9 | The Son of Heaven and Earth
'Heaven is his father, Earth his mother.' So reads the formulaalways exactly the same wherever it occurs, regardless of time or place [^1]-that defines the nature of the relationship between Man and the other two terms of the Great Triad by describing him as 'Son of Heaven and Earth'. The very fact that it is an initiatic formula is itself a clear indication that, if we are to understand it in its fullest sense, it must not just be thought of as referring to the ordinary man who is the product of present world conditions, but as describing the 'true man' all of whose possibilities the initiate is called upon to realise within himself.
This particular point deserves a little further explanation, however, because it could be objected that as manifestation in its entirety is, and can be nothing other than, the resultant of the union of Heaven and Earth, it follows that every man-indeed every being we might choose to think of-is equally a son of Heaven and Earth because by nature he or it will contain something of the nature of both.
In a sense this is true. Every being consists of both an essence and a substance (using these terms in a relative sense): a yang aspect and a yin aspect, a side that is 'in act' and a side that is 'in potency', an 'interior' and an 'exterior'. And yet the precise extent of this participation is a matter of degree, for in manifested beings the celestial and terrestrial influences clearly combine in many different ways and in many different proportions: this after all is what produces their endless diversity. But as to what it is that all beings are, to varying degrees and in various ways, that is none
other than Man. And by Man here we mean 'true man', [^2] for in our state of existence he and he alone is fully and pre-eminently Man, just as it is he alone who among his other privileges is given the capacity of actually being able to recognise Heaven as his 'True Ancestor'. [^3]
What we have just said is a direct and immediate consequence of man's 'central' position in relation to his own state of existence. [^4] To be more precise we ought to speak of the 'central' position which man should (normally and in principle) occupy. Here, in the very fact that we have to make a distinction between the place man actually occupies and the place he should occupy, we are confronted with the difference between ordinary man and 'true man'. From the traditional point of view it is 'true man' alone who is worthy of being described as normal. He is given the name 'true man' to show that he truly possesses the fullness of human nature, due to the fact that he has developed within himself every aspect of the possibilities implicit in his humanity. As to other men the best that can be said is that they possess, so to speak, a human potentiality. This potentiality will be more or less developed in some of its aspects, and particularly in those aspects corresponding to the simple corporeal modality of the individuality; but in any case it will be far from being totally actualised. It is this predominant characteristic of potentiality which makes these men sons of Earth far more than sons of Heaven, and it is also what makes themyin in relation to the Cosmos.
For a man to be truly the 'Son of Heaven and Earth', the 'act' in him must be equal to the 'potency'. This implies nothing short of the full and complete realisation of his humanity-that is, the state of 'true man'. It is the reason why 'true man' is perfectly balanced in terms of yang and yin; it is also why at the same time he is yang in relation to the Cosmos, for the heavenly nature neces-
sarily has supremacy over the terrestrial wherever the two are actualised in equal measure. This, and this alone, is what makes him capable of fulfilling effectively his 'central' role as man; yet he can only truly fulfil this role provided he is man in the fullest sense of the word, which means that for all other manifested beings 'he is the image of the True Ancestor'. [^5]
Now it is very important to bear in mind that 'true man' is also 'primordial man'. In other words, the condition of 'true man' is the condition that was natural for humanity at its origins. Since then, humanity has distanced itself little by little from that original state as it moved through its terrestrial cycle, and the end result now is the state in which what we have called ordinary man finds himself-although fallen man would be a more appropriate term. This spiritual decline, which as it increases produces a greater and greater imbalance between yang and yin, can be described as a gradual moving away from the central position occupied by 'primordial' man. The further removed a being is from the centre, the less yang he is and the more yin, for the 'outward' begins to prevail over the 'inward' in exact proportion to the distance he moves away from the centre. This is why we said above that he ends up virtually a 'son of Earth' alone: 'in act' if not 'in potency' he becomes less and less distinguishable from non-human beings sharing the same level of existence. 'Primordial man', on the other hand, was not merely one more being among the rest: he was the living synthesis of them all in his fully realised humanity. [^6] By virtue of his 'inwardness', which embraced his entire state of
existence just as Heaven embraces all manifestation (for in reality the centre contains everything), he included these beings in himself as particular possibilities inherent in his own nature. [^7] So it is that Man, as the third term of the Great Triad, effectively represents the totality of all manifested beings.
The 'place' occupied by this 'true man' is the central point where the powers of Heaven and Earth converge and unite. This means that 'true man' is the direct, culminating product of their union. And here again we see why other beings-because in a sense they are merely secondary and partial products of the union of Heaven and Earth-will necessarily proceed from him in a line of indefinite gradation determined by their greater or lesser distance from that central point. This is the reason why, as we pointed out earlier, 'true man' alone deserves the designation 'Son of Heaven and Earth': the title is pre-eminently his, and it is his to the highest degree possible. Everything else in existence is only entitled to the name by virtue of participation; and the necessary means of this participation is 'true man' himself, for only in him are Heaven and Earth directly united-if not Heaven and Earth themselves, then at least in the form of the influences they both exert in the sphere of existence to which the human state belongs. [^8]
As we have explained elsewhere, [^9] initiation falls into two parts. Its first part, which constitutes what are called the 'lesser mysteries', is concerned specifically with the possibilities of the human state and has as its object the restoration of the 'primordial state'. This means that through this initiation, if it is effectively realised,
man is brought back from the state of 'off-centredness' which he now occupies to the central position which normally should be his; and once there, all the prerogatives inherent in this central location are restored to him.
In other words, 'true man' is the person who has effectively reached the goal of the 'lesser mysteries', and this goal is nothing else than the perfection of the human state. The man who has achieved this finds himself established once and for all at the 'Unchanging Centre' (Chung Yung). He has now escaped the vicissitudes of the 'cosmic wheel', for the centre does not move like the rest of the wheel but is the fixed and stationary point around which the movement occurs. [^10]
When he has arrived at this point, 'true man' has not yet attained the highest degree which is the final goal of initiation and the term of the 'greater mysteries'. But he has passed from the circumference to the centre, from the 'outer' to the 'inner', and so truly fulfils the function of 'unmoved mover' in relation to the world that is his. [^11] And the 'action of presence' belonging to this function imitates in its particular domain the 'actionless' activity of Heaven. [^12]