True Opposites
Question: I was wondering how you define “opposite.” For example; would you say that the opposite of Love is Hate or is it No love?
Finding the opposite of a thing is fairly simple and somewhat cut and dried without a lot of mystery. I always try and use the general dictionary definition unless the right word cannot be found and then I will either create a new phrase or use an old word giving an expanded definition. Here are two dictionary definitions which express the general idea in human consciousness of the word “opposite.”
Two words that express opposing concepts.
Being the other of a pair that are corresponding or complementary in position, function, or nature (members of the opposite sex)
Either one of these works for me.
That said, what is the opposite of love?
A Course in Miracles makes the interesting statement that love has no opposite and that hate is not its opposite. It makes the point that hate is temporary and based on illusion whereas love is real and eternal.
This may be true when we consider the highest aspect of love, but not love as it is understood by general humanity.
Both love and hate, as it is understood by the masses, are lower manifestations of everlasting love. Lower love is in harmony with the higher octave and hate is out of sync with it. This corresponds to playing Middle C on a well-tuned piano and then playing it on one that is out of tune. It is the same note, but one is out of harmony.
This is why love and hate are so interconnected. We hate those most who we were first attracted to by passionate love.
As the world understands love, hate is indeed its opposite. Why? Because love is a magnetic force that pulls two people together and hate is an opposing force that separates them. The effect of the two fit very nicely into the definition of “opposite.”
Absence of love would not be the opposite of love because the opposite of love must repel. No love would exist between hate and love and would neither attract nor repel.
I would like to comment on one popular teaching that I see creates illusion and much confusion and it is this; that two opposites are really the same thing. For instance, some say that hot and cold are the same thing. The reason for this belief is that hot and cold are both created by vibrations or molecular movement.
But this is a common ingredient in both hot and cold, but a common ingredient does not create sameness.
For instance, a Porsche and a Ford both run on wheels, but that does not make them the same car.
Wheels and the engine both use circular motion, but that does not make them both the same.
A rock and a human body are both composed entirely of vibrations, but again, they are not the same.
All opposites have common ingredients but they are not the same.
The common ingredient of hot and cold is molecular motion. Hot has fast molecular motion and cold has slow, two entirely different things with entirely different effects.
Between hot and cold is a comfort zone (defined by the entity effected) which is neither hot nor cold. I would define this comfort zone as between 60 and 90 degrees F (15-32 degrees C). Anything over 30 degrees away from my comfort zone is certainly hot or cold and is definitely different to my perception.
If we were to go the sophist direction and maintain that opposites like hot and cold are the same because of a common ingredient then we would have to say that everything in the universe is the same and we would only need one word to sum everything up.
Since we need more than one word to communicate in this sphere then we need to recognize that differentiation exists and must be incorporated into our thinking if we are to remain sane.
Question: What makes hate less real compared to the other emotions? Why would it be any exception?
I never said hate was less real than the other emotions. All the emotions from the astral plane have a beginning and end and thus are not real from a higher point of view. They seem real to us and hate seems as real as the rest.
Higher love which does not originate in the emotional body is eternal as Paul says: “charity endureth forever.” Charity, of course, is a little bit of a mistranslation. The original Greek is love, love endures forever.
He was talking about the unselfish love that Christ brought, not the lower love. If lower love endured forever then we would have no divorce.
Question: Isn’t all love the same, Isn’t it just love?
To say that love is love, or all love is the same, indicates to me that you have only felt one of the octaves of love. When you experience the higher spiritual love and contrast it to the lower you will never again say that love is love or all the same.
Astral love (which is the highest love most people have experienced) and hate are a lower reflection of divine love. A reflection is reversed and not seen correctly. When the reflected love is distorted, it turns to negative emotion such as hate.
Consider the two great lights in our sky. The first is the Sun. This generates its own light and corresponds to divine love. The second is the moon. It does not generate any light, but reflects the real source of light. The reflection is much dimmer than the original.
Even so, the reflected love we see among general humanity is very dim when contrasted to the higher spiritual love that motivated Christ and other servants of humanity.
The absence of love often exists between love and hate. George falls crazy in love with Sally. After a year he grows bored and falls out of love. He neither loves or hates her but is in a zero state of astral love toward her. Then Sally sues him for all he has in a divorce and afterwards runs over his Harley Davidson with her car. Now he hates her with the same passion as he previously loved her. Zero love was between these two extremes.
Question: If one does not have love then wouldn’t he be hateful?
No. When George was in a state of no love, or neutrality, he neither loved nor hated Sally until she took vengeful action..
Comment: Just like with the absence of light, darkness must be present. You are saying the absence of light is not darkness. That does not make sense. Because darkness must be present if light is not.
Using your logic the opposite of heavy would be no weight. No weight is not its opposite, but light in weight is the opposite of heavy in weight. Neither are weightless or no weight.
We call the night dark but it is not completely dark for we still have the moon and the stars giving light. Even if one goes into a dark cave the atoms of the surrounding matter will still be giving off light invisible to our normal seeing.
In the day time there is also no ultimate light but a contrast of light and darkness.
Opposition as defined by the dictionary is created by finding the midway point and calibrating opposite points in the divergent directions.
Comment: Everything in the universe is a whole. I think that word you’re looking for is “God”.
I wasn’t looking for such a word for it does not exist. Saying the word “God” does not make everything in his creation the same. Saying God does not make hot, cold and cold, hot.
Question: Do we cease to exist during pralaya?
DK said it well when he said:
“All these mark the points for the disappearance of the unit into pralaya. We need here to remember that it is always pralaya when viewed from below. From the higher vision, that sees the subtler continuously overshadowing the dense when not in objective manifestation, pralaya is simply subjectivity, and is not that ‘which is not,’ but simply that which is esoteric.” Treatise on Cosmic Fire Pg 130
When all things are folded up we never have that “which is not” but “that which is esoteric.”
There are two correspondences to look at for understanding. The first is sleep.
Every day we have a mini pralaya when we go to bed. In sleep we have not disappeared into oblivion, but we have ascended to a higher plane. We still exist and are active on another plane. When we awake, we cannot remember all that went on because the activity was outside of the physical brain.
Even so, when the great rest occurs, we have a larger correspondence to sleep. There is not a condition of no existence, but an existence that is “esoteric” or hidden from that which is below.
The second correspondence to consider is the permanent atom as taught by DK. Each of us has a permanent atom for each of our bodies. This atom goes with us after we die and has all the programming of our past bodies of previous incarnations.
The physical universe also has a permanent atom with all the programming within it to create a new one better than the last. The last part of Book 4 of The Immortal illustrates this, but remember that this was a description of the physical plane and there are numerous higher planes, the next one up being the astral.
Light and love never completely disappear but always exist within the permanent atoms and within the subtle planes. The power of decision also always exists. As evidence of this is the realization that each creation is the result of this power operating behind the scenes.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. Mark Twain
Sept 9, 2006
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