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When 1 (God) Became 2: The Invention of Dualism "From the One, the many arise." Human
thought is characterized by a strange paradox: while it yearns for unity, it
operates through division. At the heart of this paradox lies the invention of
dualism — the framing of reality in terms of this and that, sacred
and profane, mind and body, self and other. This
bifurcation is neither a reflection of reality as such, nor a mere error, but
rather a functional necessity, an adaptive strategy for survival and
meaning-making. In religious, philosophical, and psychological contexts, this
shift from One to Two marks a profound transformation: the beginning of
proactive autonomous human self-adaptation. The Birth of Difference: From One to Two In many
mystical traditions, reality is described as originally undivided, a
pure unity. In Hindu Advaita Vedanta, this undivided principle is Brahman,
the impersonal Absolute — not this, not that: neti, neti. The phrase (neti,
neti — “not this, not that” (rather than THAT)) is a meditative
formula found in the Bṛrhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, used
to strip the mind of all conceptual categories. By negating all forms,
qualities, and distinctions, the practitioner arrives at what is beyond
duality — the formless unity. However,
everyday human experience is not one of unity but of division. The
moment a child says “I,” there is immediately a “not-I.” This conceptual
split is the seed of dualism. The original “One” — call it God, Brahman, Nature, or
Being — is now mirrored through the discretely differentiating lens of a consciousness that cannot know without
separating. Cognitive Necessity: Dualism as a Tool for Survival The
invention of dualism was not a metaphysical mistake but an evolutionary quantum
leap that made intentional (local) adaptation possible. To survive
(better), humans had to distinguish: ·
Edible from poisonous ·
Friend from foe ·
Safe from dangerous ·
Sacred from profane Thus, difference
became vital. Without binary distinctions, organisms cannot adapt to
their environments. Our perception, language, and memory are built upon
contrasts. Claude Lévi-Strauss called the human mind a "binary
machine" — it understands the world through opposites: hot/cold, day/night,
life/death. Dualism,
then, became the foundation of our epistemology (how we know), ontology
(how we divide being), and ethics (how we judge right and wrong). But
more importantly, it became the launchpad of artificial adaptation:
the uniquely human capacity to reshape life intentionally, beyond what
biology alone would dictate. Myth and Meaning: The Sacred Split Religions
often preserve the memory of unity while reinforcing dualism as a means of
moral orientation. The Genesis narrative exemplifies this: in the
beginning, there was formlessness; then God divides — light from
darkness, water from land, good from evil. The Tree of Knowledge offers the
knowledge of opposites, and humanity is cast out from Eden — from unity
into duality. In Zoroastrianism,
the cosmos is structured by an eternal battle between Ahura Mazda
(light, order) and Angra Mainyu (darkness, chaos). This moral dualism
offered a powerful interpretive lens for a complex world — a battle between
good and evil encoded into cosmic reality. Even Plato,
in his divided line and two-world theory, conceptualized a duality between
the world of appearances and the world of Forms — shadow and
substance. Such
divisions help humans navigate reality morally, existentially,
and politically. But they come at a cost: they estrange us from the
unity we dimly remember, and yearn for. The Psychological Wound: Self vs. Other With
dualism came the self-other divide, individuation and the rise of ego-consciousness.
The personal self became the centre of perception, and everything else —
nature, other beings, even the body — became objects. This allowed for
control, manipulation, and technological advancement, but also for alienation,
conflict, and domination. In
Freudian psychology, the ego is defined in opposition to the id (instincts)
and the superego (moral law). In Jungian terms, we are split into conscious
and unconscious, ever seeking wholeness through the integration of
opposites — the coniunctio oppositorum. The Cost of Division, the Memory of One Though
dualism served the survival imperative, many (escapist) traditions sought to
transcend it: ·
Taoism affirms yin and yang but
also the Tao, the undivided constant source. ·
Christian mysticism speaks
of union with God beyond the categories of heaven and hell. ·
Zen Buddhism cuts through dualism with
koans like: What is the sound of one hand clapping? ·
Sufism speaks of annihilation of
the self (fana) into the divine. ·
Modern Druidry: ‘One is none.” These are
not anti-rational views but post-dualistic: they recognize the utility
of division but refuse to be trapped in it. The monist intuition —
that "this is this," “eti, eti,” all is one — persists as a
spiritual yearning, a metaphysical homesickness. Conclusion: Two in the Service of One “The One
became Two so that there might be love.” The
invention of dualism, as evolutionary upgrade, did not merely mark the rise
of awareness, but something more radical: the
birth of intentional artificial adaptation. It allowed the human to
separate meaning from matter, value from instinct, and future from fate —
enabling an unprecedented autonomy from nature. In this cognitive revolution,
the human gained not just consciousness, but creative
agency: the ability to remake reality in the image of (one’s own)
thought. Thus, dualism was not the origin of consciousness, but the threshold
of creative freedom. Hence the druid’s quip: “Everyone is god in their
space.” When 1
became 2, it created the possibility of knowing, choosing,
and returning. And in
that return — when the “this” and “that” are once again seen as expressions,
indeed differential iterations, hence alternatives of the same source — the
human being may find peace and consolation. |