overcoming the world 75cance of the ups and downs of worldly fortune. We become, to that ex-
tent, invulnerable; invulnerability and serenity represent two aspects of
this same ideal of existence. We experience, right now, our share in the
hidden reality of the One or in the hidden realities of the models of
being.
Th e right understanding of the world may be a necessary condition
of our detachment. However, it is generally recognized by the votaries
and phi los o phers of the overcoming of the world to be an insuffi cient
condition. Right understanding must be supplemented by disciplines
that, under the light of this understanding, turn the will against itself.
One such discipline is that of intense concentration, fi ltering out all
extraneous elements in consciousness, and turning consciousness on
itself, until it comes to experience itself as a piece or as an expression of
universal mind. Another discipline is the cultivation, through art and
speculative thought, of a contemplative view of reality, uncontami-
nated and undistracted by the interests of the embodied and individual
will. Yet a third discipline is sacrifi cial action, which not only acknowl-
edges our universal kinship with all other beings but also practices re-
nunciation of our self- regarding and partial interests.
Th e intended eff ect of these disciplines is not to prevent us from act-
ing. It is to allow us to act as the conscious citizens of a higher order of
reality. Th e serenity that it seeks is therefore compatible with coura-
geous and even heroic intervention in society. Th e risks and costs of
such intervention, rather than placing the ideal of serenity in jeopardy,
reveal its nature. Serenity results from self- possession. Th e self that is
thus possessed, however, is not the one that awakens to fi nd itself tied
to a dying organism. It is the one that recognizes its participation in an
order of reality and of value lying beyond the parade of phenomenal dif-
ference and change. We can more readily confront or renounce the epi-
phenomenal because we have come to view our experience in the light
of the real, which is also the timeless.
A disinterested and universal benevolence forms, alongside this
ideal of serenity and self- possession, the second part of the existential
imperative that results from the overcoming of the world and of the
will. It is the specifi c form taken, in this approach to life, by the inclu-
sive fellow feeling that all the higher and historical religions sought to
put in the place of an ethic of proud self- assertion.