Spirit and Matter Are Dual Aspects of One Cause

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 9 pages

Nine pages on the proposition that spirit and matter, when in space and time, are dual aspects of one cause, and mutually convertible — which is the metaphysical foundation the rest of this series takes for granted. The argument is conducted as a defence of the fundamental unity of subject and object against a position Blavatsky regarded as the characteristic error of the century.

Her opponents are the reductionists, and she names their intellectual ancestry: mind cannot be dismissed as a by-product of brain activity, she argues, by controversialists who are themselves part of Büchner's marionettes and automata — the phrase turning the materialist account back on those making it, since a marionette's argument for marionettes carries no authority. The counter-proposal follows: that consciousness may indeed be explained as a peculiar property of matter under certain of its conditions, provided one understands matter as the study defines it, and not as the materialists do. It is short, dense, and the piece to read first if the rest of the section seems to rest on assumptions never stated.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.9 MB, 9 pages)