The "Manifested Universe"...is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation." But...the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized...

—The Secret Doctrine, I, 15-16

It is not difficult to accept vaguely the metaphysical conception of the duality of Spirit-Matter as the prototype, the essential polarity of Life, finding expression in every aspect, great and small, of that Life. We cannot fail to see something of the duality of positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, day and night, life and death, heat and cold, attraction and repulsion, pleasure and pain, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, freedom and slavery, and so on ad infinitum through all the pairs of opposites. The trouble is that in expanding and applying the ideas we too often see them only in their opposing aspects, and forget that they are to be viewed, not as independent actualities, but as the two facets of the same underlying reality. Apart from it and apart from each other, they have no existence. Thus, concretized Spirit is Matter, and etherealized Matter is Spirit.

We would not recognize light as light if there were no shadow to act as a complementary foil.

According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya. (The Secret Doctrine, I, 70)

Just as Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, are not distinct and separate, so also good and evil. No one can point to the existence of good per se in Nature; nor can evil be shown to have a separate independent existence. Reality is neither good nor evil, as Life is neither Spirit nor Matter.

Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as a fundamental or independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL (Universal Perfection eternally), traced both through the course of natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into form, hence becoming Matter or Evil. (S.D., I, 73)

In human nature, evil denotes only the polarity of matter and Spirit, a struggle for life between the two manifested Principles in Space and Time, which principles are one per se, inasmuch as they are rooted in the Absolute. In Kosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved. The operations of the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are necessary to each other—mutually interdependent—"in order that both should live." If one is arrested, the action of the other will become immediately self-destructive. (S.D., I, 416)

Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of Space and Time, under the sway of Maya. Separate them, by cutting off one from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists per se, since each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided. (S.D., II, 96)

In the old Zoroastrian texts, the Gathas, the opposing forces are described as two Spirits, named Spenta-Maninyu and Angra-Mainyu. Ahura Mazda, the Supreme, refers to them as "my spirits."

The spirits primeval are a pair and they together communed. These two differ in thought, in word, in deed, one the enhancer of betterment, the other the fashioner of evil....The two spirits came together at the dawn—one the maker of life, the other to mar it, and thus they shall be unto the last. (Yasna XXX, 3, 4)

I announce to you life's first two spirits of whom the Good accosted the Evil: never our thoughts, nor creeds, nor understandings, nor beliefs, nor words, nor deeds, nor consciences, nor souls can be the same. (Yasna XLV, 2)

The two primeval spirits are impersonal, universal and omnipotent forces—centripetal and centrifugal. They are the basis of the manifested universe, are coeval and coeternal and complement each other. Spenta-Mainyu is the power of Spirit. Angra-Mainyu of Matter; they are like seed and soil, both equally necessary for the birth of the tree.

Because of man's dual nature, spiritual and material, which the philosophical have always traced to its true source in the two spirits, the doctrine of two minds in man naturally and logically arose. Vohu Mano and Akem Mano are the higher and lower minds of our Theosophical philosophy. Just as the primeval spirits emanate from Ahura Mazda, so also the two minds are expressions of the Spirit in Man, the Fravashi, the Atma-Buddhic Monad.

Their mutual interdependence can be seen from the fact that a virtue on which too much stress has been put is transformed into a VICE, in the same manner as the eye that is tired from too long gazing on one colour will change over and reproduce its complementary. The man who is over-generous usually ends by being so at the expense of other people, his very craving for "generosity" leading him to acts of meanness. Even the intensive gratification of a vice can produce a temporary surfeit, but such satiety is only a temporary suspension; it is not a reformation and a cure, and there will be a swing back once more into VICE, since good and evil per se have no real permanence.

The duality of the higher or spiritual aspirations and the lower or material desires which in embodied existence work in every human consciousness, produces the three pairs mentioned in the Bhagavad-Gita—heat and cold, pleasure and pain, fame and ignominy. Krishna reiterates the advice that Arjuna should rise above these pairs, Robert Crosbie wrote that "there are always the 'pairs of opposites' in separative considerations, as these are effects. The One Reality sees both as reflections, as light and dark; if not seen, they do not exist." In day-to-day living this is most difficult to accomplish, but the principle of application and practice is given by W. Q. Judge:

Before we can hope to prevent any particular state of mind or events reaching us in this or in another life, we must in fact be detached from these things. Now we are not our bodies or mere minds, but the real part of us in which Karma inheres.

If the conception of the "pairs of opposites" still keeps the mind in its old separative groove, the conception of the "pairs of complements" can profitably be superimposed thereon. But though the theoretical distinction is made here between "contrast" and "complement," in reality there is none. The finite mind is accustomed to attach one or other idea to certain expressions, and it is therefore possible to circumvent the separative tendency of the mind by dwelling on those expressions that convey the idea of co-operation rather than of opposition.

It is in the realm of ethics and of self-development that these co-operative dualities are most easily seen. For example, we can link as complementary two qualities essential for self-control—practice and absence of desire, Abhyasa and Vairagya. The two are mutually interdependent, and only when they are practised together does progress result. Each of the Divine Paramitas, likewise, has its complementary counterpart.

Wherever we look we find duality piled on duality, contrast and complement, two in one. On the physical plane a man who has lost an eye finds that his vision loses thereby its stereoscopic sense of reality, its depth. It is the same thing with the inner sight, and there most people are unfortunately one-eyed or cross-eyed. Our task is to balance and unify our dual vision, to blend the mind and soul, for behind the illusion of the "pairs of opposites" lies the integral vision of the Third Eye, the Single Eye of Wisdom.

Saunaka asks in this [Mundaka] Upanishad a natural question, propounced by nearly every thinking man, especially by students of occultism who are continually seeking a royal road to the accomplishment of their objects. He wishes to be told what may be the great solvent of all knowledge. The reply of Angiras points out two great roads, which include all others. The lower road is the one of hard work for countless births, during which we acquire knowledge slowly in all directions, and of course, when that is possessed, one rises to the higher road....

In the journey along this road we will encounter great differences in the powers of our fellow travellers. Some go haltingly and others quickly; some with eyes bent on the ground, a few with gaze fixed on the great goal. Those who halt or look down will not reach the end, because they refuse to take the assistance to be found in the constant aspiration to the light. But we are not to blame them: they have not yet been often enough initiated to understand their error. Nature is kind and will wait for them much longer than their human fellows would if they were permitted to be their judges. This ought to give us a lesson in charity, in universal brotherhood. Very often we meet those who show an utter inability to appreciate some spiritual ideas which we quite understand. It is because they have not, so far, been able to transmute into a part of themselves, that which we have been so fortunate as to become possessed of, and so they seem devoted to things that to us appear to be of small value.

—W. Q. Judge