Understanding Duality - Part 1 - Master List of 250+ Dualities

• Understanding Dualistic Cognition: Leo Gura explains that dualistic cognition is how human minds comprehend reality by constructing concepts in relation to their opposites. Every concept, from energy to success vs failure or life vs death, is defined against what it isn't, thus creating dualities. This tends to happen when humans attempt to communicate, think or engage in scientific pursuits and philosophical deliberations.
• Role of Dualities in Perception of Reality: All our views about the world- whether it's casual conversations or opinions on politics, science, religion- are based on these dualities. Yet, the problem emerges when people become unaware of these as constructed dualities, leading to misinterpretations and false assumptions about reality.
• Problem with Binary Thinking: People often don't realize that their understandings of the world are made up of dualities, like up vs down or success vs failure. They perceive these dualities as fixed and absolute, not recognizing the relative nature of these concepts.
• Viewing Dualities as Untenable and Temporary: Dualities, while forming the basic structure of human understanding, are ultimately untenable and temporary because reality at its core is non-dual. Traditional, orthodox, and even scientific cognition are dualistic in nature, and as one becomes more conscious, the thinking becomes less dualistic and the apparent boundaries between these dualities start to blur.
• Examples of Blurring Dualities: Examples include the evolving understanding of previously rigid concepts such as man vs woman and progress vs regress. Even man vs machine may become a less distinguishable category as we progress with technological advancements and human-machine integration.
• Human Categories Not Absolute: Gura emphasizes that human created categories, like up vs down or good vs evil do not exist inherently in nature but are created to make sense of the world. However, these categories can lead to misunderstanding and confusion if not recognized as human constructs.
• Importance of Non-Dual Understanding: Understanding and acknowledging the non-dual nature of reality can contribute to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the world. It is important to recognise the role that dualistic thinking plays in shaping our perceptions and understanding of reality.
• Leo's Long-term Investigation into Dualities: Leo spent two years developing a list of over 250 common and important dualities to help people understand how their mind perceives life. He plans to discuss these dualities in three groups: common dualities, scientific dualities, and existential dualities.
• Importance of Understanding Dualities: Understanding dualities can help uncover biases and misconceptions within our perceptions of reality. Recognizing and assessing these mental constructs can aid in a more nuanced understanding of the world.
• Dualities in Personal Progress and Mind-made Categories: Leo acknowledges that personal progress often includes periods of regression, and it's especially common in the realm of personal development. He suggests that the dark moments of failure can serve as the catalyst for great success. Leo emphasizes that our minds create dualities like 'man vs machine', 'progress vs regress', and even 'man vs woman', and these aren't inherent in the universe. He points out that when any duality is explored deeply enough, it circles back around and becomes a unity.
• The Challenge of Drawing Boundaries: According to Leo, the process of carving up reality varies for each individual, leading to disagreements as people have carved it up in different ways. This is witnessed in examples such as defining the boundary of outer space or when a cluster of cells becomes a human. These essentially depend on individual perspective and are not absolute. Leo emphasizes that confusion and miscommunication often stem from these subjective delineations.
• The Interplay between Thoughts and Emotions: Leo explores the connection between thoughts and emotions, indicating that one can influence the other. Specifically regarding pain, Leo advocates the understanding of it as a complex entity influenced by both thought and emotion, which could potentially help alleviate chronic pain. Questions such as whether pain is a thought or emotion highlight this blurred line.
• Exploring Love and Hatred Duality: Leo finishes by raising the question of where the line is drawn between love and hatred, suggesting that these emotions too can intertwine and overlap, once more underlining the complexity of understanding dualities.
• Love vs. Hatred: In this part of the transcript, Leo discusses how love and hatred aren't necessarily clear opposites. One can generate feelings of anger or hatred out of love for someone else, for instance, hating someone who hurt a loved one is actually due to the love for that person who was hurt. This illustrates how closely intertwined and complex these dualities can be.
• Exploring Dualities: Leo mentions that people often resist exploring deep into these dualities because it can lead to challenging existential questions, which can be threatening or uncomfortable. Examples of such profound dualities include reality vs. fantasy or good vs. evil, which shape an individual’s perception of the world and their own identity.
• Collapse of Dualities: Emphasizing a key point in epistemology, Leo states that every duality will eventually collapse. This is due to human understanding being partial, biased, confused, and lopsided. Humans hold dualities as dogmas, and as a result resist their collapse, which leads to deep misunderstandings of how reality functions.
• Duality Categories: The video presenter introduces numerous examples of dualities, each highlighting different experiences and concepts. Examples like up vs. down, left vs. right, hot vs. cold, among others, are relative terms, defined in the context of the other. This further underlines the constant fluidity and dependence within dualities.
• The Importance of Perspective: Leo discusses fluidity in reality and how it is interpreted differently based on one’s perspective. Using the example of left vs. right, he talks about how even basic dualities can have shifting definitions based on perspective, emphasizing the complexity and relativity in how we interpret concepts. Hence, for a deeper understanding, he encourages examining situations from others’ perspectives.
• Artificial Limits Imposed by Dualities: Leo touches on the concept of how dualities can limit imagination. Using the example of teaching a child about even and odd numbers, he explains how imposing such binary categories can prevent exploration into more complex concepts later. This illustrates how predefined, dogmatic categorizations can hinder cognitive evolution and understanding of advanced or transrational truths.
• Relative nature of categories: Leo Gura emphasizes that what one person may consider shallow or deep can be different for another individual, based on their level of knowledge or experience. This point is valid for self-help books, where a beginner might find most books profound, which an expert might find superficial.
• Concept of the absolute or transcendent: Leo introduces the concept of "absolute" or "transcendent," which refers to a level of consciousness that recognizes and transcends two opposing elements of a duality. For example, he mentions that relative good and bad can be transcended by acknowledging an "absolute good" that holds no opposite. By incorporating both lowercase 'g' good and lowercase 'b' bad into a single entity, it results in the realization of an uppercase 'G' good that is universally true.
• The Yin Yang symbol as a representation of duality and non-duality: Leo mentions the Yin Yang symbol, which perfectly embodies the interplay of duality and non-duality. Each part (black and white) contains a dot of the other, revealing that within every supposedly opposing part, there is a fragment of its counterpart. This interplay signifies that dividing the world into categories isn't simple and there's an inherent unity that higher consciousness level can acknowledge.
• Right, wrong, positive, and negative - The notion of absolutes: He then suggests that with higher consciousness, one can reach the realization that 'wrong' and 'negative' are merely concepts while reality is inherently 'right' and 'positive', highlighting the existence of absolute 'Right' and 'Positive'.
• Moral and Immoral are relative: Leo states the moral and immoral concepts are also relative. Our legal system, sense of morality, and emotional responses are based upon the notion of this duality. He cautions about the popularity of absolutist cognition, where people hold their belief in what's moral or immoral as universal truth, while in reality, these concepts are relative and specific to personal or societal context.
• Transcending relative duality to perceive absolute: Leo notes that the perception of absolutes is hindered when one clings to a relative duality, confusing it for absolutes. Understanding the difference and transcending this confusion allows one to access the true absolutes.
• Understanding True and False: Leo Gura covers the duality of true and false, explaining that these concepts are also a duality people create. Despite this, he mentions the existence of an absolute truth that is not a human creation.
• Should vs. Shouldn't: Gura highlights the tension people often experience between what they believe they should and shouldn't do. He suggests that this is a false dichotomy, as everything that happens in life is exactly what should be happening. Understanding this concept can help people eliminate guilt and internal struggles.
• Transcending Good and Evil: Gura emphasizes the need to rise above polarities such as good and evil, suggesting that doing this leads to liberation and a better state of existence. However, he warns this process can be intimidating because it appears to condone evil acts, but it ultimately results in transcending both good and evil.
• Battles and Conflicts: Life's tug of wars, particularly in politics and religions, can be transcended by becoming conscious of absolutes. By becoming aware of the absolute truth, conflicts and problems seem to melt away on their own.
• Happiness Versus Sadness: Even the pursuit of happiness versus sadness is viewed as a duality. Ironically, the chase for increased periods of happiness often leads to periods of sadness. According to Gura, sustained happiness or 'absolute happiness' can only be achieved by transcending both happiness and sadness.
• The Illusion of New vs Old: Gura illustrates how 'new' quickly becomes 'old,' underlining the relative nature of these concepts. The definition of these terms changes based on the context such as fashion, technology, or societal evolution.
• Useful vs. Useless: The terms 'useful' and 'useless' are deeply subjective and dependent on individual goals and needs. If someone's goal shifts from money to love, their perception of what is deemed 'useful' modifies relative to their new goal. This example demonstrates the flexible and relative nature of these concepts within the duality framework.
• Concept of Boring and Exciting: This section discusses the relativity of concepts like "boring" and "exciting". Leo highlights the fact that one's perception changes based on their mental state, using the example of playing a video game or meditating. A game might be exciting one moment and boring the next, while meditating can fluctuate between being engaging and dull.
• Concept of Rich and Poor: Leo delves into notions of wealth highlighting how a person's perception of being rich or poor is relative. This can range from comparing current living standards to historical eras or comparing oneself financially to a peer group.
• Concept of Normal and Weird: Social pressures to fit into "normal" societal molds are discussed, along with the investment of emotional energy to either meet these standards or deliberately rebel against them. The idea of transcending these labels through authenticity is emphasised.
• Duality of Black and White: Leo challenges the rigid differentiation between racial categories such as black and white. He explains that the genetic diversity even within these groups can render such distinctions questionable. He emphasises that the importance we attach to certain characteristics like skin colour or gender roles is a product of our cultural constructs and survival-based convenience, rather than inherent or absolute truths.
• Importance of Questioning Dualities: Leo encourages his audience to question and challenge the seemingly fixed dualities they encounter. By acknowledging these categories as constructs and recognizing their fluid nature, one can better adapt to a rapidly evolving society and more accurately interface with reality.
• Effect of Dualities on Perception and Life: Leo illustrates how our perception of reality, our relationship with it, and thus our entire lives are defined by how we comprehend and relate to these dualities. By changing and questioning these constructs, we open ourselves up to transforming our lives as a whole.
• Transcending identity boundaries: Leo emphasizes that our identities as Africans, Europeans, etc., are self-created categories we often cling onto. He encourages viewers to realize their absolute identity that transcends race, human, and animal, experiencing themselves as an embodiment of all existence without boundaries or categories.
• Flawed versus perfect: Conventionally, we view things as flawed or perfect based on their relative values, like the value of a diamond or a person's beauty. Leo suggests a shift in Perspective to view everything as perfect in its absolute state, regardless of its apparent condition or qualities.
• Dirty versus clean: This concept offers a perception of categories being subjective and based on human survival instinct. For example, while humans may perceive fecal matter as dirty and potentially harmful, a fly might perceive it as clean and a source of sustenance.
• Tame versus wild: A comparison is made concerning the tamability of animals. Leo illustrates how selective breeding by scientists led to the partial taming of foxes, considered previously untamable. This example demonstrates the blurring boundaries between wild and tame, indicating degrees of tameness.
• Differentiating categories: The discussion highlights that differentiation among categories (simple vs complex, clean vs dirty, etc.) is human-made and relative. By questioning these categories and being open to the perception of the absolute, one can transcend the dualistic framework.
• Perception of reality: Leo emphasizes the power of questioning these categories deeply ingrained in our reality. These categories form a nested web of beliefs that solidify our lives. By questioning and unraveling them, he suggests that one could dissolve a conventional understanding of reality and discover the absolute view which transcends all categorizations.
• Identity as a construct: Leo further talks about identity being a human-made construct relative to survival and societal norms. For instance, the perception of something being dirty or clean, wild or tame, is defined based on human living requirements and societal beliefs.
• Acceptance of all that is: Towards the end of this section, Leo suggests that consciousness in its absolute state is inclusive and transcendent of all categories. He encourages viewers to contemplate and practice openness towards this form of awareness.
• Duality of Fair vs Unfair: Leo discusses how a person's perception of the fairness/unfairness of any situation is based on their own dualistic understanding. He explores the concept of universal consciousness, where one entity experiences both sides of every event in life. As such, the universe is considered perfectly fair since it allows all experiences.
• Dualities Influencing Identity and Life Attitudes: He talks about winning vs losing, success vs failure, and fake vs genuine. These dualities, driven by societal or personal pressures, can influence individuals' identities and attitudes towards life. Notions of success and failure, for example, can cause depression or unhappiness if one perceives themselves as failing.
• Relative Nature of Dichotomies: Leo uses terms like superficial vs profound, growth vs decay, and arrogance vs humility to illustrate the relative nature of dichotomies. He emphasizes that humility often comes from learning and growing through arrogance. Meanwhile, growth and decay are interconnected, implying that continuous growth isn't sustainable without decay.
• Necessary Balance of Violence and Peace: Leo discusses the often-seen duality of war vs peace. He explains that achieving peace often requires conflict and violence, thus suggesting that every action, including violence, is leading towards peace.
• Challenge of Defining Terms Relating to Guilt and Crime: Leo mentions difficulties associated with dualities like innocent vs guilty, criminal vs non-criminal, and terrorist vs non-terrorist. These traits prove hard to define, as viewed differently depending on cultural, societal, or personal perspectives. For instance, a police officer in one context could be seen as a criminal in another.
• Unavoidable Dichotomies in Politics: Political ideologies often clash, which is evident in capitalism vs socialism, or conservatism vs liberalism. Leo highlights that these dichotomies are entirely relative and based on societal norms and values.
• Dualities and Labels: He addresses the dualities of legal vs illegal, and criminal vs police, emphasizing how these labels can be blurred and subjective, depending on individual perspectives and societal norms. This shows the complexities and paradoxes of labeling and categorization.
• Understanding Duality - Part 1 - Master List of 250+ Dualities Continued: In this section, Leo Gura goes into depth about various dualities, including the contrast between hero versus villain, journey versus destination, and product development versus marketing. He highlights the complications that arise when these elements are seen as distinct and separated, emphasizing how they intersect and depend on each other. He moves on to lecture on the duality of healthy versus unhealthy, and the unreality of separating different academic departments. He further explores the relativism of concepts like civilized versus uncivilized, and the need for an interplay between spirituality and politics. He concludes this section by denouncing the notion of categories as absolute and independent of each other, reiterating how they exist only in relation to one another.
• Balancing Spirituality and Politics: Leo points out the potential for leaders deeply rooted in spirituality to bring consciousness and wisdom to politics. However, there are risks in combining the two as politics could tarnish the genuineness and authenticity of spirituality. Separation of church and state is important, but spirituality still has a role to play in political leadership.
• Relativity of Importance and Significance: Leo discusses how labels of importance and significance are relative. For example, the categories of 'mother' and 'father' may change in significance for someone raised by a same-sex couple. Cases like a democratically elected leader turning into a tyrant blur the boundaries between democracy and tyranny.
• Sober vs Intoxicated Awakening: According to Leo, the experience of awakening, whether achieved soberly or under intoxication, is not definitively different. However, he also acknowledges important differences between the two experiences.
• Need vs Want & Pain vs Pleasure: Leo contemplates over the fluid nature of 'need' and 'want.' He suggests that these aren't fixed and vary based on personal perspectives. Similarly, he emphasizes the possibility of transcending the traditional tug of war between 'pain' and 'pleasure' to attain a state of joy.
• Individualism vs Collectivism: Leo discusses the necessity of balancing individualism and collectivism for a functioning society. He argues that proper collectivism can empower individualism. One's existence as a part of a collective requires certain sacrifices for the collective good.
• Theistic vs Atheistic Views: Leo argues that theism and atheism aren't strictly opposed and there are multiple meta-levels that incorporate both. Both views have more in common and harbor more delusions than followers are willing to admit.
• Status Quo vs Change: Leo emphasizes the need to respect the status quo for the freedoms and luxuries it provides while also acknowledging the need for healthy change. This dichotomy is particularly applicable to political processes, where the challenge is to balance between making incremental changes and bringing about revolutionary transformation.
• Dominant vs Submissive: Leo states that both dominance and submission are necessary for a relationship to work. Similarly, mainstream and niche ideas are relative and interchangeable, dependent on time and context.
• Transcending Temporary and Eternal: Leo talks about the potential to transcend temporal limitations and perceive everything as eternal, existing outside of time.
• Addition vs Subtraction: Leo concludes this section by referring to the notion of adding a negative number, highlighting how seemingly contrasting concepts can interact and overlap.
• Discussion on Positive and Negative Number Dualities: Leo discusses the interplay of positive and negative numbers an example of dualities and demonstrates how their interactions can yield counterintuitive results, for example, subtracting a negative number from another negative number results in a positive number.
• Work versus Play Duality: He explores the line between work and play, showing that the definition can shift based on personal passion or interest. What might start as play (like a game) can turn into work if you grind on it, and work can transform into play when you're intensely involved in it and enjoy it, like when following your life purpose.
• Content versus Context Duality: The video transcript talks about the complex relationship between content and context. Content becomes the context for more content, and context is usually some form of content itself, leading to multiple nested levels of content and context.
• Dualities of Emotions and Rationality: Leo discusses the common misconception that people are either emotional or rational beings, asserting that emotions underpin rationality and that rational thinking is often driven by unconscious emotions.
• Corporations as People: He brings up the concept of corporations being composed of people, and how their actions can reflect individual actions, pointing toward similar psychological dynamics in corporations and individuals.
• Private versus Public Duality: Leo discusses the interplay between a person's private and public lives, highlighting that actions in one sphere inevitably affect the other. He stresses the importance of finding a balance between the two.
• Competitive versus Cooperative Dynamics: He emphasizes the coexistence of competition and cooperation within the same environment, using the example of working together on a project in a team while also competing for promotions.
• Danger versus Safety Duality: Leo points out the difficulty in balancing safety with danger, as seen in heated debates like gun control or managing the use of psychedelics.
• Dualities of Gender Roles and Homosexuality: The discussion highlights the increasing questioning and challenging of traditional gender roles and norms. Leo mentions the backlash against the fluidity of gender norms and the trademark homophobia, identifying it as a resistance against accepting one's own feminine side.
• Identity Constructs of Male and Female: Leo suggests that labels such as "male" and "female" are mental constructs created by individuals and society, and these categories carry significant associations and assumptions that may vary across cultures and individuals.
• Red Pill Culture and Gender Norms: He touches upon the growing trend of hyper-masculinity in response to feminism, hinting at a backlash against social justice and blurred gender boundaries. He emphasizes that these categories aren't absolute and it's the individuals who assign significance to these distinctions.
• Transcending Traditional Gender Roles: Leo Gura argues that gender is not fixed to biology, and that things are not as clear-cut as being male or female. He points out that there are individuals born with organs that do not fit into the traditional definition of male or female, and that even the criteria used to define sex, like X and Y chromosomes, are not absolute. Leo points out that our categories of "man" and "woman" carry many societal and personal associations well beyond chromosomes, all of which are attachments and constructs of our own minds. He argues that it's not about removing the ability to distinguish between male and female, but recognizing that we are the ones creating these distinctions and attaching significance to them. Using his gaming experience, he discusses characters that embody both male and female traits, symbolizing the transcendence of gender roles, which he suggests is the potential outcome of deep spiritual work and being fully conscious of the absolute. Leo proposes that we should prepare our minds for future changes and advancements in technology, including potential genetic engineering, which will blur our traditional categories even more. He ends by saying that these matters will be delved into even further in the next part of his video series.