It is kind of sadly funny or rather, funnily sad, when we come to understand that to know the absolute, relative is the key. Absolute by itself is beyond comprehension. How can one define absolute? The dictionary definitions are rather interesting. These are some of the definitions given.
Well, is it possible to mentally imagine the word “absolute?” Not considering Absolute Barbeque or Absolut Vodka or the abuse of the word absolute in every day usage, it is absolutely impossible to comprehend this word absolute with our limited perception.
Now, picture these words. Light, sorrow, hate, rich, long, big, sweet, male, female, cruel, up, center, north…etc etc. Don’t these evoke a strong understanding and a clear idea of what it signifies. How come we are able to comprehend these words? Elementary, my dear Watson. It is because all these are relative terms -i.e they exist in reference to another term that means the exact opposite of what the above words signify.
Light & dark, sorrow & joy, hate & love, rich & poor and so on. Without one, the other has no meaning. Light has no meaning if there is no darkness. Imagine being in love all the time. Will we even know that we are in love? Imagine that there is no sorrow at all. Then is it possible to really comprehend that all that there is, is joy?
Going by this, everything in life is relative. We separate one experience from another on the basis of this simple relativity. The primordial of all relatives in life is driven by like and dislike. We each have this default setting of like and dislike and with that as the reference point, everything that we experience is categorized into dualities. Likes and dislikes are the driving force behind all our activities.
Coming back to absolute, the problem with absolute is that it has no reference point. With nothing relative or comparative, the “absoluteness” is beyond our comprehension. But, the paradox is, without “relative”, absolute itself has no meaning. It is only by negating the relative, absolute is attained.