Law of Pendulum

Life is a flux, a continuous process of change. Nothing is permanent, from our inner moods and psychological states to outer situations and events. There is constant change in nature too, summer transforms to winter, day turns to night, and high tide becomes low tide. The bible says “As above so below”; as in nature, so within ourselves.

Our inner state constantly swings between two opposite poles. Just as a pendulum swings from one end to another, we move from desire to frustration, happiness to sadness, like to dislike, certainty to doubt, and love to hate. Our psychology always keeps swinging and as a result, we relate to life in a certain way; we always exclude one side of a situation in favour of another. When confronted with a problem, we try to solve it by an emphatic yes or no. We also demand an answer either in yes or no. Consequently, we take sides and if we do not take sides, we regard ourselves as indecisive. We live an illusion that everything must have a value judgement – true or untrue, good or bad, right or wrong.

Is it possible to see things differently? Can we see the two sides, yes and no, together? This would require the opening of a new vision where we see and understand the law of the pendulum. Say, when we are happy the pendulum is moving to the right. We fail to see is that as it moves to the extreme right it is gathering energy to go to the left and when it does, we swing from happiness to sadness.

The two poles of the pendulum complement each other. Similarly, all our inner states which we interpret as contradictory are actually complementary. This is not apparently visible but we can develop the capacity to see things differently. Then, we do not see yes or no, but we pause (or halt) in the middle of the swing where yes and no merge into one. We awaken to a different solution, a sort of a divine intervention.

The guru wants the disciple to transcend opposites, for in truth they are merged. A classic example of merging them is depicted in ‘The Godfather’, where Tom Hagen asks the Godfather as to how should one say no. He advises him to say no as if saying yes.