This realization of the integral individuality is described by all traditions as the restoration of what is called the primordial state, which is regarded as man’s true estate and which moreover escapes some of the limitations characteristic of the ordinary state, notably that of the temporal condition. The person who attains this “primordial state” is still only a human individual and is without effective possession of any suprain-dividual states; he is nevertheless freed from time, and the apparent succession of things is transformed for him into simultaneity; he consciously possesses a faculty that is unknown to the ordinary man and that one might call the sense of eternity. This is of extreme importance, for he who is unable to leave the viewpoint of temporal succession and see everything in simultaneity is incapable of the least conception of the metaphysical order. The first thing to be done by those who wish to achieve true metaphysical understanding is to take up a position outside time, we say deliberately in “NONTIME,” if such an expression does not seem too peculiar and unusual. This knowledge of the intemporal can, moreover, be achieved in some real measure, if incompletely, before having fully attained this “primordial state” that we are considering. Essays: Oriental Metaphysics