Addendum to D.O.G.M.A.

Homo sapiens sapiens, with its burden of (partial) consciousness, seems to rely on such dichotomic constructs to generate intellectual and psychological security; Good or Bad, Right or Wrong etc. are not concepts readily or oft questioned in their delineated essence. Even more problematic is the Cartesian division of mind and matter, which allowed pious scientists to construct a mechanistic model of the cosmos that did not offend the church; much of modern religiosity still substantiates on the foundation of this dualism (the confrontation of science and religion is in itself a false opposition, but one which requires its own rant anew). The dismantlement of certitude and such binary oppositional anchors in our noospace, is not easy and can serve to undermine individual and collective sanity, even when such deconstruction is desirable and potentially for the greater better.

As much as the void of the Theravadan Buddhists, or the abyss of Nietzsche, are a subject of great philosophical interest and epistemological value, they are equally a source of great individual and cultural anxiety, even when unrecognised. Similarly, the discoveries of quantum physics, with their inherent ambiguities, did not at the time lead to the deconstruction of the reductionistic paradigm itself or that of the mutually exclusive notions of wave or particle, but rather to confusion and vague attempts to anneal the false-opposition (one physicist even sardonically coined the term ‘wavicle’). Even worse were the attempts to shun the very science itself, with a desire to unobserve the observations, to escape from the revealed truth, to step back from insight.

We are deeply afraid of this mind-place, this Bardo dream-space, an apparently cold, seething, unrelenting chaos: an uncharted territory, devoid of certitude. It whispers to us, of madness, and of falling, and it inspires a child’s fear; a simple universal fear; the fear of being lost in the darkness, of being alone in infinity.

It seems that only the Taoists have managed to come close, historically, to managing duality and healing such false-oppositions; in the Taijitu. The dynamic dualism of Yin and Yang is embodied herein, they circle around each other, separated by a dichromatic threshold, the seed of each enveloped in the dividuation of the other; a subtle visual metaphor, rich in insight and intent.