overcoming the world 81and depersonalizing perils of intimate connection remains at odds
with our recognition of the need to affi rm and to develop ourselves
through connection, then the solution to this contradiction in the re-
quirements of personal existence is to lengthen our distance from both
sides of this polarity. We shall still be able to recognize our kinship with
our fellow creatures, but we shall do so from a distance, the distance of a
benevolence off ered from a superior position, with the double privilege
of higher place and limited exposure, without danger of rebuff or disap-
pointment. We shall give up the attempt to form connections that di-
minish the confl ict between the value and the danger of attachment to
others. We shall not see in personal love among equals, and in the social
arrangements that spread its infl uence to broader parts of our experi-
ence, the supreme instance of such a reconciliation.
Our need to engage in a par tic u lar society and culture for the sake of
self- construction and of fi delity to our beliefs threatens to result in our
surrender to the ideas and standards of other people. Our refusal to
surrender drives us into an isolation that denies us means for produc-
tive action in the world. Th e solution that the overcoming of the world
proposes to this second contradiction among the requirements of a
strong self in society is to withdraw into an inner citadel.
Under the terms of this solution, we renounce the eff ort permanently
to change the relation between spirit- limiting structure and structure-
def ying spirit by creating societies and cultures that enable us to engage
more and to surrender less. We lose hope in the possibility of develop-
ing institutions and practices that weaken the contrast between the or-
dinary moves we make within a framework of established arrange-
ments and assumptions and the extraordinary moves by which we
change that framework. Instead, we place our hope in another realm of
value and reality, one in which worldly power counts for little. Of the
social order in which we have refused to place our hope, we demand
chiefl y that it not bar our access to higher reality and value and not in-
fl ict unnecessary cruelty on our fellow suff erers, who await with us
their liberation from the perceived circumstance of an embodied self,
exposed to suff ering and death.
Life is the cumulative sum of our engagements and connections. Th e
more we shield ourselves against change and illusion, the less we shall
have to shield. Th e spell that we cast on ourselves to ensure serenity