Not only is the mutable world separated from its divine principle — the One — by intervals of
emanation that descend in ever greater alienation from their source, but because the highest truth is the secret identity between the human mind and the One, the labor of philosophy is one of escape: all multiplicity, change, particularity, every
feature of the living world, is not only accidental to this formless identity, but a kind of falsehood, and to recover the truth that dwells within, one must detach oneself from what lies without, including the sundry incidentals of one's individual existence; truth is oblivion of the flesh, a pure nothingness, to attain which one must sacrifice the world.