Human beings are subjective. Each person sees the world through his center of gravity. Man has four brains, an instinctive, moving, intellectual and emotional center. Part of a person`s make-up is the fact that one of these centers is predominant and a person experiences the world more through this center than the other centers.
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. — Goethe
In contrast, statues of gods with four heads represent the objectivity of the higher self. This represents a balanced view, when the higher self uses the machine as a tool and uses all four centers relatively equally.
The garden of balance and harmony are the four directions centered on reality. — Li DaoChun, The Book of Balance and Harmony
In addition, the centers are divided into three parts, a mechanical, emotional and intellectual part. People tend to look for ways to stimulate the emotional parts of centers. It’s true that the energy from these parts are the most intense and make one feel alive. Activities that stimulate this part in each center include arguing, watching and playing sports, enjoying food, and playing video games. When the emotional parts are active, the level of identification is usually high. The intense rush of energy stimulated by these activities creates a strong feeling of ‘I’ and the illusion that the machine is real.
Because of the level of identification, the absence of this intense energy may trigger a feeling of boredom and create an opposite intense negative energy. The more one`s machine looks for these activities as stimulation, the more intense the swing into negative energy can be. It’s the same swing to the opposite as when one gives up addiction to alcohol smoking or drugs. Because one`s identity depends so strongly on the activity, the absence of it triggers a deep feeling of discomfort.
Yin and Yang
The following symbol represents this swing of positive energy into negative energy.
The Taiji Symbol
In contrast, the Taiji symbol (popularly called the yin/yang symbol) has yin inside yang and yang inside yin. One of the many meanings of this symbol refers to the trigram Fire ☲, which is made up of yin (black) inside yang (white), and the trigram Water ☵ has yang inside yin.
Among the trigrams, the sun is Fire ☲, yang outside and yin inside, the moon is Water ☵, yin outside and yang inside. The science of spiritual alchemy is simply a matter of taking the two great medicines of true yin and true yang, and fusing them into one energy, thus forming the elixir. — Liu Yiming
Fire refers to the emotions, which flare up when stimulated. For example, when playing a video game, involved in a heated discussion, or watching a game of a favorite sports team. Water refers to the many I`s, which flow through the mind in a meaningless and unbroken stream. However, when Water and Fire represent the medicine, the many ‘I’s are used to return to self-remembering. Water then, represents thoughts that support self-remembering while Fire represents self-awareness itself. When sustaining self-remembering, Water and Fire symbolically fuse into one. This is clear in the following symbol, the unification of yin and yang, and going beyond them to experience true reality.
The Merging of Yin and Yang
QUESTION: What is the reason for using a “gold pill” to symbolize the marvel of supreme true reality?
ANSWER: Its fundamental true essence, like the stability of gold, like the roundness of a pill, never ever decays. The more refined, the brighter it becomes. Its symbol is a circle. – Li Daochun, The Book of Balance and Harmony
The golden pill, which Gurdjieff called ‘the sly man’s pill,’ represents going beyond yin and yang after they are unified.
Heaven is yang, earth is yin; the heart of Heaven and Earth is the heart in which yin is not separate from yang, yang is not separate from yin; yin and yang merge. — Liu Yiming
Ouspensky said, “The work must be emotional,” but it must be higher emotional and lower emotional, world 12 and the nine of hearts. — Robert Burton
The Heart of Heaven
The Heart of Heaven and Earth represent a heart in which heaven and earth, yin and yang are unified. This requires controlling one’s desires, by staying centered, rather than swinging to extremes. The thorns around the heart symbolize the friction and payment required to keep yin and yang balanced.
Walther Sell is the author of a website on Oriental esoteric teachings and the Fourth Way. For more, see his page, Inner Journey to the West and prior articles from Walther for FourthWayToday.org: https://fourthwaytoday.org/author/walther-sell/, such as: