The recognition of opposing, co-existent tensions within human experience, and a theoretical structure for reconciling opposite impulses, is a fundamental part of both the Yoruba and the Hindu outlook. It is proposed that, particularly because of the flexibility of realities in Yoruba and Hindu thought, an examination of their specific concepts of duality in the human psyche can reveal possible directions for contemporary society. Such critically reclaimed theories could answer to intellectual dilemmas of modernity and post modernity; for the inherent interconnectedness of creativity / destruction, male / female, life / death, and the existence of rituals aimed at recognition and balance between dualities, demonstrates an ancient understanding that is spiritual and scientific, personal and universal, specific and relative. Can ancient ideas that theorise the fluidity of space, time, and self, and yet empower humanity with choice, indeed serve to prise open current intellectual impasses caught between absolutes and ambiguities?