Another Vector: Transcending Dualities (Part 1 in Article Series)
By Mandela Shabazz
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."
-Arthur Eddington
It was difficult to partition what would be encompassed in this essay from what would not; you see, I have trouble with dualities. The process was made easier when I remembered that everyone is already familiar with the core subject matter; which is insanity. If you're to tell me, "Well actually I feel that I've lead a completely mundane life where nothing really that strange has ever happened" then fine, you don't fit my model, you can go take a nap and maybe you'll have your first weird dream. For the rest of us, we've all had our own personal encounters with madness and because these mental experiences can be so complex, it has its own unique flavor to each of us. Insanity has been the subject of my observation for as long as I can remember, but I have no delusions of being a pioneer in the field.
It seems like most people make unpleasant associations with madness; they think of strait jackets and googly eyes. But people are also known to describe positive experiences as "crazy" or "insane". The unifying trait to these associations is their intensity. From my own experience I can tell you that madness can be quite intense. You may already have intense feelings about insanity, but because there are so many possibilities to these experiences, you must reserve judgment until your understanding is not as strictly limited to your own perspective. Attempting to comprehend the profound range of insanity is immensely dangerous without the right preparation and approach. A good first step, I think, is to transcend dualities.
It is through our sense organs that we perceive our common reality but these organs are actually extremely limited in what they can perceive. It is these limitations that give us context; after all, what is the difference between everything and nothing, zero and infinity? But our perceptions are so limited that they mislead us when it comes to certain empirical truths. We are all familiar with the duality of hot and cold, we all believe that they are real because we have all had tangible experiences with them. But science tells us that there is actually no such thing as cold, there are only varying degrees of heat. You only experience them as hot and cold because you are confined to the operational temperature range of terrestrial life. Were you not constrained by your fragile, organic form, you would be able to experience the accurate context for temperatures that the universe has to offer.
This is not merely semantics or word play, it is an example of a misunderstanding that can arise when people let their bodily experience inform their mental cosmology. But what is the goal in transcending our perceptions? What advantage is there to comprehending the full madness of existence? I'm entirely not sure, but I suspect that if we can perceive the true structure and behavior of existence, only then will we be able to see the phenomenon of sentient life in its full context. That's something I am curious about.
My goal is not to chronicle these odd incongruencies between reality and perception; I want to encourage people to seek out mystical states where understandings become so clear and go so far beyond the dualistic questions that we are inclined to develop prior to reaching such states. To glimpse a larger scale network to the causal interactions around you is a mind-blowing experience; it shows you the mistakes that we make but you also understand the logical misunderstandings that lead to the mistakes. It may feel unnatural to abandon dualities; some of them seem so obvious and real; but so does hot and cold. It will always seem real when you are standing somewhere along the spectrum; looking one way with your back to the other. Such paths are for people who do not belong in the jungle because all paths lead away from the jungle.
These paths are like mental blinders, looking at things dualistically prevents you from seeing the strangeness around you. If you take a step off the path and immerse yourself in the disorienting mental wilderness, you'll find that your dualistic compass no longer works. Attempting to label the concepts you come across in the realm of madness as pleasant or unpleasant, good or evil, etc is nearly as nonsensical as the concepts themselves. You'll see beautifully disgusting things, horrifically happy things, maybe even excruciatingly relaxing things; and there are all kinds of experiences that we don't yet have words for. All taboos are broken down and blended in these realms but good and evil are only a fraction of the ingredients in the recipe.
Perhaps you'll become at home in this mental space of raw imagination and possibility. Maybe you'll stop searching for paths and be able to appreciate the world around you. Maybe you'll climb a holy mountain and be able to look out over the network of paths that people ignorantly tread upon. I wish there was a greater realization that I could wrap this up with but what more is there to say; once you realize how much lies beyond the dualities, you'll wonder how it is that anyone has the audacity to make a judgment or decision without being aware of the unseen insanity that, like shade, lurks behind, beneath, and between every surface.
