For most of our waking times, we look at the world around us and see nothing but the usual “this and that”. To ask someone if they truly understood the world around them would be met with strange looks. But do we really know anything about this world? Do we know enough to really be able to say that the principles which govern its mechanics will truly be tied up in one neat formula?
The concept of duality – a paradigm particularly revered by the Egyptians – underpins our very existence to the extent that we cannot perceive it. It is a factor so deeply engrained in the fabric of the universe that, were we to actually be granted an understanding of it, we would not be able to handle its true power. I do not profess to understand duality or its depth. My writings here are a simple mind piece to exercise the brain.
Duality is the natural need for all things to have an opposite. It could be argued that, without an opposite, some things would be imperceptible, and others would run amok. It could also be argued that, were some things not to have an opposite, that our ability to perceive the world around us would indeed have evolved differently to compensate for the absence. Can it be said that the world around us presents the epitome of perfectly balanced opposition?
Take, as an example, the simple duality of night and day. If night were not to exist, and we were to live only in daytime, our ability to perceive time and to carry out our sleep cycles would be governed by very different processes to how they are today. All life would be affected, plants would suffer an over abundance of sunshine and people would be forced to spend half the day away from the blazing heat. The global environment would probably be different, where more sunshine would create more clouds, which in turn would block more sunshine, balancing out the temperatures somewhat. In this world governed completely by day, what if we were then told the concept of a night, and what it could mean for us, having never had an inkling of such a concept? Would we then be better off, at this later stage of evolution, to have night thrust upon us? Would we find it as hard to perceive night as we would today to perceive a world with either night or day missing?
In order for some things to come into being, they must first reside in space either in a state of opposition to itself or as a pre-formed consequence of opposite forces. Take the example of a book to be written by an author. In order for that book to come into being, the author must oppose the “force” willed upon him by the blank writing medium, and by his own writers block and gaps in his creativity. I know it may seem strange talking of a piece of paper as having a “force” opposing a writer, but this is true. Opposition, in all of its guises comes down to one thing – the need to expend energy and effort in changing a void into an act of creation. It’s a simple fact that I cannot get from here into town without opposing the separation of me from the town. It is a fact that I cannot go out with a girl if there is hatred getting in the way. A snooker player cannot win a match unless he knows how to play snooker.
Anything that requires practice and hard work lie within the realm of opposition forces. War does not happen without opposing sides. Reproduction doesn’t happen without a man and a woman.
An understanding of the force of opposition can be a very useful thing. It is a belief of mine that the Egyptians and other ancient cultures had an understanding of this force, and used that understanding to build temples and run their great civilisations. From a simple engineering point of view, there is no adequate explanation of how the Egyptians built the Valley Temple at the end of the Sphinx causeway – containing multi-hundred ton blocks of limestone, hewn very accurately and hoisted foot decades into the air. Slave labour is not an adequate means of explaining this feat. Where are the pulley systems strong enough to lift the blocks? How did they organise the thousands of men required, and how did they order and attach the ropes? The same goes for the fallacy of using ramps to build the pyramids. In order to build the limestone and granite pyramids with ramps, up which the blocks were dragged, the ramps themselves would have had to be made out of a material AT LEAST as strong as the blocks that were being dragged up it. The reality is, however, that the ramp would have been several times bigger than the pyramid they were building. For a pyramid of height ~800feet, with a light incline of 15 degrees on the stone ramp, this would necessitate a ramp of length 2985 feet. So what – wouldn’t they need a ramp to build the ramp? A sand ramp would be decimated by the stone blocks, whether carpeted on top with wood burgs or not. Yet somehow the Egyptians opposed this force hampering the creation of their legacy, and conquered it. How, I do not know. Since everything has an opposite, they obviously found it and used it to build their great structure.
Posts
