overcoming the world 63vision of impersonal, unifi ed, and universal being. Th is vision in turn
inspires an ethic of selfl ess benevolence and a quest for indiff erence to suf-
fering and change. It does so, however, on the basis of a devaluation of the
reality of time and of the distinctions among beings, including the dis-
tinction among selves. No wonder these mystics have regularly fallen un-
der the suspicion of heresy in each of the Semitic mono the isms.
Th e metaphysical idea informing this approach to existence is the
affi rmation of a universal being lying behind the manifest world of
time, distinction, and individuality. Our experience is the experience
of the reality of time in this one real world. It is an experience of a
world in which there is an enduring structure of diff erent kinds of
things and the individual mind is embodied in an individual organism.
Th e philosophy and theology of the overcoming of the world tell us,
however, that time, distinction, and individuality are unreal, or that
they are less real than they seem to be.
In the history of thought, this view has taken both radical and quali-
fi ed forms. Th e radical versions of this view (as we have it, for example,
in the Vedas or in Schopenhauer) deny time, distinction, and individu-
ality altogether. Th ey proclaim the illusory character of each of these
features of our experience. However, even these radical teachings ac-
knowledge that there must be some limited element of truth in these
illusory experiences: enough truth to explain why the world appears to
us under the disguise of a diff erentiated structure of distinct types of
being.
Unifi ed and timeless being becomes manifest, according to this rad-
ical form of the metaphysic of the overcoming of the world, in a mani-
fold of distinct natural kinds: types of being. Some of these types of be-
ing possess sentient life and will. Th ey fi nd themselves housed in a
par tic u lar body, with a par tic u lar fate, susceptible to the ills and risks
that attend embodiment, and doomed to die. Th ey may be tempted to
form an idea of their own distinction and reality that the truth about
the world fails to support. In fact, they are passing expressions of what
is really real: the one, timeless being that stands behind the screen of
time- bound and divided experience.
But why has unitary and timeless being become manifest in divided
and time- bound experience? We cannot know. No philosophical