The Light and Dark Sides of Nature (Besant: Lecture 9)

[icymist]

The Light and Dark Sides of Nature
From "Lucifer," October and November, 1896

Everything in this universe of differentiated matter has its two aspects, the light and the dark side, and these two attributes applied practically, lead the one to use, the other to abuse. Every man may become a botanist without apparent danger to his fellow creatures; and many a chemist who has mastered the science of essences knows that every one of them can both heal and kill. Not an ingredient, not a poison, but can be used for both purposes--aye, from harmless wax to deadly prussic acid, from the saliva of an infant to that of the cobra di capella.
--H.P. Blavatsky

In one of the scriptures of our race it is pointed out that at the very beginning of the universe the pairs of opposites appeared. "The pairs of opposites" may be taken as a general name for the light and dark sides of Nature, and a word on this general meaning of the pairs of opposites and on what they imply in Nature may fitly be said in opening.

First, it is impossible to think at all without pairs of opposites; we can only think, that is, by and through duality. If there were but a single thing undifferentiated, always the same, always everywhere, no thinking could arise in that thing. There must be at least two--the thinker and the thing thought of, distinguishable from himself, before what we call "thought" can exist at all. Not only so, but in thinking we find ourselves continually distinguishing one thing from another, we perceive the presence of these opposites: light and not-light, dark and not-dark--put in the most general form, A and not-A. To recognize identity--A = A, and to perceive difference, A is not not-A--is the condition of thinking, the law of the mind. Without this no mind, no thought can be. It is because this fact is recognized that in philosophic religious books the phrase which strikes many western thinkers as not only strange but nihilistic is used: Brahman is "without mind." So long as only the One exists nothing that the incarnate intellect can call "thought" or "mind" can be present. There is something deeper than "thought," something which is the form of "thought"; but thought as known by the brain must always imply duality, for without this we are unable to perceive, perception depending on distinctions.

While this formal statement may be unfamiliar it must at once be seen to be accurate when it is understood. For the very moment anyone thinks of anything he distinguishes it from other things by its differences, and assigns it relations by its identities; he distinguishes it from everything which is not itself, and he recognizes in it identities with things previously perceived, things to which it is akin. We only know things as we separate them by differences from the things they are not, and classify them with the things they resemble.

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[Ilsa]

1. I went to the Table of Contents and bookmarked the entire

group of lectures. his one was good as well, but I've only gotten halfway through it.

Thanks again!

[Why Syzygy]

2. Thanks.

This is a subject of keen interest.