Integrating Opposites


We often experience the world as a struggle between competing opposites: conservative vs liberal, objective vs subjective, male vs female, right brain vs left brain, the inner life vs the outer life, the active vs the passive, and so on. In the study and practise of Tai Chi I have observed a dynamic tension between  opposing forces – advance and withdraw, rise and sink. After many years of diligent practise, you can master the rise without losing the sink or you can withdraw but remain a coiled spring prepared for the advance. Mastering integration ignites explosive power (Tai Chi is a martial art).  It’s not a question of rise or sink, advance or retreat; it’s more a case of rise and sink happening together so fast as to achieve integration. The interaction of opposites could best be described as a marriage, not a binary choice or a conflict but integration.

Fundamentalists invariably identify with one pole or another creating an adversarial relationship between opposites.

From my office window I survey a pleasant scene of forested hills, early-spring pastures slowly turning green, and below them, a vast expanse of wetland where ducks and geese are returning from their winter refuge. Soon our farm pond will come alive with tiny goslings and ducklings eagerly following their mothers. It’s a scene of perfect harmony which could not exist without a balance and reconciliation of opposites – death and decay vs renewal and rebirth. Neither should prevail over the other. Both work together for good and what we observe with pleasure is the outcome of integration. Likewise, the most beautiful paintings are a combination of light and dark.


I didn’t get too far in my expose of postmodernism before I realized, yes, I am a postmodernist myself; I only reject the counterfeit version, used wrongly for political purposes, to foster totalitarianism, censorship and societal subordination to a global technocracy. Nevertheless, we do not understand the world through reason alone and in this sense, I am a postmodernist. We have a left brain which is rational and a right brain which is artistic – the realm of the poet, the mystic, the musician and the painter. A whole person must function with both hemispheres without one dominating the other.

In the early part of my book, I identify personal experience (subjective) as the only thing we can know for sure and the inner journey as an avenue to certainty (very postmodern). Finding truth in the outer world is difficult because it’s a funhouse ‘s “hall of mirrors.” It’s hard to tell what is real and what is illusion. Observing the outer world we are confused and unsure and thus vulnerable to the Wizard’s counterfeit offer of comforting certitude.

Here’s where I think the counterfeit version of postmodernism gets it wrong. I refer to a teaching story about a village of blind people trying to figure out what an elephant is. One holds the tail and says it’s a snake. Another holds the leg and says it’s a pillar, another holds the trunk and says it’s a hollow tube; but no one has the vantage point to see the whole elephant even with the use of scientific instruments. The extremists say there is no elephant. I say there is one but difficult to discover, difficult but not impossible. If there was no elephant, then nothing would be objective and therefore nothing in the outer world could be described as true or false. If nothing is true then science has no place, there would be no such thing as a lie and research would be pointless ( no truth to be found).


The great mathematician Ramanujan said that the Hindu goddess Namagiri would appear in his dreams, delivering mathematical insights, which he would write down when he awoke. He described one of them as follows:




We become much more effective as a result of integration and the world is a more peaceful place without the either/or mindset of fundamentalism.

The amazing life of Ramanujan was made into a feature film which I highly recommend (see Recommended Viewing section for movie trailer).

(C) Adrian Charles Smith 2020

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