It is absolutely impossible for a subject to see or have insight into something while leaving itself out of the picture, so impossible that knowing and being are the most opposite of all spheres.
I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world, and we have always been on opposite sides, without affectation or animosity... It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as I do; and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.
Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.
If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both. . . . The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.
.. we shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.
Just like I described in health care, yeah, somebody comes in, they got new ideas, maybe ideas that are completely opposite of my ideas. Maybe some of it goes, maybe some of that progress goes back. Maybe they think of some things we didn't think of, and so in some other areas - we can learn something.