Concept of Duality

For any quality in this universe one can find an opposite quality also. Good – Bad, Day – Night, Long – Short, Beauty – Ugly, Hot - Cold and any such number of qualities! One, who can understand this duality with the right perspective, can have an undisturbed life. Such person need not and will not have any worry about life or affinity towards destiny, God, heaven, hell and such entities. Such person is a self sustained person. He does not need any thing from others. As this person is beyond all this requirements, there is no harm to any body due to such a person. One who deeply involved with this duality can not have any life other than a disturbed life. To transcend duality and become free is not a difficult task. The only necessity is the real willingness to be like that. The difficulty lies in bringing in the willingness. This discussion is a small step towards removing the misconceptions with in us rather than bringing in willingness with in us. Once the misconceptions are understood, there is a better possibility of being willing to look into these possibilities.

Let us have a detailed discussion on the concept of duality. All these qualities can be classified into two groups. One set of qualities is entirely based on our senses. They are qualities like hot – cold, bright – dark, noise – silence and so on. Another set of qualities is mainly created by our reactive thoughts and senses are used to support the reaction of thoughts. Qualities such as good – bad, beauty – ugly and so on are such qualities supported by our reactive thoughts. There is not much harm in the dualities of first set of qualities as they are physical aspect and these dualities in these aspects exist because of the limitations of our sense organs. The duality exist in the second set of qualities is the most dangerous and this duality is the cause of each and every problem, violence and uneasiness in this planet. If a certain percentage of the human population can understand this duality and can transcend this duality, the problems in the whole existence will be solved. We may consider this discussion as a micro level attempt to such a reality (Hopefully!).

Let us take the quality hot & cold. Our body temperature is about 28 deg C. If a object which comes to contact with us is say at 30 deg C, we say it is hot while another object which is at 26 deg C, will be cold to us. If we are suffering with high fever, the object which is at 30 deg C will now seems to be very cold. Few days ago it was hot to us. The feeling of hot or cold depends on at what temperature we are. On the other hand the sense of hot or cold is relative to the temperature of our body. Similar is the case with any qualities directly related to our senses. Normally, we are not much affected by the duality in these qualities as it is required to protect our body to some extent.

The duality constructed by our mind such as good – bad, beauty – ugly, heaven – hell, etc are dangerous and they are the root cause for every problem of us. The mind, with the help of reactive thoughts creates such qualities. So, now the root cause is shifted to our thoughts. Reactive thoughts are the result of qualities such as fear, dependency, possessiveness and such qualities. Hence the root cause is shifted once again. Thus it is an endless circle. We have to break this circle some where. It does not matter where we break this circle. It depends on the individual capability and tendency of each one of us. We may discuss all such qualities and, may be with a bit of effort from our side, it is possible for every one of us to break the circle at one or the other point. If we can do that, we have already made a change with in us. Hence changing the world as we like to have is not far away.

Even though we know how the senses work for us, it may be relevant here to discuss it once again so that we may be able to approach our problems with the right perspective. Let us take the sense of hearing for our study. We know that the sound is produced by the vibration of the sound source. This vibration is transferred to the medium around and the particles in that medium starts vibrating and finally these vibrations reaches our ear. The ear drums starts vibrating and the vibration is transferred as electrical/chemical signal and this signal is carried over to the brain. The brain process the information by means of comparison. It pulls out already stored sound information and compare it with them. It recognize the pattern and then pull out the information stored along with those pattern of information. With that information, we recognize the sound and related information about the sound. Now whether we like it or not, the recently gathered information is stored in the memory. With this work, the active part of sense recognizing is complete. Now based on the type of information received, there may be another active process initiated by the brain. For example, the information received is some thing related to further action to be taken, another process of active brain function should be initiated. It is just a possibility. Now, we never stop at this active part of brain function.

Now, instead of being aware of this active process, we direct our awareness to one or few of the lead given by the active process of comparison. Our awareness is such a powerful phenomena, it immediately initiates a reactive processing. It is reactive process because that process is not about any fact, but a possibility brought out by the comparison process of our mind. With this reactive process initiated, we go as far back as possible to retrieve information from brain and project to future as far as possible. The past is already completed and whatever information in our brain is the information of whatever already happened (There is an exception here). The future has limitless possibilities and the brain can not project it with the facts already available in memory. But as our awareness was directed to that direction, the brain has to project the future. Now the brain is in a deep trouble. At this point, we need to remember that all actions of brain shall be recorded in the memory, whether it is an active process or reactive process. To come out of this trouble, the brain pull out the memory stored as a result of reactive thoughts in the past also. Here we have to note that the result stored in memory due to reactive thought is not the fact or information which had happened. But it is the result of projection of future at certain time in the past. Hence the mind project the future with the information stored in the memory, which was also a projection, stored at some point in the past. Now we can understand the chaos situation of mind. Over a period of time, our mind start processing only the (past) projections dumped into our memory, which is junk information rather than processing the memory of facts actually happened in the past. Now probably we may understand why young ones are more target oriented than the old ones, with very few exceptions. These exceptional ones are who learned to be aware (at least to a certain extent) of the active process of their brain rather than the reactive process of brain.

We deviated much from our discussion of the concept of duality. But this may be required to understand the concept of duality.

With the above discussion, we recognize that there is more garbage in our memory rather than the facts. Over a period of time, our brain starts processing major part of garbage with a little bit facts which it can recognize. The irony is with so much of garbage in our memory, our brain seldom recognize the facts. Out of ignorance, we consider the result of garbage processing as our way of life. Because of these garbage, our mind fixes a reference point for each and every perception and hence a quality is attached to it and hence the duality.

For the purpose of constructing the duality concept, let us assume, until now we have not seen flowers. We happened to visit a flower garden in a distant land. On entering the garden, for the first time in our life we are seeing a flower. The brain process the visual and fragrance of the flower and store it in the brain. At this point of time, there is no duality with respect to the qualities of the flower. This is because there are no qualities of flower at all with in our mind. This is because, this is the first time we are seeing the flower and there is nothing else there to compare. With out comparison there are no qualities. As we progress into the garden, we see the same type of flower with another colour. Now our memory already have information to compare. Once the active process recognize the flower with new colour and compare it with already available information and store the result back in memory, the reactive thought process spring out and construct the qualities out of the two flowers we have seen. Based on the garbage in our mind, we attach the quality beauty to one of these two flowers. Now the flower has a quality called beauty. If you have followed this discussion it is clear that the quality is the result of reactive thought process and the result of garbage with in our memory. The flower does not have any quality as such. The quality is attached to the flower by the observer and it is the result of reactive thought process of the observer.

If the above result can be projected little further, there is no quality at all to any thing which we observe. The qualities of the observations are due to the dualities built in to the memory of the observer.

If we can extend the above projections further, we ourselves may not be having any qualities as such. The qualities we observe about ourselves are just because of the duality built into our mind due to the garbage in our mind.

Please not that the above discussions are not yet facts for us. These are all just possibilities. We shall just keep these possibilities in our mind and at later stage there is probability of getting more clarity on this.