CHAPTER VI
"POLARITY OF THE MENTAL"
The structuring of all the things is resulting from the performance of the Universal Laws. Everything in the Universe is inter-related; neither the tiniest grain of sand is turned off of the Whole.
According to Hegel (1.770 1.831): "The world is not a collection of autonomous units, atoms, souls, each one with independent existence. Nothing is completely independent and subsistent except the Whole that comes to be the Absolute, which is not static but dynamic. In the structuring of the world, he grows in agreement with his fundamental internal law - the dialectics that is constituted of three phases - thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The Nature is antithesis of the Absolute. Through the Nature, as his opposite, the Absolute gets conscience of himself, what constitutes as his supreme synthesis."
The method that the Supreme Architect, in other words, God, used to build the Cosmic Work is the same one that we have to apply to ourselves to understand our reactions and to drive our activities in this physical plan in which we live now.
In this chapter we will stop meditating a little regarding the Law of the Polarity. It is evidenced everywhere in the electricity as positive and negative pole; in the constitution of the atom as protons and electrons.
That cosmic polarity is evident in the human nature and it is her exactly the primordial cause of the human being's complexity. The day when the man understands this Law, could see it acting inside of himself, he will be entering into the road of the self-knowledge. And the self realization is linked to the conciliation of these two poles in the operation of the mental and of the emotional. No principle existent in the Universe can be despised. It needs to be understood, and correctly used because everything is dual and the ideal state of all of the things is the one of perfect balance.
To take the best possible advantage of any machine, we need to know its gear, its operation, and their possibilities. This, no matter how simple it is. To obtain the largest possible income of all their infinite possibilities, the man needs to begin by knowing his interior structure.
We will give, then, one more step inside of ourselves, considering new aspects of the duality of our mental and, then, the one of our emotional.
Well then, the polarity is exactly the characteristic of the rational mental. The man only gets to understand some thing in terms of another. It is only possible to form a concept of something of which we can conceive the opposite, as for instance: easy -difficult, death - life, beautiful - ugly, good - bad. We can form concept of those ideas because we can establish comparisons.
Aristotle, that was the precursor of the logic, affirmed that the thought only begins when he associates at least two ideas, affirming or denying one to the other. Otherwise, we will just be emitting ideas free, scattered.
To ratiocinate, in logic, means to establish a necessary relationship between two propositions or statements. Let us see the two reasoning forms, the deductive and the inductive.
The simplest form of the deductive reasoning is the called syllogism, proposed by Aristotle. In the syllogism we have:
1. Larger premise, of universal character;
2. Smaller premise, of particular character;
3. Conclusion.
The most traditional example of the syllogism is the one that says:
1. The man is mortal;
2. Socrates is man;
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
If we observe, each one of these statements represents an idea free, scattered. There only is thought, reasoning, by the connection between ideas, occurs a comparison affirming, or a comparison denying, to reach a conclusion. The mathematics is based on this reasoning type, which is deductive. The mathematics results from deductions that depart from fundamental principles preestablished, called axioms, or postulates. Naturally, this method can fail in their conclusions because everything depends on the truthfulness, on the accuracy of those postulates and axioms, taken as base of the reasoning.
For instance, with false premises, we can deform the conclusion and create sophisms.
1. Who buries a cutting object in a person's body should be punished;
2. The surgeons perforate the bodies;
3. The surgeons should be punished.
Zenon of Eléia (490 the.C.) was not a sophist but he made fun of their argumentations. He says: "Achilles will never reach the turtle. Achilles runs the double. Whenever Achilles runs a space, the turtle runs the half. As the path is composed of infinites space points, eternally they will be with the distance of half of the road."
The called inductive reasoning is that which starts by the analysis of the parts and goes on for the whole. Example:
1. Particular - the Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn and Neptune are planets;
2. The Earth, Mars, Venus, Saturn, Neptune don't shine with own light;
3. Therefore, the planets don't shine with own light.
This reasoning type uses the method of the experimentation, of observation of particular cases to arrive to a generalization. This method can also fail, for the generalization is always dangerous. We can say, in some branches of the knowledge, that this is one of the mortal sins of the thought, because the man knows some few elements of a certain class and he generalizes for the whole class; he knows some few elements of a certain race, for instance, and he generalizes the characteristics for the whole race. For this method to have success is necessary that he bases on perfected experiences and in meticulous statistics.
From the point of view of the polarity, in that type of inductive reasoning, the man also deals always with two objects or two statements among which he establishes relationships, analogies to form a concept a little wider. With this new concept, however, he doesn't manage to do anything. He needs a new object or statement for with him to establish new analogies, new associations to arrive to a truth a little wider and, like this, successively, to go by comparison and comparison, walking until arriving to a point that satisfies his mental.
It means that, analyzing the current reasoning methods, we verify that the rational mind always starts from a doubtful state to enter in the grounds of the investigation, of the inquiry for, then, to finish in a situation that answers to their expectations when, then, he gives place to a faith, to a knowledge, or, if the result goes extremely wide, to arrive to the establishment of a law.
We made this entire dissertation to show that the human mental is limited, imperfect and the objective of the self - organization is to take the individual to develop his mental through special processes, specified inside of Yoga. The man should develop his mental in such a way to acquire the capacity of the called direct knowledge, one of the potentialities of the spirit. He will go little by little acquiring that aptitude that the science knows today for the name of intuition and, he will go penetrating in the grounds of the omniscience, which is one of the characteristics of the state of being of the Divinity.
The scientist of our days recognizes the limitations of our mental one openly. We can affirm that the largest discovery done by the science, on these last times, was exactly the abandonment of that conviction of the scientist of last century that believed to always have the last word in each new discovery. Every scientist of the XX century accepts that he is far away from the last truth, what is a great advantage of the mental point of view, which should be eclectic, of wide horizons.
The man ended up by convincing himself that the senses and the mind have been provoking mistakes that took the science to wrong interpretations of the facts. Once we there believed, for instance, that the sun rotated around of the earth and not the earth around of the sun; that the earth was immobile; we believed in the solidity and indestructibility of the matter etc.
With the recent studies of the Parapsychology, the science begins accepting, also, that there exists a strip of our unconscious that is totally unexplored, strip which is source of rich inspirations that arrive as flashes of intuition. As time goes by, these flashes should go on increasing, stabilizing until they turn a state of being permanent. The man no more will need of the comparison, of the experimentation to learn. It will be enough to meditate, whose process, in fact, is taught in Yoga and he will simply know, he will start to see the laws.
That is why it is difficult for the human being to understand God, because God is the sum of all of the laws, is something global and will never be understood by the mental rational that it is dual, dialectic, imperfect.
It is because of this limitation of his mental one that the man is replete of concepts, of points of view, of dogmas, philosophical schools etc.; the mental rational refuses to accept that which cannot be proved in a material way.
Our mental only has capacity of perception for knowledges that are inside of a certain limit. Beyond of that limit, for more transcendent knowledges, a new vehicle, a new form of perception is demanded. The man is, so to speak, incomplete.
In the next chapter we will treat of the polarity of the emotion.