Duality

To wonder about reality is to wonder about illusion. What is it that we mean by the word 'real'? Do we refer to something deterministic and absolute; something fundamental in its essence? Duality exists evenly both in the question and in the answer. The fact that absolute realism is intertwined with the abstract, seems by itself to be an absolution. 

Nature is probabilistic. But this statement is a 'fact'. Or is it? If the statement allows for error bars, then the outcome, which is just another statement becomes the fact. And there starts an endless loop, a circle, encompassing a void.

The light emanating from a CO2 laser appears green to some people, and then to some more people, and then some more, until it experiences someone who is colourblind with respect to green. To the eye then, colour is an illusion. But the laser light has a definite energy (statistically). It has a measure. Does measure not reflect definitiveness? Well, no, it does not. To a non comoving observer, the frequency of the laser is something else anyway. And something else to somebody else. The Physical is an illusion, as is the Metaphysical.

To think deeply is somehow to not think at all. There was a void, there shall be a void, as there is a void...until there is the Physical. The touch. Fingers and water. Lips into each other. Feelings, continents apart. To awake, to know, to breathe, to know, to awake. To think deeply and to not think at all. The void is all there is, and the void encompasses it all.

To be And not to be; To be conscious and to be free of thought; To know and to lose it all; are but one and the same; dualities in each other's embrace, free together but bound as well. Everything and nothing; Nothing and the whole. What is, is what was. What shall be is just another duality.

Is it duality then, that is real? Or is it our ego that is?

What follows next in the article takes a more technical approach.

There's indeed a definitive skeleton of the classical world; the world run by laws of classical mechanics. Predictions are true to a very high degree, with accidents being rare events. An escape from this world that we inhabit, the world of our senses, ensures a trip through the inner randomness. To escape from what we know, what is boring, is then to delve into the laws of multiples, and thus towards the realms of dualities - of zeros and ones. 

True, everything can indeed be constructed from a collection of 0s and 1s. But is it necessary to break the existing into its 0s and 1s to reconstruct the same? Or is it also enough to understand the existing and consider that as just another building block? Enough, for whom? There opens a door for ambition and ego. This is also where in some sense modern Statistical Physics encounters duality. Do we try to understand Nature at the fundamental level by studying strongly correlated electrons, or do we ignore 'unnecessary' grains of sand and simply call a brick - a brick; and use it to build a pillar? An example of the later is the formulation of the physics of universality through phase transitions.

There is no definite answer to this dilemma either. This brings the discussion back to square one. What defines 'need'? For all we know, everything is Natural. Be it ego, or asceticism - anything that exists, the Physical and the Metaphysical - is but natural. 

To seek inward or outwards is the duality of humankind. Life is the superposition; of two conflicts. What happens to consciousness once the collapse comes into existence? What really is the collapse? Is it eternal Nothingness? Or does it have an alibi - the consciousness?  If consciousness ceases to exist, what does that even mean? Is consciousness only a captive to cellular organization, or does it pertain to all that is? Air, water, rocks, and illusion itself? Is illusion and consciousness one and the same? 

Let's argue that consciousness is information. Then, it is everywhere. What the universe then is, is a duality of compression and release of information. Life, or in a broader sense, anything Physical is the compressed state. That is all how we can 'feel' information. Both its release, and it, itself remain beyond our present physical bounds of 'understanding'. 

The next part of the article has deeper use of first person expressions.

The more I dive into my research, the same philosophical outcome I arrive at. It is as if I keep taking detours from the center, in search of a new destination. But all I seem to gain is the experience of the journey. It appears increasingly obvious that deeper quest for the 'fundamental' only leads to one answer : randomness. Whether one tries to negotiate through Vedic philosophy, quantum mechanics or statistical physics, all roads lead to randomness; the indefinite; the undefined. This journey at once seems to be a futile, pointless exercise and an enriching, humbling experience. The duality rests and resets eternally; enlightening the perimeter of a void that shines and veils equally.

But there's fulfilment elsewhere. In an embrace of love, in surrender. For some reason, it is here that duality ceases to exist! What emerges is unity; an union of souls, and union with the whole. There exists no quest for knowledge, or for decoding the unknown. But this too is only an illusion, for this freedom from duality, itself reflects duality by surviving in an association. But here it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the Physical, the feeling, the touch and the unknown, uncertain future. A game ensues thereafter, between duality and unity. Duality of existence and the union of information; souls.

The duel of unity and duality; the union of both.