Birds do it.

Here’s your basic Graduate Record Exam question: What event links the following people? The people are (not in any particular order): Max Planck, Cole Porter, James Clerk Maxwell, Mitch McConnell, Gautama Buddha, and Michael Faraday. 

And a second related question is, who was first to discover this point of intersection? Are you ready? You have twenty seconds to answer. Begin. (Sound of a clock ticking. Twenty seconds ends). Put your pencils down.

The correct answer is the principle of polarity. In 1900 Max Planck based his theory of quantum mechanics on polarity. Cole Porter wrote his song, “Let’s fall in love” in 1928, which is based on polarity (between love and the opposite). James Clerk Maxwell is accepted as the father of electromagnetic theory, which is based on the polarity of positive and negative charges. His theory, expressed in a paper titled On Physical Lines of Force was published in 1861. 

Mitch McConnell is the current senator from Kentucky and became famous for his polar opposition to Barack Obama and branded his party as the Party of No vs. Obama’s Yes we can. Gautama Buddha lived 2,500 years ago and discovered the fundamental principle of polarity as the governing force of everything (physical, spiritual or emotional) and expressed his understanding in the Dharma of dependent origination and corollary principle of everything/nothing (emptiness). And finally Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist, first isolated and identified benzene in 1825, which is likewise based on the chemical equivalent of attracting bonds of polarity.

Polarity is the fundamental principle, as Gautama discovered, of everything. Nothing can exist or be understood without this principle. It governs everything. Think about it: Love/hate, up/down, positive/negative, attraction/opposition, everything/nothing: the whole ball of wax (or not) is organized, held together, understood and energized by polarity. 

Contrast is central to perception and discrimination is being aware of one thing vs. another. Whereas discrimination sees things separately, unification brings them together. Duality and unity are likewise polar forces and bound together through dependent origination. Neither can exist without the other.

And yet, as powerful and ubiquitous as polarity is, it can be the most destructive of all forces. It can divide all people, result in the destruction of entire global systems, be the central ingredient of hostility, in weapons of mass destruction polarity can quite literally blow us all to kingdom come and be the ultimate force of our collective undoing. 

So here is the next GRE question. What is the central force that converts this power into a force of destruction? No time given for answering this question. The answer is something that is not real but is universally accepted as real. It is ego: the imaginary idea we hold of ourselves as being separate and special. Ego is the driving force of destruction: the corruptive force of meism.  It is this mythical force that stands at the center of polarity and keeps the forces of balance apart, and when ego is removed from this central position between opposites, harmony and power for the good of all is the result.

That awareness is the central premise of my second book: The Other Side of Midnight—The fundamental principle of polarity. If properly understood, polarity can be either the most positive, or the most negative force of all. That awareness can save your life, and mine, because if we don’t universally grasp the significance of polarity (and soon) we are all going down the tubes together.
“…birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, lets fall in love.”