Dualities: why objects tend towards walls
A clock suspended in the air by the chain
Why is that TV mounted on a wall? Your house secured into the ground?
Why do your feet stand on the floor? Is it all just a coincidence? Or are they all evidence of a fundamental flaw in human thinking and reasoning?
I argue the latter.
I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, and when I encountered the idea of dualities, or opposites, I was moved to a profound moment of clarity.
Dualities such as TV and wall, house and ground, as well as feet and floor can only be a product of the universe as we perceive it. Just as the universe is a projection coming from a flat wall, and a projector hangs on a wall, so it seems necessary to have things that stand on top of hard surfaces. This is especially true because perceived beginnings or first impressions can and do influence the future.
TV and wall and other types of dualities indicate a deterministic relationship between the pair: one of the elements supports the existence of the other. Without one element, the duality and relationship ceases to exist.
But like Eckhart Tolle suggests in his book, the mind has been poisoned by time and the two have become inseparable. It is why humans are inclined to believe in the past and future, as well as the infinitude of the other dualities. Thinking that the now is determined by the past and the future gives us a feeling of stability—it allows us to explain the decisions we make in the present moment.
But this view of the world highlights man’s greatest failure in understanding the meaning of life on earth. If science has led us to conceptualize the universe as a projection from a wall, and also led to the atomic bomb that can easily kill all of life, then how important is science, the human mind, and its knowledge?
Anyway, where is the wall supporting this proverbial projector for the universe standing?
Clearly, if humans are to live meaningfully, we must let go of our mind’s desire to think in dualities. In other words, we must strive to only live in the present moment. In doing so, only then can we escape the confines of time, and the endless list of dualities that come with it.
According to Eckhart, living in the now allows us to have the purest state of mind, a state in which we’re not attached to any outcomes or anything in life. In this state, we look beyond good and evil, happy and sad, and find meaning in the now.
More importantly, in this state of existence, our TV no longer hangs on the wall. The house also no longer settles in the ground, and our feet no longer stand on the floor. All boundaries disappear.
In the same process, we’re also not tempted to compare or weigh different sorts of emotions or situations in order to learn and make “informed” decisions. Instead, everything is one and the same, as good as the other.
We seek happiness in what is. Without time, we live blissfully in the present moment.
