The dichotomy between matter and spirit is one of the heaviest burdens of dualistic confusion. If we don’t resolve it, it will remain one of the most pernicious bonds due to the attitudes and conflicts that arise from it.
It’s a bond generated, on one hand, by the misunderstanding of considering matter and spirit as antagonistic opposites, without seeing the polarity they represent and the balance and unity between them. On the other hand, believing in the superiority of one over the other also reinforces the bond of dual confusion. It makes no difference whether the idealist view dominates—one that deems everything perceived through the senses as almost unreal—or the materialist view prevails—one that denies all transcendence beyond a tangible reality.
As a result, we live LIVE split into two parts in conflict with each other. This starts with ourselves, when the dichotomy between matter and spirit translates into dissociation and conflict between a body we call physical, and on the other hand, the cognitive and emotional faculties that make up what we call psyche, soul, or —usually nowadays— consciousness.
The Roots of the Conflict
Humans, since ancient times and conditioned by the limitations of our senses, instinctively tend to distinguish the palpable that we can see and touch, like the body and the objects around us, from everything more intangible, but still felt or perceived in other ways, such as emotions, thoughts, or natural forces.
The phenomenon of death, with the sudden disappearance of vitality in living beings and the decomposition of their visible bodies, has led to a distinction between inert matter and a vital breath, a spirit (from Latin spiritus, breath) or a soul that animates or breathes life into it.
Many cultures understood this differentiation between matter and spirit not as a duality between two opposites, but as two poles that, by interacting and complementing each other, generate the entire world we perceive. This vital attitude can still be seen in indigenous peoples who survive in remote corners of the world. Or in the purusha and prakriti of Samkhya philosophy, the Shiva-Shakti of pre-Vedic Shaivism, the yin-yang dynamic of Taoism in Chinese culture, and in ancient Egypt or pre-Christian paganism —cultures closely linked to astronomy and nature’s cycles—where polarities such as male/female, father/mother, or sky/earth were often symbolized by a cross of equal arms —static or rotating— symbolizing the generation of life.
By contrast, in the Greco-Judeo-Christian-rooted West, the dualistic conception of God and the divine or sacred, in opposition to the human and worldly or profane. attributed the origin of the vital breath to a divine source, breaking the symmetry and dynamic balance of the matter/spirit polarity. A prevalence of one pole over the other was established: spirit, the masculine aspect, the father, the sky, came to be seen as superior to matter, the feminine aspect, the mother, the earth.
Over the centuries, as understanding of natural forces advanced, we gradually turned our gaze in the opposite direction, toward a more materialistic view, supported by rationalist and empirical humanism that places humans at the center and as the reference point of the known world.
This has been a pendular movement, logical and natural to a degree, as a reaction to an artificial imbalance of harmful consequences. The problem is that the pendulum has only swung inertially to the opposite extreme, with results not much more satisfactory. Until we find balance, we will not resolve the dichotomy.
A Misunderstood Spirituality
The antagonistic and biased interpretation of matter and spirit, in one direction or the other, distorts our perception of life and ourselves. It drives us toward a fragmented experience, often in conflict, between a physical body and more subtle psychic components that we call mind, consciousness, soul, or spirit —often without making clear distinctions.
Giving spiritual aspects more importance leads us to adopt attitudes such as inhabiting a body, a body we consider inferior, merely a shell, a casing. Even a cage or prison in the most extreme forms of asceticism. An illusory, temporary body, opposed to a real and eternal spirit. In the name of a misunderstood spirituality, we belittle the body and deny its inherent instincts and emotions, considering them a burden to be renounced in order to reach otherworldly dimensions.
On the flip side, when we give priority to what we call material, we focus our attention on the body and its needs. We care for its physical, emotional, and mental well-being. But the sense of individuality and separation takes center stage, and aware of its transience, we cling to living as fully and intensely as possible. By denying all spiritual transcendence, we speak instead of personal growth, inner dimension, and the search for life’s purpose, as a way to soothe the anguish and existential conflict in which we live.
Neither of these two opposing perspectives seems capable of liberating us from conflict or leading to a harmonious and fulfilled life.
Matter-Energy Equivalence
The scientific breakthrough of the past hundred years may help us soften the edges and overcome the contradictions between both views. Indeed, concepts once considered absolute and immutable by common sense have been blown apart. What we understand as space, time, matter, or causality in our limited daily experience no longer applies when trying to comprehend the subatomic world or the universe on a large scale.
Without aiming to justify anything scientifically, it is still illuminating that, after centuries spent searching for matter’s smallest indivisible piece, science today is heading toward what some cultures already intuited: that energy not only animates matter, it also constitutes it.
Until recently, we believed that matter could neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed in shape or structure. Today, physics tells us that matter and energy are equivalent, convertible into one another. When matter disintegrates, it releases energy; when enough energy is concentrated, material particles appear. In other words, everything we perceive as material —including ourselves—, are structures of cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei, and particles that are ultimately nothing more than energy, let’s say, reified, dense, solid, or materialized energy. To top it off, we are told that energy itself is nothing but a vibration of emptiness. Let’s not try to grasp this intellectually. It’s beyond reason. Mathematics can explain it, but it eludes all intuition.
And yet this should not surprise us. Many cultures have long stated that it is energy that forms the world. A vital energy that in Indian culture is called prana, in Chinese culture qi, the ancient Egyptians called ka, and the Toltecs, nagual. All these traditions describe how different forms of energy shape the physical body, emotions, mind, consciousness, and innermost nature. They also show how awareness and proper management of vital energy, by avoiding the individuality blocks that hinder its natural flow, can be sources of health, well-being, and harmony, and can also lead to the direct experience of the Non-Dual Presence of LIFE (Advaita Samnidhi).
A Single Nature
Thus, it is quite evident that to live fully, we cannot continue to believe in the false dichotomy between matter and spirit. To realize our true nature, we must free ourselves from the conflict in which we live, trapped in a fictitious duality between a body and a spirit.
Just as we use the terms ice, water, and steam to refer to different states of a single element (water), we must be aware that when we talk about the aggregates that make us up, body, emotions, mind, consciousness, and that which transcends individuality, we are referring to aspects of a single nature. Each has its own function and way of operating, but they act as a whole. They are modalities of a single energy with varying degrees, so to speak, of density or subtlety. Just as LIFE is One and Multiple at the same time.
Nonetheless, it is necessary to distinguish the aggregates to understand their specific characteristics as well as the holistic dynamics with which they operate together. This way, we can identify the blocks and imbalances that disrupt their natural harmony and prevent us from experiencing the transcendence of what we truly are. A transcendence that is not otherworldly. We won’t find it in heavenly realms or higher dimensions, but in our deepest inner being.
Let us then stop living in conflict. Let us stop belittling the body, repressing emotions, and clinging to mental structures and beliefs. Instead, let’s trust more in what resonates most deeply within us. As body, emotions, and mind calm and harmonize, they will become more transparent and allow us to see clearly that what we are, our true nature —what we used to call spirit— is nothing other than the very Nature of LIFE itself.
If we rest in what we are, and what we are is LIFE, where is the conflict?
