The Web of Life, Part 7: An Implicit Agreement

But duality is always—secretly—unity. Take the contrast between the words we use: explicit and implicit. They’re very valuable words. What is explicit, what’s on the outside, that’s, say, how we come on publically—explicitly we are thus and so. We have a fight. We’re in competition, say, in business, explicitly. But implicitly, we’ve worked this out: that we’ve agreed, in a secret way that nobody knows about, that this competition is extremely valuable to both of us.

Take it politically, for example: let’s take the situation of Russia versus the United States. Explicitly, in public, this has to be a big fight. These two ways of life, these two ideologies, are opposed. They say, “Brrrrrraaaagh,” you know? But behind the scenes it’s all been carefully worked out. You bet it has. That this opposition has to happen because our economy depends on it, and their economy depends on it, and everybody knows this who’s got a little smart. But there are a lot of people who get taken in by the propaganda, and they should be taken in, because that makes the thing work. It’s crazy, but that’s the way it goes.

And everything works this way. There is, for example—when swans start to mate, they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do, and they begin to fight. I had a long talk about this with C. G. Jung. He lived on the edge of Lake Zürich, and he had a little summer house right on the water’s edge, and there were many swans there. And I was getting up after the end of a conversation with him, and we were beginning to walk back to the main house, and I said, “Isn’t it true that swans are monogamous?” And he said, “Yes, they are.” He said, “Do you know, I have had most interesting relationships between these swans and many of my female patients who thought they were homosexual.” I mean, Jung wasn’t a sexual snob—I mean, he understood all the legitimacy of all kinds of sexual variations—but he said, “It has been a point of departure for our discussions”. And he said, “It’s a very funny thing that, when they begin to mate, they start fighting. And they don’t know what it’s all about, and then, suddenly, the fight turns into lovemaking.”

So that’s what I mean. Underneath opposition there is love. Underneath duality there’s unity. That Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle. So you see, here’s that weaving principle. That things hold together by over-under, under-over, over-under, under-over, over-under, under-over, and that creates a stuff, it creates a fabric, it creates clothing, it creates shelter, it creates what we call matter. Matter. Mater. Mother. And also, the same word, māyā, “illusion.” See? The world as a marvelous illusion.

Now, we’ve got to go into this. Look at another form of the thing: you can play it not only by two as one, but you can play it by three as one. You know the trademark for Ballantine’s Ale, which is three interlocked rings. Now, the way these rings are interlocked is such that they are joined only if the three of them are present. If you take one away, the other two fall apart. This is a very interesting phenomenon, but it can be created physically, with steel rings. Their cohesion depends on all three of them being present.