Observations placeholder
Custance, John - Adventure into the Unconscious - The need for Contrast
Identifier
001929
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
John Custance – Adventure into the Unconscious
Broadly speaking the purely rational visible aspect of things presented to my conscious mind was 'positive'; moreover it was essentially 'male', like the Chinese concept of Yang …. Conversely, the 'negative' aspect was irrational and intuitive, darkly chaotic, essentially female and associated with Yin, the opposite of Yang.
Numerous analogies become apparent:
Goethe's systole and diastole, the Apollonian and Dionysian principles... the more common opposition of Logos to Eros...... but the closest analogy of all is with the ideas of Jung, who uses on occasion the same terms 'positive' and 'negative' meaning by the latter, the reverse aspect of things, the other side of the medal or coin, which in the modern world we almost invariably try to repress or reject.
Such other sides are innumerable, since all things have them. Without its opposite nothing has meaning. What would white be without black, light without darkness, health without disease, good without evil?
How can there be God without Satan, heaven without hell, the Father without the Mother?