The Law of the Pendulum

Our whole lives, ordinarily, are governed by the Law of the Pendulum. We all swing to and fro. When you are in one opposite you are unconscious of the other, and vice versa. You may have idle dreams of rising and rising, of progressing and progressing, of getting better and better, but all these are indeed idle dreams.

You cannot escape from the opposites unless you know how to do so. You have to see both sides of yourselves and how one side helps the other side. This requires double thinking.

What do you think self-knowledge means? It means knowledge of all sides of yourself. If you can see both sides of yourself, what you call your good side and your bad, then you begin to be conscious in opposites at the same time. And this is where some strange secret lies that is spoken of so much in past esoteric literature.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Opposites" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 325)