The problems of duality are clearly stated in the Christian faith, but they often pass unrecognized under the symbols in which they are contained. The story of the Fall, of the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, describes man’s involvement in the vicious circle—a condition in which, of his own power, he is able to do nothing good that is not vitiated by evil. In this condition it may be said that “all good deeds are done for the love of gain,” that is, with a purely self-interested motive, because “honesty is the best policy.” Every advance in morality is counterbalanced by the growth of repressed evil in the unconscious, for morality has to be imposed by law and wherever there is compulsion there is repression of instinctual urges. Indeed, the very formulation of the ideal of righteousness suggests and aggravates its opposite. Thus St. Paul says, “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” So, too, Lao Tzu remarks in the Tao Te Ching:
When the great Tao is lost, spring forth benevolence and righteousness.
When wisdom and sagacity arise, there are great hypocrites.
When family relations are no longer harmonious, we have filial children and devoted parents.
When a nation is in confusion and disorder, patriots are recognized.
Where Tao is, equilibrium is. When Tao is lost, out come all the differences of things.
[Trans. Ch’u Ta-kao]
It is not surprising, therefore, that Christian doctrine follows St. Paul in saying that salvation for fallen man is unattainable by law alone, which is to say by technique. For this is not only a question of morality. So long as man attempts to save himself by the mere observance of moral, spiritual, or psychological law he is involved in the vicious circle of duality.
The Acceptance of Grace
The motivating power of the vicious circle is pride. In Christian terms we should say that man is not willing to be saved as he is; he feels that it is necessary for him to do something about it, to earn salvation by his own self-made spirituality and righteousness. The Grace of God is offered freely to all, but through pride man will not accept it. He cannot bear the thought that he is absolutely powerless to lift himself up and that the only chance of salvation is simply to accept something which is offered as freely to the saint as to the sinner. If nothing can be done to earn this Grace it seems to set all man’s self-imposed ideals at naught; he has to confess himself impotent, and this is more than he can bear. So the gift of Grace is tacitly ignored, and man goes on trying to manufacture it for himself.6
When it is said that man will not let himself be saved as he is, this is another way of saying that he will not accept himself as he is; subtly he gets around this simple act by making a technique out of acceptance, setting it up as something which he should do in order to be a “good boy.” And as soon as acceptance is made a question of doing and technique we have the vicious circle. True acceptance is not something to be attained; it is not an ideal to be sought after—a state of soul which can be possessed and acquired, which we can add to ourselves in order to increase our spiritual stature. If another paradox may be forgiven, true acceptance is accepting yourself as you are NOW, at this moment, before you have even begun to make yourself different by accepting yourself.7 In other words, as soon as we try to make the ideal state of mind called “acceptance” something different from the state of mind which we have at this moment, this is the pride which makes it so difficult to accept what we are now, the barrier that stands between man and that which we call God or Tao.
But when it is suggested that we should find union with God here and now at this very moment, everyone is outraged and begins to make excuses. “After all, how can we attain such sublime understanding at this moment? We are unprepared. We are not good enough. We shall have to do all kinds of things first. We must meditate and train ourselves in religious discipline, and then perhaps after many years we shall be fit and worthy to attain that greatest of all attainments.” But this is surely a peculiar form of blindness and false pride, masquerading as humility. We see God every time we open our eyes; we inhale Him at every breath; we use His strength in every movement of a finger; we think Him in every thought, although we may not think of Him, and we taste Him in every bite of food. This is an old story to those who have studied the wisdom of the East, but still the search goes on, a search for something we have never lost, something which is staring us right in the face, a search which the Buddhists sometimes describe as “hiding loot in one’s pocket and declaring oneself innocent.” It is difficult just because it is too easy, for man finds it so hard to climb down from his high horse and accept that which is, freely and unreservedly. Small wonder, then, that we are advised to become again as little children, who have an inconvenient way of drawing attention to obvious things which the adult mind cannot or will not see. For spiritual understanding is not a reward given to you for being a great person; you cannot acquire it any more than you can acquire the wind and the stars. But you can open your eyes and see it.
The Dweller on the Threshold
Now in this true acceptance of oneself there is a mystery, for, as the Pythagoreans say, “Know thyself, and thou wilt know the universe and the gods.” The mystery is that something so apparently simple and lowly as oneself as it is at this moment can contain so great a treasure. But that is the peculiarity of divine Grace; it is always found where it would least be expected, for, in the words of Lao Tzu, Tao “seeks, like water, the lowly level which men abhor.” And so it happens that the very thing we are forever struggling to get away from, to outgrow, to change, and to escape, is the very thing which holds the much desired secret. That is why there is a vicious circle, why our search for happiness is this frantic running around, pursuing in ignorance that which we are trying to flee. We are running away from our front in order to catch up with our back, with the result that, for us, happiness is always somewhere in the future, just round the corner perhaps, but always beyond. Ourselves and our situation as they are at this moment contain the whole secret, but when we try to accept them in the technical way we are still going on with the circular chase; we are trying to add to them the virtue of acceptance so that we do not have to face them as they are, without their acceptance and with all their shortcomings, their conflicts, their desires to escape, their impotence, and their sins. We catch a glimpse of them from time to time in all their nakedness and run from them as fast as we can go, trying to improve them, spiritualize them, and in a thousand other ways hide such terrible nudity. Naturally we deceive ourselves and begin to have fanciful pictures of ourselves as we are. But when these pictures are torn away we meet again the unedifying and fearful sight of our real selves, and it seems impossible that the great treasure can have anything to do with such a degraded state of affairs.
From one point of view this sight of our true selves is the dreaded Dweller on the Threshold, the monster which all initiates into the divine mysteries have to face on the brink of their enlightenment. But the Dweller on the Threshold is the face of God seen from this side of the brink; you pass over the brink if you can call Him by His real name, though it needs a profound humility to utter it. For to accept the Grace of God as you are now, without any “improvements” and dressing up in more respectable clothes, is to realize that all the cherished ambitions of self-interest, all your efforts to make yourself great, are vain. You have to come down to the level of worms and dust which have not a particle of your cleverness and yet exist by the Grace of God. Most people know this from childhood, and yet never can be simple enough to recognize it, for “which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”8 It would be well for those who struggle so hard in the squirrel cage of duality to be spiritual, to accept, to find wisdom, and to be happy to remember occasionally those words, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”