The Challenge of Duality and the Conquest of Light Over Darkness

We live in a world filled with contradictions, a world of dualities. We accept the premise that we cannot have light without dark, pleasure without pain, joy without sorrow. This appears to be the nature of the world, and it seems like an irrefutable concept. Yet, we can in fact conceive of the idea that there could be endless light, without darkness, and that there are potentially worlds or planes where this actually is the case. We can also conceive of a time in the future of our world where this may arise, even if the physical organisation continues to manifest both light and dark. The fact of our ability to conceive of this development implies a potentiality that is as yet unrealised, and thus, we cannot dismiss outright the idea or its possible realisation.

In the meantime, we can actually utilise the dark shadows of our nature as signs of the challenge before us, and as specific indicators of the issues that need to be faced and the potential growth and opportunity that each individual has in his spiritual development. 

A disciple asks: ”You have said: ‘Everyone possesses… two opposite tendencies of character…. which are like the light and the shadow of the same thing.’ (Questions and Answers 1954, The Mother: ”…Everyone possesses in a large measure, and the exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of character, in almost equal proportions, which are like the light and the shadow of the same thing. Thus someone who has the capacity of being exceptionally generous will suddenly find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be a coward in some part of his being and the good man will suddenly have wicked impulses. In this way life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, but also with contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has to wage and the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. Consequently, all life is an education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly.”) Why are things made in this way? Can’t one have only the light?”

The Mother observes: ”Yes, if one eliminates the shadow. But it must be eliminated. That does not happen by itself. The world as it is is a mixed world. You cannot have an object which gets the light from one side without its casting a shadow on the other. It is like that, and indeed it is the shadows which make you see the lights. The world is like that, and to have only the light one must definitely go through the entire discipline necessary for eliminating the shadow. This is what I have explained a little farther; I have said that this shadow was like a sign of what you had to conquer in your nature in order to be able to realise what you have come to do. If you have a part to play, a mission to fulfil, you will always carry in yourself the main difficulty preventing you from realising it, so that you have within your reach the victory you must win. If you had to fight against a difficulty which is everywhere on earth, it would be very difficult (you would need to have a very vast consciousness and a very great power), while if you carry in your nature just the shadow or defect you must conquer, well, it is there, within your reach: you see all the time the effects of this thing and can fight it directly, immediately. It is a very practical organisation.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 167-168