The expression “Beyond Being” refers to God—or the Ultimate Reality—insofar as He is prior to Being, prior to the Creator-God or the so-called “personal God,” understood merely as a partner in dialogue with the human person. It signifies God “before” He is the Cause of Being and of beings, before He assumes that determination which, if taken as limiting, would confine Him to a particular ontological order.
More specifically
Thus Plotinus teaches that the One is beyond being and thought: not merely the cause, but the cause of the cause. From the One proceed Intellect and Soul; He is the inexhaustible source of all procession without being affected by it. The One is ineffable, absolutely simple, and undetermined, the super-essential Principle from which all things derive.
In the Christian tradition, Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of God as “beyond every affirmation and every negation.” God is neither being nor non-being, since He transcends every ontological category: every name points symbolically toward Him but none defines Him. The phrase “beyond being” therefore expresses the apophatic dimension of theology, which rises above ontology to the principle that founds it.
In medieval metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas identifies God as ipsum esse subsistens—“Being itself subsisting”—thus maintaining the absolute transcendence of God while grounding all existence in Him. Yet metaphysical reflection recognizes that the Absolute is not simply Being, but that by which Being itself is possible. Meister Eckhart, following Dionysius and Plotinus, speaks of the Gottheit, the Deity beyond God, “which has no name” and “wills nothing,” the pure super-essence.
Comparable notions appear in other traditions: the ineffable Tao of Taoism, Parabrahman in Hindu metaphysics, or the nameless Dhāt Allāh of Sufism. In each case, the Absolute is not identical with manifested being but is the unconditioned Principle from which being emanates as its first determination.
To speak of the “Beyond Being” is not to deny Being but to reveal its transcendental source—the pure principial Reality where all duality and distinction dissolve.
Further reading:
– Plotinus, Enneads VI.9 – on the One as beyond being and thought.
– Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology – on God beyond affirmation and negation.
– Meister Eckhart, German Sermons – on the Gottheit beyond the personal God.
– Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q.3 & q.44 – on Being itself subsisting.
– Śaṅkara, Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya – on Parabrahman beyond being and non-being.
– Ibn ʿArabī, Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya – on the Divine Essence (Dhāt Allāh) beyond all qualification.
– Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press), trad. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2021); It. Sui sentieri della metafisica; Sp. ¿Qué es la metafísica?; Ger. Was ist Metaphysik? – on “Beyond Being” as the metaphysical apprehension of the Absolute surpassing ontology.