Unity and Duality

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Confusing Words Series · 4 pages

Two short propositions, each with its source given. The first is that man is a unity only at his origin and at his end: in between there is a ceaseless struggle between divine wisdom and its earthly reflection, truth and error — and if he can emerge from the region of lust and iniquity victorious, he may re-become what he was before and retire into the Silence and Darkness whence he came.

The second qualifies the first without contradicting it: duality is an illusion only within the span of a Great Manvantara. The phenomenal contrast of mind and matter is not merely at the root of our present constitution but an essential of our terrestrial consciousness; duality is illusion in the ultimate analysis, but within the limits of a universe-cycle it holds true. The two bases of manifested being — the Logos, spirit, and Mulaprakriti, matter or rather its noumenon — are unified in the absolute reality, but in the manvantaric Maya, under conditions of space and time, they are contrasted though mutually interdependent aspects of the one cause. The care taken over that "but" is what the file is for: neither the flat assertion that all is one nor the flat assertion that mind and matter differ is allowed to stand alone.

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