Oliver Robinson

Palintonos Harmonia: The alchemy of opposites

Oliver Robinson

The idea that the tension generated by the juxtaposition of opposites is somehow central to human existence stretches right back to the to the roots of Western and Eastern thought. Heraclitus, one of the Pre-Socratic philosophers of Ancient Greece, referred to this idea using the lovely phrase palintonos harmonia (counter-stretched harmony). He pointed out that wherever one finds a tension of opposites one also finds a unity; hot and cold are opposed yet are part of one continuum. The same with night and day. More of one means less of the other, and yet they can only exist together as one. Heraclitus suggested that this kind of tension sustains the cosmos and is an expression of its paradoxical nature as both unity and multiplicity.

In Chinese philosophy, the play of opposites is central to yin yang theory. Yin and yang represent two power-principles that are different yet utterly interconnected. Yin is yielding, covert, dark and flowing. Yang is active, agentic, overt, light and hard. Together they create a two-part whole. Harmony and health is found in their relative balance. Illness and pathology in physical, mental or social forms occurs from too much of one or the other. Everything contains is opposite, and too much of anything can bring a loss of balance. As well as the realm of ideas that Heraclitus and the Chinese philosophers explored, harmony in music and art is produced by the juxtaposition of two or more contrasting things that come together to forge a higher unity. Perhaps the clearest expression of this is in colour theory, where complementary colours are those that are opposite on the colour wheel, as shown in Figure 1. By juxtaposing complementary colours in a painting or design, such as red and green, one creates a visual balance and harmony. In the Middle Ages, Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464) continued the philosophical exploration of palintonos harmonia by suggesting that the nature of the divine is best understand as a coincidentia oppositorum – that which contains opposites and thus transcends them. He wrote:

“When we attempted to see Him beyond being and not-being, we were unable to understand how He could be visible. For He is beyond everything plural, beyond every limit and all unlimitedness; He is completely everywhere and not at all anywhere; He is of every form and of no form, alike; He is completely ineffable; in all things He is all things, in nothing He is nothing, and in Him all things and nothing are Himself;

He is wholly and indivisibly present in any given thing (no matter how small) and, at the same time, is present in no thing at all.” De Possest 74

Green YELLOW

primary ▲

complementary

▲

complementary

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Orange

BLUE

primary ▲

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primary

complementary RED

Figure 1: The colour wheel

Mechanistic Verbal

Impersonal Contemplation

Transcendental

Feeling

Outer INTERFACE SPACE Inner

Thinking Personal

Empirieal

Explanation Ineffable Purposive

HEAD HEART Figure 2: The visual integration of my dialectical model of the relationship between science and spirituality

Carl Jung was influenced by de Cusa’s writings, and wrote about the tension of opposites as central to psychic balance and health and its healthy relationship to the divine or infinite. The Self is, he said, a complex of opposites, and consciousness does not exist without the discrimination of opposites. The juxtaposition and integration of opposites was for Jung a way of holding and resolving paradox and opening to the unknown while not getting lost in it. Influenced by this influential train of thought through West and East, and by notions of harmony in art and music, I have developed a model of the relationship between science and spirituality that is premised on them being two halves of a whole, that nature of which can be expressed in seven pairs of opposites, each of which is a polarity, and thus a unity. In my new book Paths Between Head and Heart: Exploring the harmonies of science and spirituality, I explore these seven polarities and how particular key thinkers and contemplatives who have contrasted science and spirituality, or the rational and the mystical, have based their work

predominantly on one. I synthesise these different ideas together into a single complexio oppositorum, and the image that I use to represent this is shown in Figure 2. It is no accident that the image bears some resemblance to a mandala, for mandalas have been used across the ages to represent

Dr Oliver Robinson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich. the tension of opposites and wholeness through holding this opposition. By arranging the seven polarities around a central point in this way, their overlapping nature is illustrated, as is the way in which they are all tapping an essential duality, which itself sits within an ultimate unity or nondual space that transcends and yet somehow contains the cognitive process of contrasting opposites or perceiving dualities. The interface space shown in the middle of these continua is the space where the SMN naturally operates. I hope that my book may be a small contribution to this longstanding tradition of palintonos harmonia, and strongly believe the topic has profound contemporary relevance. It seems we may have collectively forgotten that everything pushed to an extreme, no matter how ostensibly positive the thing may be in moderation, will in the end lead to pain. Let us all work towards the eternally important goals of harmony and the wisdom that emerges from balancing the contrasting opposites of the human mind.