Hindu Gods and Goddesses

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Dichotomies and Dualisms: Gold in the Darkness

Dichotomies and dualisms, though never ultimately true, do provide means to exercise ranges of sense vibration perhaps otherwise inaccessible to the collective consciousness in this dark age.  Constructs such as "the Devil" allow for a certain binary play of opposition, as well as the ironic and oft playful use of such tropes to elevate the discourse above dualistic violences. 

It is indeed of note that the nature of this age, when people are generally most unaware of the truly non-dual nature of reality, allows certain transcendent leaps unavailable in those ages when the potential potency of (albeit illusory) dichotomies (think of the power of opposite charges in magnetism and electricity) cannot be accessed by the functioning of the already fully Self-aware conscious mind.  If one doesn't (albeit mistakenly) believe in "other" or "Other," the play of relationship between self/Self and not-self/-Self loses some potency and poignancy.  If you don't believe in the bad guy, you can't play games of good guy vs. bad guy.  Not to say that ignorance of the non-dual nature of reality is better that true Self-awareness.  Rather, as people play with a dualistic framework imagined, certain possible constructs become available for the play and array of life lived rather differently than for the truly Self-aware mind. 

In truth, awareness that behind all illusions maya may proffer, indeed all is brahman/God/good is a better, more peaceful and fruitful mode of being than the ill prospects of dualism.  Regardless, to function within the functionally dualistic constructs of culture and society in this dark age, the Kali yuga, the potency of "opposite charges" ought be considered and sometimes employed as potential if illusory means and power, if without any real attachment to that game of seeming opposition and potently/functionally imagined and constructed dualisms.


In the Ayurvedic understanding of time and ages of humanity, within the Kali Yuga, a period of 432,000 years or so, there is a Gauri Yuga or "Golden Age" touted to last 10,000 years.  That within the darkness there is a bright and beautiful light is directly analogous to Gauri Ma emerging from Kali Ma.  Kali Ma and Durga Ma are the same being, yet Dark Goddess Kali Ma does of certainty present a terrible figure, whereas Gauri presents a brighter and in some guises more pleasant Person.  There is no difference in truth between them, though the play of dichotomy even there does allow potencies unavailable to the non-differentiated form.  Thus the bliss of the Gauri Yuga, in relation to the supposed terrible state of the encompassing Kali Yuga, is granted more potency in the play of mind and experiencing than were that fictional separation not extant.  Dualism is illusion, though can offer means of play that allow for excitement and cycles of play can't be played if difference is not.



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