Duality is a property of Ego
To ground oneself in something is to entangle oneself causally with it. For example, we use our visual system to ground ourselves in our external, ‘physical’ environment. We are causally entangling our brain chemistry with what appears to be occurring around us. Our ability consciously focus our awareness allows us to either direct ourselves more within our personal psyche and the deeper, underlying realms of consciousness (or lack thereof), or away from our personal psyches (by focusing on the external environment). When we meditate we go within. When we focus on the external, we are often just distracting ourselves from our true nature.
The ability to distract oneself by focusing on the external — the other — is a very convenient tool for the ego. The ego does not want to examine itself. This is because the ego is built upon self-deceptions — illusions.
These illusions of the ego require the notion of duality. Duality is a concept that all things are separated by something else. In conventional Western culture, this takes on the additional layer of materialism — even though physics as an institution has embraced the quantum model — that each thing is separated by another physical thing. As a result, duality implies that the ‘other’ is its foundation. Because without it, it would be nothing. That is, each duality requires its opposite to exist. Each pole of a duality requires its opposite to contrast itself with for it to exist at all. For instance, black requires white, etc. When I speak of a ‘foundation,’ I am referring to the notion that all of reality is grounded in a fundamental foundation (some cause or substance)
The consequence of this is that duality is a circular process, which contradicts the materialist and positivist notion of reality being linear, logical, discrete, quantifiable, and knowable. Circularity and linearity are different. The materialist notion claims that reality ‘bottoms out’ to some initial cause. This was allegedly the Big Bang, which, fundamentally speaking is an inference, but many people forget that there is a gap between data and conclusion — inference fills that gap. We fill that gap. Our egos fill that gap, the gap being the mystery, which will always exist no matter how precise our measuring instruments become. You are still throwing your beliefs into the dark, even if you have a high degree of confidence.
You are throwing your guess into the dark because each duality does not ‘bottom out’ into the other. It actually goes on forever. Infinitely back and forth — back into each other, each giving birth to and swallowing up the other. This is called the infinite regress, the lack of a foundation, I mean. Each duality comes from and relies upon the other. In reality they are the same — One. The illusion of the ego is believing that they are not One. Really, the separation is but an appearance, an illusion. All dualities, which includes everything you have ever experienced as ‘you’ are subsumed under the non-dual nature of reality. Even further, duality and non-duality are actually the same as well, but that’s beside the point for now. All collapse into infinity.
Since separation is an appearance, the self/other duality collapses. That is why it is said that the ego is an illusion: because the ego is rooted in duality. It also means, relatively speaking, that it is an illusion to believe that materialist desire will liberate and satisfy, but that is another discussion.
Of course, however, I believe all physical things are ‘real’ in a relative sense, and that science communicates relative truths to us. It is just that we often (as a culture of materialism and scientism) fail to recognize the limitations of science. But at the core you are limitless because you have no core.
