in the immanent. What distinguishes Confucian spirituality among the world's religious traditions is an all-encompassing cosmological context that grounds its world-affirming orientation for humanity. This is not a tradition that seeks liberation outside the world, but rather one that affirms the spirituality of becoming more fully human within the world. (Tucker 1)

Much the same thing could be said of Theosophical spirituality. Both Confucianism and Theosophy are world-affirming, rather than world-denying.

As for the person of Master Kung, in Isis Unveiled (2:159), Blavat­sky mentions that there are two classes among the great teach­ers. One is those holy (that is, "whole") ones who have permanently united with their spiritual selves; they include Buda­dha, Christ, and Krisha­na. The other category is those who have been so united at intervals; they include Moses, Pythagoras, Apollonius, Plotinus, Plato, Iamblichus, and Confucius.

We should not, however, think of the latter group as somehow "second class" Masters. They too are Elders, far ahead of us in evolution. Our species is now in a stage of its evolution known in Theosophical literature as the Fourth Round. Blavatsky, however, explains (Secret Doctrine 1:162) that Confucius and Plato are Fifth-Rounders because they have evolved psychically, mentally, and spiritually to the level that will be the norm of humanity in the next round after our current one—ages in the future. In making this observation, Blavat­sky was quoting one of her teach­ers, Koot Hoomi (or K.H.), who wrote: "Plato and Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord [Buddha] a sixth round man" (Mahatma Letters, chronological letter 66, 3d ed., 14).

In her earliest writing, Blavatsky was less sympathetic to Confucius than in her later works. In July 1875, before the foundation of the Theosophical Society, she wrote of his "cold, practical philosophy" (Collected Writings 1:108), and she observed that he "confined his attention solely to his own country." Even so, she recognized that he was "trying to apply his profound wisdom and philosophy to the wants of his countrymen." Her judgment of Confucius in this regard seems less sympathetic than it was later to become, perhaps because in her later years Blavatsky grew better acquainted with the teachings of Master Kung.

If we consider Confucian teachings parallel to those of Theosophy, we can understand why Blavatsky came to hold the Chinese teacher in such high regard. To be sure, "parallel to" does not mean "equivalent to" or "the same as." In any coherent system of thought, every idea in the system derives its meaning from, and is connected with, other ideas in that system. Thus no two ideas from different thought systems can ever be exactly equivalent because they have separate connections, each within its own frame of reference. But ideas from different systems can be like each other in some respects and thus be parallel. The ideas cited here from Theosophy and Confucianism are not the same ideas, but they echo each other in notable ways.

Blavatsky and Master Kung were both fundamentally concerned, not with intellectual abstractions, but with human behavior, that is, with ethics or moral action. Yet all action needs to be considered within a view of the nature of the cosmos in which we act. Blavatsky and Master Kung both relate human behavior to the larger cosmos. Here are nine ways in which their teachings are parallel.

1. Because of their shared concern for ethics, Blavatsky early commented on Master Kung's version of the Golden Rule, and referred to it repeatedly. In Isis Unveiled (2:239, 338) she noted that the Christian "Golden Rule" is paralleled in Confucius's Analects. Perhaps the clearest statement is Analects 15.24, where a disciple asks the Master whether some single word can sum up how we ought to live. The Master replied: "It is perhaps shu (= consideration of others). What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others." In another passage (4.15), the Master said that his teaching was simple and easy to understand. One of his disciples explained: "The doctrine of our master consists in doing what we should, and in being considerate of others." Those two principles are parallel with two concepts that H.P.B. often cited: dharma and ahims?. The first principle, "doing what we should," is living according to our dharma or duty in life. The second principle, "consideration of others" (in Chinese shu, often translated as "reciprocity"), advises us not to harm others, but to treat them as we would want them to treat us, and so is equivalent to ahims?.

2. Blavatsky found Confucius's attitude toward "spirits" (specifically, spirits of the dead) compatible with her own. She believed that most of the "spirits" contacted in séances were not what they seemed to be. In 1872 she wrote to her relatives about the belief of Spiritualists: "Their spirits are no spirits but spooks—rags, the cast off second skins of their personalities that the dead shed in the astral light as serpents shed theirs on earth." So Blavatsky quotes Confucius's words as one of "the wise conclusions of some of the greatest philosophers" (Collected Writings 2:178). She is referring to his advice to his students: "Respect the spirits and—keep them at a distance." When one of his students asked Confucius how to serve the spirits, the Master responded: "You cannot serve men yet; how can you serve the spirits?" (Analects 11.12). Confucius's reluctance to talk about otherworldly matters is much like a similar reluctance by the Buddha and the Christ.

3. One of the great themes in both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, and indeed all of Blavatsky's writing, is that the Wisdom is ancient, not new. None of the great teachers ever put forth new ideas, but only restated ancient traditions in a form appropriate to their time and place. Blavatsky consequently looks with favor on Confucius, who also claimed to do only that. She cites the Analects (7.1), where Confucius said: "I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ancients and therefore I love them." But just as Blavatsky restated the Ancient Wisdom for the West in the late nineteenth century, Master Kung did the same for China in the fifth century BC. As one scholar puts it, "Confucius's €˜transmission' is not simply imposing the past on the present . . . . Rather, his transmission is a dynamic process of meeting new challenges with resources accumulated in the past, which become revitalized and renewed in being made useful and relevant to the present" (Sor-hoon Tan, 71). That is also what Theosophy does—or should do.

4. Blavatsky (Secret Doctrine 1:441) calls Confucius a "great sage" and "one of the greatest sages of the ancient world," who believed in and practiced "ancient magic," that is, the divination of the I Ching or "Book of Changes," which is one of the Confucian Five Classics or central scriptures. She says that he also taught the sphericity of the Earth and the heliocentric system. In several other places in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky refers admiringly to Confucius, especially to those aspects of his teaching that are most like the Wisdom Tradition she was presenting in that book. For example, the I-Ching or Yijing, which Confucius certainly knew, mentions the "great Extreme" (or "Supreme Ultimate," as the Chinese term t'ai chi or taiji is also translated). It is the ground and source of everything (Secret Doctrine 1:356) and thus is the same as Blavatsky's concept of Parabrahm, the Absolute.

5. Although the Chinese are sometimes said to have no cosmogony, Blavatsky affirms that they do (Secret Doctrine 1:440-41). The "Great Extreme" is the source of "changes" (that is, all forms of cyclicity). Cyclicity, in the form of changing circumstances, is the subject of the I Ching. And change or periodicity is affirmed by the second of The Secret Doctrine's three fundamental propositions.

6. Blavatsky says that the "Great Extreme" first produces two energies, which are represented by two figures: yang, a solid line representing unity, and yin, a broken or divided line, representing duality. These two lines in turn combine to produce four "images," which are the possible combinations and orderings of the two lines. The two lines also combine in groups of three to produce eight "symbols," each consisting of three lines, in all the possible combinations of the yang and yin lines. Blavatsky says that these "wise symbols" "represent precisely the same idea" as "the Stanzas [of Dzyan] given in our text." The unfolding of duality and then of multiplicity from the Unity that underlies all existence is the great theme of The Secret Doctrine's cosmogony and also of the lines of the I Ching.

 

Together, these Confucian concepts of the Great Extreme and the Changes parallel the first two fundamental propositions of The Secret Doctrine: an Absolute that is the source of everything and a process of manifestation by cycles, which can be found everywhere in this world.

7. Blavatsky also says (Secret Doctrine 1:440) that Confucius did not believe in a future life, but rather in the "changes," that is, transformations or rebirths: "He denied immortality to the personality of man—as we do—not to MAN." Theosophical teachings about the afterlife and reincarnation have often been misunderstood because we tend to identify ourselves with the personality, which neither survives nor is reborn. Only the individuality or "thread-self" endures from life to life. This is the distinction Blavatsky alludes to here. Confucius did not talk about reincarnation, because that involved what happens after death, which is another subject he avoided. When one of his students asked Confucius what death is, the Master responded: "You do not understand life yet; how can you understand death?" (Analects 11.12). Confucius's concern was how to live well in this life. But, as Blavatsky points out, Confucius regards the "changes" as pervasive in the world, and reincarnation can be seen as an aspect of those changes.

While recognizing a spiritual order of existence, Master Kung emphasized life in this world. He was concerned especially with how we can live together in society peacefully and productively. He emphasized the centrality of human relationships: between parent and child, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder and younger sibling, and friend and friend. His emphasis on human community and the family can be seen as parallel to the first Object of the Theosophical Society: "to form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood (or family) of humanity."

By the time H.P.B. wrote The Key to Theosophy, near the end of her life, Confucius had risen greatly in her estimation, precisely because of the moral strength of his teaching. In The Key, she says that Theosophical ethics "are the essence and cream of the world's ethics, gathered from the teachings of all the world's great reformers. Therefore, you will find represented therein Confucius and Zoroaster, Laotze and the Bhagavat-Gita, the precepts of Gautama Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, of Hillel and his school, as of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and their schools" (48-49). Notice that in listing "the world's great reformers" in the realm of ethics, she mentions Confucius first. And later in The Key (239), she expressed the wish that human beings "would live up to the standard of Confucius and their other sages."

     8. With respect to ethical teachings, Master Kung spoke of four categories of human beings who are distinguished by their evolutionary progress toward a realization of the great principles of life. He emphasized that all human beings are fundamentally the same, but he also recognized that by experience and evolution they develop diversely (Analects 17.2). The four human categories he recognized are these (Analects 16.9):

     (a) Those who have innate wisdom, who are the divine Sages (that is, avatars or Sixth-Rounders, like the Buddha, Christ, and Krishna). Such far advanced souls are very rare.

     (b) Those who have acquired wisdom by study and thus made themselves into exemplary humans (that is, chohans or Fifth-Rounders, like Moses, Pythagoras, Apollonius, Plotinus, Plato, and Iamblichus). Such advanced souls are the great teachers and example-setters of our species. The Chinese term for this category of person (chun tzu or junzi, etymologically "son of a ruler") originally denoted an inherited rank, a condition defined by one's birth, that is, a great or noble person. But Confucius agreed with Tennyson that "Kind hearts are more than coronets, / And a noble soul, than Norman blood." Confucius believed that those who lead should not necessarily be those who are born to power, but rather those who merit leadership by their personal achievements. Confucius was the first promoter of government by meritocracy. He was the first social democrat.

     (c) Those who are learning, despite the limitations of nature (that is, chelas, seekers, or disciples consciously treading the Path, who are advanced Fourth-Rounders). Such striving souls have recognized the need to take their own evolution in hand and work toward perfection. They are the ones who (as the Master K.H. says) "TRY."

     (d) Those who are of limited ability and have not yet learned what is most important in life. They are ordinary, common, or "little" persons (that is, the mass of humanity in the Fourth Round). They are those of us who are progressing only slowly and unconsciously because we have not yet come to a realization of the need for personal effort to improve ourselves.

     With regard to those four categories, we must be careful about where we place anyone—especially ourselves. In exercising such care, Master Kung set us an example, as he did in many other matters. As already noted, H.P.B. and the Masters clearly identified Confucius as a member of the second category, a Fifth-Rounder, who had mastered the lessons most of us are still struggling with. But Confucius himself never claimed such a status (Analects 7.33): "As to being a sage, or an exemplary human, how dare I presume to make such a claim? But as to striving tirelessly to achieve that, and also teaching others without growing weary—that can be said of me, and that is all." This is not false modesty on the part of Master Kung; it is rather his recognition of the truth of the saying in Light on the Path: "You will enter the light, but you will never touch the Flame." We never achieve fully, but only strive to do so.

     9. Tao or Dao is a very important Confucian concept. Its literal meaning is "way," and in Confucian use it is sometimes parallel to the Theosophical concept of the Path. But it is not merely the Path individuals tread; in a sense it is also parallel with the Theosophical concept of the Plan, which is the way the whole world evolves, the cosmic Path.

     For Master Kung, treading the Path is a matter of learning and of applying what one has learned. It is significant that he is known in China as the "First Teacher" and his birthday, celebrated on September 28, is known as "Teachers Day." A joyous emphasis on applied learning is expressed in the very first sentence of the Analects (1.1): "To learn something and then to practice it at the right time, is that not a pleasure?" And the last verse of the Analects (20.3) rounds off Master Kung's view of the importance of learning that leads to understanding on three levels: spiritual understanding of Heaven's plan; intellectual understanding of correct behavior; and social understanding of other human beings. "The Master said: If one does not understand the plan of Heaven, one has no way of becoming an exemplary person; if one does not understand the right way to do things (ritual), one has no way of taking a stand; if one does not understand words, one has no way of understanding people."

     Blavatsky and Confucius were two great exponents of living the Ancient Wisdom. They each spoke in the idioms of their times. Yet they also both speak timeless truths to us if we will hear them.

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 References

 Blavatsky, Helena P. Collected Writings. 15 vols. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977-91.

———. Isis Unveiled. 2 vols. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972, first published 1877.

———. The Secret Doctrine. 3 vols. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978-79, first published 1888.

Confucius. The Analects. There are many translations of this work; it is best to read several together so as to compare them. Quotations above often combine several.

The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. and K.H. Transcribed by A. T. Barker. Ed. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr. Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993.  

Tan, Sor-hoon. "Three Corners for One: Tradition and Creativity in the Analects." In Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the "Analects", ed. David Jones, 59-77.   Chicago: Open Court, 2008.

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. Introduction to Confucian Spirituality, vol. 1, ed. Tu Weiming and Mary Evelyn Tucker. New York: Crossroad, 2003.

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John Algeo served for nine years as president of the Theosophical Society in America. He is also past international vice-president of the Theosophical Society.

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