64 overcoming the worldstatement of this worldview (not even Schopenhauer’s) has ever pro-
vided a developed account of why or how underlying being becomes
expressed in phenomena that generate such illusions. Why does there
exist not just a world but a world that appears— at least to us— under an
aspect contradicting its ultimate reality?
Within the bounds of such a view of the world, this question may
remain unanswerable. We dare not attribute to unifi ed being the inten-
tions of a person. We are separated from this ultimate reality by the
abyss of embodiment and by all the illusions accompanying it. For the
metaphysic of the overcoming of the world, our most reliable connec-
tion with the one being and the one mind is the experience of conscious-
ness, understood to soar above the divisions that are imposed on this
ultimate reality by the incarnation of universal mind in individual bod-
ies. Nothing in the experience of consciousness explains why universal
mind should appear to us thus partitioned in the form of individual
minds. Nothing in the metaphysical systems associated with the over-
coming of the world accounts for why the supposedly illusory experi-
ences of time, distinction, and individual selfh ood should form part of
the pro cess by which the truth about unifi ed and timeless being is af-
fi rmed. Th e prevalence of these illusions in our experience seems to
represent a superfl uous and mysterious detour.
Th is radical version of the metaphysic of the overcoming of the world
rests on two bases: one, cognitive; the other, practical. Th e latter may be
stronger and more appealing than the former.
Th e cognitive basis of this radical metaphysical doctrine is the claim
to make sense of a world in which all distinctions are impermanent.
Th e trouble is that impermanence is not the opposite of being or reality.
Th e distinctions among beings in the world may be real, although they
are impermanent, if time is real. Th en we must form an account of how
things turn into other things, in the course of time. To provide such an
account is the proper goal of science.
On the other hand, if time is not real, as the radical philosophical
statements of the overcoming of the world commonly claim, we can give
no account of transformation. Transformation presupposes time. Th e
distinctions among things, or beings, must therefore be illusory. More-
over, the hold of this illusion on our experience must be explained.