Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 39 — Attaining the One
Heaven attained the One and became clear
Heaven attained the One and became clear; earth attained the One and became stable; gods attained the One and became spiritual; the valley attained the One and became full; the ten thousand things attained the One and lived; the king attained the One and the world followed.
Source context
- Theme
- the primordial One as source of wholeness, and the catastrophic loss attending departure from that ground
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta (Advaita)The Upanishadic teaching that multiplicity without its ground in Brahman collapses into unreality offers a structural parallel to Chapter 39's insistence that heaven, earth, gods, and kings derive coherence only from their participation in the One.
- Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Enneads)Plotinus's account of procession and reversion — that all derived beings, if they cease to refer back to the One, lose both being and form — is structurally congruent with the chapter's list of catastrophic disintegrations when wholeness is abandoned.
- Kabbalah (Ein Sof / Sefirot)The Kabbalistic doctrine that the Sefirot become destructive when severed from their root in Ein Sof parallels Chapter 39's enumeration of cosmic and social collapse when constituent levels lose their grounding in the undivided source.
Chapter 39
The things which from of old have got the One (the Tao) are--
Heaven which by it is bright and pure; Earth rendered thereby firm and sure; Spirits with powers by it supplied; Valleys kept full throughout their void All creatures which through it do live Princes and kings who from it get The model which to all they give.
All these are the results of the One (Tao).
If heaven were not thus pure, it soon would rend; If earth were not thus sure, 'twould break and bend; Without these powers, the spirits soon would fail; If not so filled, the drought would parch each vale; Without that life, creatures would pass away; Princes and kings, without that moral sway, However grand and high, would all decay.
Thus it is that dignity finds its (firm) root in its (previous) meanness, and what is lofty finds its stability in the lowness (from which it rises). Hence princes and kings call themselves 'Orphans,' 'Men of small virtue,' and as 'Carriages without a nave.' Is not this an acknowledgment that in their considering themselves mean they see the foundation of their dignity? So it is that in the enumeration of the different parts of a carriage we do not come on what makes it answer the ends of a carriage. They do not wish to show themselves elegant-looking as jade, but (prefer) to be coarse-looking as an (ordinary) stone.