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Beyond the Dualities IT is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know
the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of
truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed
aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its
canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the
famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and
cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot
be also many. If the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is
there, Brahman cannot be. There begins also the unending theological dispute
that either God has a form or He is formless. He cannot be both at the same
time. What the mind forgets or ignores is that the
law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold
good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has transcended the laws
and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In
the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same
time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all);
also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not
be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind
and see and experience the reality. There are other dualities that are confusing
to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or
position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously
this is a truth belonging to the material world – for it is said matter is
impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less
and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two
Page – 193 movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's
identity, being a total identity. And there is a law, a law of scientific
rational inquiry which they have posited and called the law of Parsimony which
means that a simpler solution to a problem is always to be preferred to a
complex solution. But if it means that a simpler truth is more true than a
complex one then we would be on a doubtful and even dangerous ground. To find a
simple truth one may be tempted to slice off truth, that is to say, reject or
ignore or shut one's eyes to some forms or aspects of the truth, even those
that belong to its very essence. In fact the real world is not a very simple
thing, it is complex to its core. Contraries and even contradictories co-exist
in the universe and they have to be equally accepted in an inevitably complex
solution. Modern science is in such a delicate situation. How can the same
thing be a particle and a wave at the same time? How can a point be also a line
at the same time? How to reconcile, assimilate, synthetise electric energy and
gravitational force which seem to be two distinct and incommensurable entities
governing, between them, the universe in its ultimate analysis? In other fields
also, social and political, there are ideologies, forces that run contrary to
each other but claim equal allegiance of mankind. There are no unitary solutions to these
problems; the unitary solutions are constructions of the mind that lead nowhere
except in a merry-go-round. We have to rise out of the mind and go beyond and
realise that unity in plurality or plurality in unity is a self-evident fact,
somewhere else than in the mind.
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