Why Philosophy Matters - Transcendence

 Where to Start? That is not meant to be a philosophical question. When searching for roots, tracing down from the plant, you must ask how from the main root do I want to go? Roots eventually become tiny fibers that are indiscernible from the earth itself. Rather than starting at a place or time, I will begin with “Transcendence”.

In a discussion on a religious podcast in 2023, an agnostic mentioned a transcendent experience they once had. The religious host asked him, “transcended from what, or into what, and you said you were grateful for it, grateful to whom?” The agnostic, Bart Campolo Humanize Me – Home of the Humanize Me podcast, hosted by Bart Campolo, had also stated he never has intentions to convince someone that his experience is better than anyone else’s. Transcendent experiences are a human occurrence. They can happen at any gathering. Music can help them come about, and maybe dancing. Practices to help create them include refraining from eating or sleeping. A quicker path can be found by taking drugs.

Bart defined transcendence as an experience where you are overwhelmed by the presence of some “invisible other”. They discuss what or who that other is, but Bart doesn’t need to. He is defining the experience as something anyone from any culture could experience. An examination of history and literature backs that up. Unfortunately, something that unites all of humanity has often been used to divide us. Tribes, and now nations give names to the “other”. The transcendent experience gets converted into dogma, liturgy, rituals, and codes to live by. The ineffable experience gets turned into a belief.

Studies that have talked with people who have had these experiences find a person might have beliefs about how or why such supernatural events occur, or they might not. They might want to believe things that others tell them they should believe, or they might not. They may have been surrounded by believers, or not. It is understandable that someone who had an overwhelming experience would want to have explanations. The experience itself might have included images or sounds from a tradition or history, or a family member. It may not seem like a belief to the person who experienced it, it may seem like logical conclusions made from the evidence seen, heard, or felt.

The attachment of whatever was felt to something tangible doesn’t have to be supernatural. If music inspires, then the attachment could be the musician, or to the one who wrote the lyrics, or something more generic like the type of music. It could be the ones attending the event too, something that might be closer to the truth, that the feeling of being with people who care about you and are doing the same things is really the source of the feeling of an “other”. Not an other that isn’t there, but something that is greater than the sum of all the parts.

https://youtu.be/d0A_hA5OQSs

In answer to the questions posed by Eric Huffman, the religious person in the podcast, it is an experience that has a feeling of going from one place to another, although it doesn’t require physically going anywhere. The “from” is the experience of day to day living, the regular routine, whatever it is that has become or has been learned to be “normal”. The “into” can be a combination of things. It might be insights into ways of living that will increase happiness. It might be a feeling of connections, to a person or place, or the whole universe. It might include a vision. Words, voices, or stories might come into your head.

The “grateful to whom” part gets complicated. It has been a philosophical question for most of human history and might remain one. When something so profound happens, it’s natural to want to give thanks for it. It’s not illogical to think that a sudden flush of knowledge and insight must have a source, something other than our own brains. But transcendence doesn’t come with evidence that can be shown, or demonstrated, or even easily replicated.

For Bart, there is no “who” that caused this. Something happened in the first generation of stars in the universe, cooking the few elements available into more, exploding, and spreading them around to the galaxies and solar systems that we see today. At this point in the podcast, Justin Bryerly jumped in and asked something about why matter went to all that trouble? It’s hard for me to grasp exactly where a question like that comes from.

The narrative of human origins from the Big Bang to now is 13.7 billion years long. If you prefer a narrative that is only a few pages, I can see how it would be hard to think of these as in the same category. But in a very real sense, they are. Grasping that, I believe, is essential to our survival. In the rest of the series, I hope to find ways to demonstrate that and consider how all of us can accept the variations in the interpretations of transcendence and find the commonalities. 

This entry might need some polish, but I wanted to get out there before moving on.