ONE

Many / One

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1		"Polar tension occurs in all natural and human affairs as any opposing relationship, contrast, difference. It is at the root of our pernicious notion of separateness from each other, from nature, and from our own inherent divinity. The paradox of the Dyad (polarity) is that while it appears to separate from unity, its opposite poles remember their source and attract each other in an attempt to merge and return to that state of unity." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

2		"There is something in the spirit of man that knows that the dualism, however apparently binding, runs out, exhausts itself, and leaves a core of assurance that the ultimate destiny of man is good." Howard Thurman One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from World Faiths (Matthew Fox)

3		"When dualistic opposites are allowed to fuse in the mind, the psyche saves itself." Great Cosmic Mother, Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor)

4		"God appeared to me as the highest unity of all contrasts." Letter of Nicholas of Cusa to Cardinal Julianus Mystics after Modernism (Rudolf Steiner)

5		"Through all the contraries of phenomenality the Uncreate-Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

6		"Chaos is infinitely complex order." David Bohm, physicist The Mystic Hours, A Daybook of Interspiritual Wisdom & Devotion (Wayne Teasdale)

7		"I believe in the Word become flesh, in the spirit-filled body, where yang and yin are wedded into a living form." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

8		"If history reveals anything it is that dissolution and growth have been aspects of the same phenomenon. Growth has not occurred anywhere without involving dissolution. Every major cultural change throughout history has involved this two-fold process of death and emergence." Bernard Eugene Meland (b. 1899), American philosopher and professor of religion, from an article in 'The Personalist' The Choice Is Always Ours (Dorothy B. Phillips, Chief Editor)

9		"The tension of opposites that makes energy possible is a universal law, fittingly expressed in the yang and yin of Chinese philosophy." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

10		"In the context of wholeness, the opposites appear as no more than phases in an endless cycling process, for each turns incessantly into its opposite, exchanging places with it. Life…bends back upon itself to come, full circle, to the realization that all is one and all is well." The World's Religions (Huston Smith)

11		"From the unreal to the real is not from one thing to another, but from the complexity of duality and multiplicity to the simplicity of unity." The Glorious Presence (Ernest E. Wood)

12		"No duality can be an originating source; the source of every duality is a monad." Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works (John Farina, Editor-in-Chief)

13		"It is a fact that symbols, by their very nature, can so unite the opposites that these no longer diverge or clash, but mutually supplement one another and give meaningful shape to life." Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Carl Jung (edited by Aniela Jaffe))

14		"Pluralism is illusory, since all separate forms originate in the indistinguishable oneness of the psychic matrix, deep down in the unconscious." C. G. Jung, Psychological Commentary The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (W. Y. Evans-Wentz, compiler and editor)

15		"In accordance with the principle of compensation which runs through the whole of nature, every psychic development, whether individual or collective, possesses an optimum which, when exceeded, produces an enantiodromia, that is, turns into its opposite." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

16		"The distinction between eternity and time is only apparent – made, perforce, by the rational mind, but dissolved in the perfect knowledge of the mind that has transcended the pairs of opposites." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

17		"Our inner development as persons comes about as we are able to bear the wholeness of the opposites, to experience them as mutually completing, as interdependent and interpenetrating, in some sense simultaneous. To see them, in other words, as alive, moving, and interweaving, like the distinct and yet interflowing rivers that course through the oceans." Mary Caroline Richards, poet and teacher, 'Separating and Connecting: The Vessel and the Fire' The Fabric of the Future (M. J. Ryan, editor)

18		"Jung's involvement with the mandala culminated in his insight that it represented the center, the midpoint that balance all dualities." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy' Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)

19		“If a union is to take place between opposites like spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, bright and dark, and so on, it will happen in a third thing, which represents not a compromise but something new.” Collected Works (Carl Jung)

20		"Growth and decay, life and death, are both opposites and yet contained, even embraced, by a continuum." Return of the Goddess (Edward C. Whitmont, MD)

21		"Everything in nature is cyclical and opposites are in balance. In the natural world you have opposites, like day and night, but they're not in opposition; they're complements to each other. They're part of one whole, and you have to have both. One isn't 'good' and the other 'evil'. The more that we can start to look at the world in this way again, the more integrated we can be." Starhawk, author and founding minister of the Covenant of the Goddess, 'Envisioning the Future' The Fabric of the Future (M. J. Ryan, editor)

22		"'Harmony' (from the Greek 'harmonia', signifying 'fitting together') in music, as elsewhere in the cosmos, comes from the reconciliation of opposites by a third element, bringing them all a new unity." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

23		"Becoming conscious reconciles the opposites." C. G. Jung: Letters, 1951-1961 (Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, editors)

24		"Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows like harmony in music; there is a dark inscrutable workmanship that reconciles discordant elements." William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet, 'The Prelude' The Great Thoughts (George Seldes, compiler)

25		"From the living comes death, and from the dead, life; from the young, old age; and from the old, youth; from waking, sleep; and from sleep, waking; the stream of creation and decay never stands still….Construction and destruction, destruction and construction – this is the norm which rules in every circle of natural life from the smallest to the greatest. Just as the cosmos itself emerged from the primal, so must it return once more into the same – a double process running its measured course through vast periods, a drama eternally re-enacted." Heraclitus Jung's Psychology and Its Social Meaning (Ira Progoff, Ph.D.)

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite