VISIBLE light and shadow always appear together, and this is as it should be. Our perception of everyday objects is dependent on these ever-present twins.
This point-counterpoint dance rules our everyday awareness. Shift one of the duo on life’s canvas, and the other balances with a corresponding change. Shadows lengthen as the sun sets, and stars shine as the heavens darken.
This phenomenon occurs because at the moment of manifestation the universe is pervaded by duality according to Theosophical cosmogenesis (SD1:15), which explains that “duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.”
Spirit on its own, like a horseless rider, is helpless on Earth say these metaphysical axioms, and a riderless horse similarly lacks purpose, direction, and love. “Though one and the same thing in their origin, Spirit and Matter,” say the teachings (SD 1:247), “begin each of them their evolutionary progress in contrary directions —
“Spirit falling gradually into matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure spiritual substance.”
“Both are inseparable, yet ever separated,” Blavatsky wrote. “Two like poles will always repel each other, while the negative and the positive are mutually attracted, so do Spirit and Matter stand to each other—the two poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the universe.”
“On almost every page of the Bhagavad-Gita we are instructed only to direct our love to that which is eternal in every form,” Blavatsky wrote in Love with an Object,
“and let the form itself be a matter of secondary consideration.“
We must rise above the pairs of opposites, seeking to unite with their essence, the Source. Love and compassion are the keys that extricate our minds and hearts from external forms, from the myriad illusions on the lower planes of consciousness.
Time and space are also paradoxical principles. Pain extends our perception of passing time, for example, and the invisible air, gravity, and electromagnetic radiations fill the seemingly empty space around us.
Because we see through it, we believe that space is empty. Yet a fundamental principle in The Secret Doctrine (1:289), states: “there is not one finger’s breath (angula) of void Space in the whole Boundless (Universe).”
For example, we couldn’t see the words without this background page, nor could we see them if the words and page were the same color.
WE are surrounded today by untold numbers and varieties of energy-intensive, man-made machines and gadgets.
“THERE are no isolated islands in an electric universe, from the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation.
