Dual Nature of matter
Bhagavat-Sangi-Sangasya
Dual Nature of matter
Early 1900 saw the new found ideas about characteristics of matter and energy. The stalwarts of the time – Bohr, Schrodinger, Eistien and others came to the conclusion that energy sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle.
A different dimension of duality of matter and material energy was well known to the sages of ancient India through the Srimad Bhagavad Gita and the timeless Vedic Literatures. Bhagavad Gita informs us that matter is a manifestation of material energy, personified by Mother Goddess Durga, who is also the external energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the source and progenitor of all energy, Lord Krishna.
This material world and material energy is described to have a dual nature. There is happiness and distress, heat and cold, success and failure, pleasure and pain, good and bad, light and darkness, birth and death. We can find all possible pairs of antonyms to describe this state of duality. The Gita says that this duality is the nature of matter and this material world and is the source of all our sufferings.
This duality is in a dynamic state of constant change steered by the energy of Time. And we feel the existence of this duality only because of this change i.e. we cannot enjoy pleasure without suffering pain. So the flickering pleasures in this world are not real pleasures. No pleasure will last for eternity. It is just our perception of the dynamic duality, the temporary phase out of suffering.
But we all want to be happy, in the real sense - a kind of happiness which even if goes on indefinitely would still feel exciting and thrilling at every moment, happiness which is not over-shadowed by the fear of being driven away by another phase of sorrow. This can be achieved only if one transcends the dualities of material nature and gets established in ever blissful Krishna consciousness. A Krishna conscious person is above duality because he does not hesitate to act in any way for the satisfaction of Krishna. Therefore he is steady both in success and in failure.
How can this be practically achieved? We need to drench our mind in transcendental knowledge which comes by a scrutinizing study of the Bhagavad Gita under the
guidance of a realized soul. Next, we need to practice changing ourselves so that we are shielded from the effects of duality of the world. We cannot change the nature of the world. But we can individually change our consciousness and collectively change our culture to tolerate all these disturbances.
Just as, if we do not like the monsoon, we cannot do anything to stop the rains. But we can build a roof to guard ourselves from the effect of the rain. Similarly, we can safeguard our consciousness from being carried away by the wave of time through the storms of the dualities of material nature and remain fixed in Krishna.