Now, once one has seen the nature of the game, you realise that it matters superficially which of these 2 things happens, but it doesn't fundamentally matter because all negative things pair with positives.
There is no 'positive' without 'negative', and there is no negative without positive.
I heard a very amusing story, which kind of goes with these rugs, the question is: "Is a zebra a yellow horse with black stripes, or a black horse with yellow stripes?"
The answer is, it is an invisible horse, which has been striped yellow and black so that people won't bump into it.
*laughs*
Now, in a similar way, reality is an invisible state of affairs, beyond all description and thought, but it has been striped black and white, so as to be seen.
Now this is life and death, up and down, sound and silence, the whole vibratory character of being.
And the game, the fundamental game that the universe is playing, is to forget that this is so.
You see, what you might say in theological language, the invisibility of God is his self-forgetfulness.
And the visibility of the world, is the game being played.
Now, the nature of the game (I think I've told some of you this before, but some I haven't), the nature of the game, is let us pretend that the positive and the negative are not really identical.
You see, they are explicitly different, but implicitly the same, because they always go around together.
And that reveals a hidden implicit conspiracy between black and white, and the truth is that you can't have one without the other.
But if we can pretend that they don't go together, that they are actually enemies, then we can have all sorts of games, the first game of which is 'oh dear black might win'.
The next game is 'but white must win'.
And from that position, you can develop all the games you want.
And it's interesting isn't it, how so many of our table games, like chess, and dominoes, and checkers and so on use the black and white pieces.
And you can find in the conventions of chess, one could discuss all this, the problem, in terms of chess.
When I bring up the Joker of course, we are in a way discussing it in term of the game of cards, because the Joker is the card beyond role, the card that's wild, that can be any card in the pack.
In other words, it's delivered from being a particular someone, and can be an anyone.
And it pops up here, and it pops up there, and it pops up here, and you never know 'where is the joker, who is the joker'?
You see?
The thing that we have to understand really, is that all the roles are the Joker playing.
And the Joker is looking at you out of all pairs of eyes.
There he is.
Only, he is pretending very often that he is not the Joker at all - "oh, no, it's just me, it's not the Joker, where is the Joker?"
Well, let's have an intermission.