Is Duality the Key to Spiritual Transformation
When the individual is more evolved, duality and separation trigger the need for peace and harmony. Pleasures, passions and the ambitions of the ego now feel vain, superficial and bring frustration and suffering. The individual feels an emptiness which pushes him or her towards a disidentification and detachment from all things. Eventually, this outer detachment leads to a detachment from oneself. Moreover, if the individual aspires to a spiritual life, it initiates a letting go of this precarious world saturated with duality and, in doing so, one discovers the ultimate and object-free joy of Non-Duality. The indescribable experience of pure joy liberates the individual from him or herself to unite with the immutable Being, an indivisible reality beyond our fragmented world. Freed from duality, the individual is no longer trapped in the game of ‘mine and yours’. What remains is the ineffable reality in which nothing more can be said, as it escapes our language caught in duality. It is the Silent Void, the Shûnyam of the Buddhists, the ultimate realization in transcendence, where the Infinite radiates beyond the clouds of forms.
But is conflictual duality—the experience of the ego where everything is subject to the law of the strongest—final, or does it conceal within itself a profound unity of an as-yet-unrealized love? Should one flee from this world of duality toward a Buddhist Nirvana, toward a celestial paradise, or should one rather decipher its secrets? This is the challenge: to unravel the Gordian knot that separates spiritual schools. Symbolically, duality could be seen as a purifying fire that transmutes coarse matter into fine gold, from animal-man into a divine being. Thus, rather than being an inherent evil, duality could reveal a hidden treasure, the fundamental enigma of the mystery of Being and the origin of our world.
“(…) what seemed to him (the seeker) dark incomprehensible Maya was all the time no other than the Consciousness-Puissance of the Eternal, timeless and illimitable beyond the universe, but spread out here under a mask of bright and dark opposites for the miracle of the slow manifestation of the Divine in Mind and Life and Matter.” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
According to Sri Aurobindo, duality is the eternal relationship between Soul and Nature (Purusha and Prakriti), Pure Being and Manifestation form a duality necessary for creative life. Being is formless; Nature, the manifested world, are its forms. In other words, behind the mountain, the bird, the tree, the human being, and all things, there is the omnipresent Being. This duality allows for infinite possibilities of different expressions and experiences of life. It expresses itself through the material, vital, and mental planes that Nature has created so that a multidimensional dynamism may unfold within the individual evolving in it. Thus, body and matter provide the spirit with a vehicle and a field of action, a duality without which it could not expand, actualize, and realize itself.
“It is again a Duality necessary for the manifestation, creating and enabling that double current of energy which seems always necessary for the world-workings, two poles of the same Being, but here closer to each other and always very evidently carrying each the powers of the other in its essence and its dynamic nature. At the same time by the fact that the two great éléments of the divine Mystery, the Personal and the Impersonal, are here fused together, the seeker of the integral Truth feels in the duality of Ishwara-Shakti his closeness to a more intimate and ultimate secret of the divine Transcendence and the Manifestation than that offered to him by any other experience.” Sri Aurobindo, Ibid.
The experience of Non-Duality, in which all that exists merges into the One single and indivisible reality, much like all pottery is made of the same substance — clay, implies an ineffable Beingness without differentiation, without name, without form. According to this spiritual realization, the form to which our being is identified would be nothing more than an illusory appearance. This is the state of the awakened soul! The individual dissolved in Non-Duality becomes a detached witness of the world and to the fantasy of forms that do not exist in themselves! The awakened individual now lives in That, which is beyond all forms.
Yet, this transcendental non-dual experience is not the only truth, for according to the integral vision proposed by Sri Aurobindo, Duality and Non-Duality coexist in a dynamic interplay essential to the creative unfoldment of creation. Duality and Non-Duality thus become bi-unity or bi-one and, in their complementarity, form a complete picture of reality.
Duality evolves through different stages depending on the growth and maturity of the individual’s consciousness. The first stage is a primordial, oppositional duality, bluntly separative, I am me, and you are other; I only believe what I see! Eventually this opposing, conflictual duality is transformed into a complementary polarity. For example, a weak or passive woman is usually drawn towards her opposite, a strong or dominant man, or vice versa. Once this psychological complex is overcome, the relationship transforms into a harmonious complementarity: opposition turns into polarity. At the next stage, duality softens further and becomes bi-one, meaning that another is perceived as oneself, while still being appreciated for his or her own uniqueness. This is the experience of union within difference, but there is no longer a feeling of separateness. Finally, at an even higher stage in the dynamics of duality, the truths of the Infinite Being which is both the One and the Many, are reflected in the individual. Let us recall the experience of the Hindu sage Ramakrishna, who, while standing on the threshold of liberation and dissolution into the One, preferred to taste the sugar rather than become the sugar! This is the supreme state of dual-non-duality (bi-one). If there is Being, there is also Nature, Manifestation, and Creation. The duality that initially appeared negative at the beginning of evolution becomes supremely positive in its fulfilment.
In fact, the strife of apparent duality helps us to mature, and the ego that arises from it is a necessary stage, a preparation for the discovery of our soul, our true individuality. A difficult childhood, the loss of a loved one, or any other adversity is often the best teaching for growth and self-knowledge. When viewed from this perspective, duality is an initiation. Failing to meet the challenge and giving up too soon means turning away from the opportunity to truly find your deeper self, to mature and become an integral being, to flourish in both strength and gentleness which embody the best of both the feminine and the masculine qualities. Each experience in duality and the lessons that they provide, allow each individual to develop in a unique, rich and multifaceted way. Nonetheless, to reject life and all its dualistic meanderings in favour of a transcendental withdrawal may indeed bring inner tranquillity, but it is at the cost of losing the uniqueness and richness that life bestows with all its adventures.
An androgynous individual is an example of this accomplished state, where the duality of the feminine and masculine has been integrated into a single person who creatively utilizes uses each polarity according to the situation, in contradistinction to those who, identified with their gender, remain dependent on the opposite sex. The androgynous being is autonomous, yet enjoys both the feminine and masculine principles perfectly blended within one’s nature. Every single man and woman engaged in the play of duality is destined for this completeness of being.
Our mind struggles to grasp what surpasses it and tends to resolve the question of duality and non-duality, the eternal debate between Being and Becoming among philosophers, by choosing one side or the other. Our reason finds clarity through definition, however the problem is that it takes its definitions as solid facts and absolute truths. Truth, however, is paradoxical in nature and transcends the logic of our finite reason: fluid and indefinable, it is a living expression of the Infinite.
We are both being and nature, that is, we exist in ourselves as being, and also as nature in the present form of a mind and body. When we disidentify ourselves from all aspects of our nature, what remains is being. Although this disidentification from the external objective world and from various aspects of our nature leads us to the ultimate non-dual knowledge of Being, our body and the surrounding environment—which is its substance, that is an extension of His body—are its incarnation. In other words, Being needs Nature in order to express and incarnate itself. Without a body and relationship, we become the immutable, infinite Being, inactive and silent. But as soon as there is Nature, there is manifestation, movement, and becoming—the play of Being in Nature.
The becoming of Nature takes on two forms: one that unfolds in Ignorance and identification, giving rise to the ego, and the other which is creative, actualizing itself in Knowledge, and in the joy of creation and creativity in all its forms and activities. Duality in Ignorance produces an ego that is entirely subjected to the modes of Nature; duality in Knowledge no longer dissociates Being from Nature and becomes the true unified individual, a universal being. The accomplished individual masters the energies of cosmic Nature which gives rise to a world that unfolds in intelligence, harmony, and universal beauty.
More often, when we awaken into spirituality, we seek to be rid of the ego as quickly as possible. Yet, the ego is a necessary stage on the path to the blossoming of our true being, in order to emerge out of the inertia of primordial Unconsciousness, constituted essentially of collective irrational forces. Trying to abandon the ego prematurely in pursuit of the spiritual realm prevents us from understanding our fragmented self—torn between being and nature. This premature departure from the ego into a “no man’s land” severs all connections with the manifested world. At this stage, the danger is to become a spiritual ego. Therefore, we must fully engage with the world, for it is by living in it completely that we can learn and discover the hidden intentions of the Divine. Krishnamurti affirms the necessity of duality for evolutionary purposes, where Nature veils Being:
“Life is creation, and Nature conceals Life. That is to say, everything that is manifested masks Life itself, and when Life, through Nature, develops and crystallizes within an individual, Nature has fulfilled its purpose. The entire destiny and function of Nature is to create a self-conscious individual, who knows the duality of opposites, who is aware that he is an entity unto himself, a separate being who experiences the feeling of separation between ‘you’ and ‘me.’ (…) For the separate individual, life becomes subject and object, but the purpose of life is to realize the totality of the Whole—Being, without objectivity, without subjectivity—which is pure Life. (…) Within him lies the entire potential, and his task is to realize this totality within the subjective realm, that is, within his own consciousness.” — Krishnamurti, Eerde, 1930
Likewise, Sri Aurobindo, explains that duality serves the purpose of concealing Being so that we may seek It and thus embark on the vast adventure of the play between Being and Nature, moving from experience to experience, only to ultimately discover that Nature was concealing Being in countless forms. It is for the joy of self-discovery, that Nature manifests itself in duality. The ego is but a temporary shadow, that allows the game of duality to unfold, a game in which the Ultimate Being plays through each of us.
According to Sri Aurobindo, the discovery of our true soul is the fulfilment of the first phase of terrestrial evolution. Beyond this lower nature, whose primary purpose was to create a separate individuality, there exists a Supreme Nature (Para-Prakriti) that reveals Being in all its splendour and allows the realized soul to participate in the higher planes of creation. Thus, the individual embarks on the second phase of creative evolution on Earth. No longer passively controlled and articulated by the lower nature, the individual now masters its energies. With this new birth, unfolds the divine potential, the subtle duality that remains allows, through this non-separative distance between beings, the enjoyment of all variations, that each of us express in the unified field of Being. Our world that has evolved in discord and separation transforms into a world of harmony and creativity.
The union between duality and non-duality marks the beginning of authentic living which is nonetheless inconceivable as long as we remain confined within our separate self. The stakes are high: deciphering the mystery of duality opens the door to “Life in Freedom”—not outside, but within the very forms of manifestation, within you and me…
At the end of our egoic journey, Duality is transformed into a Becoming illuminated by the presence of the Eternal. This is the birth of a new world, conceived in its divine essence, where duality and non-duality are fused into one.
“There is a union in spiritual essence, by identity; there is a union by the indwelling of our soul in this highest Being and Consciousness; there is a dynamic union of likeness or oneness of nature between That and our instrumental being here.” Sri Aurobindo
This article has been published by Dominique Schmidt in issue 150 of the “3e Millénaire” french magazine, Winter 2023, entitled “Duality and Non-duality”.