Transcendence

To transcend is to move from one mental state of being to another, but there is not always a clear dividing line between the two states because it is always just an arbitrary decision to where the crossing takes place. It is all yin within yang, recursively entwined, and the attributes which define the polarity for transcendence can reverse relative to the situation. Effectively, what happens is that another ego is created, even in the case of transcending ego itself, allowing a new paradigm to exist, which once experienced is difficult to remember how it could have been any other way. This is the case which ever way you cross over, and crossing back to the original paradigm is experienced as an equally great revelation even though you have been there before. This is the nature of relativity even when it is applied to the absolute.

But any transcendence is just to a different cage. Many transcendences are to states of understanding or capability that you have already passed through; you've been there before and you thought then that you were transcending to a higher level, but now you think it is the other way around. Ultimately none of it really matters and is not as important as we like to think it is. The higher levels later become the lower levels again, as we revolve within our world which has all been done throughout the history of our planet so many billion times before. The spiritual worlds are our early paradigms which we transcended so we were able to operate within our social world, which later becomes the cage we want to transcend from. The mundane view that becomes the norm, is an enlightened state before the familiarity denigrates it to normal. Both worlds have their place and both worlds supersede each other. Neither world is ultimately true.

We are already liberated from a previous oppression, and each liberation brings a different oppression in its stead. Our desire for liberation is in itself an oppression which brings about the dissatisfaction born from the belief that somebody else has achieved a better state and that we have to follow them to be who we truly are. To be happy with who you are and with what you have is the goal, and you are already there. There is nothing to be done. The controlling of our control of it is how we can be at peace. Each transcendence is made upon a wheel which returns to its start point; there is no progress. Knowing this is your liberation.

~

I remember a childhood conversation with a couple of other children of my own age, where we were discussing the nature of reality. The adults had said to one of them that reality wasn't what it appeared and that it wasn't like this. But we had just spent the previous 7 or 8 years of our lives working out what reality was without any help at all, and the spiritual concept that the adults were talking about was what we had been living in and had only just recently managed to transcend.

Growing up is all about separating the dreams from the persistent continuity of waking experiences; recognizing that thoughts do not produce the events that you would like them to; noticing that coincidences were not omens and that anticipations were entirely unpredictable. The childhood unravelling of experience is done by a brain equal to any adult, if not actually superior due to the lack of years of indoctrination that undoes all the hard work of the early years. The adults epiphany of transcending their illusions is in actuality a return to a lesser state of understanding that was in turn transcended at an early age to what was then a greater revelation of a functional paradigm. The spiritual and the reasoned science views swap back and forth, with each overpowering the other in lucid moments of realisation, ridiculing the previous concept and fooling us that we are making progress and getting better. Always the present moment holds the strongest captivation, leading to the illusion of gaining greater understanding but turning out to be but a transitory platitude to appease our ego's insistence for an incessant and never ending advancement.

~

'Ascend' means to go up, 'descend' to go down, and 'transcend' means to go across. To transcend doesn't mean going to a higher place, just to a different place.

Your spiritual transcendence is not to a new place, but to the place you came from; the place that preceded the place you now want to egress. Your original self is your destination, a returning to non-dichotomy, to purity and wholeness, to your holy self — your First Self.

The First Self is an ascended state because it hasn't yet descended. We are born divine beings destined to become mired within the society that pervades every aspect of our lives every moment of each day, and with this inevitable falling into the mundane comes the veil that precludes our divinity. We are all angels descended into the world who by the time we have the ability to convey our message, we have forgotten. The avatar that we are has become suppressed in our attempt to obey society and is now mostly a prisoner of our habituations and the social denial of our divine appointment. With over eight billion gods on the planet, how could it be any other way?

~

As with all things, there are levels of transcendence. There are levels of transcendence from our normal waking operation, which will result in a breakdown of normal functioning. While in these transcended states the letters on a keyboard can revert to how you first saw them, to being just abstract meaningless symbols, and they will lose all their conditioned appearance and return to their alien form as when first experienced. In this state the words that a person says will just sound like song, and the words will just be notes without meaning to them. All the words that can be spoken would be meaningless even if they were processed because there isn't anything to say, there isn't any point in it. Speaking is an inane activity which can be seen to be a little silly and ridiculous while in a transcended state.

In this detached state we can see that there is no doubt that our laughing is the same as the shrieking of a chimpanzee and that their shrieking is their laughter. The realisation of the utter fantasticness of our reality cannot be approached by any other way. It is hilarious! We are no higher than they are at this level, or indeed any creature what so ever. 

A lot of the transcending experiences are just not useful to us. The breaking out of our conditioning reveals why we were broken-in in the first place. It is necessary; we are supposed to be distracted into this false reality which we call normality, so that we can function within society and perform our role.

The divine experience is utterly incompatible with normal physical functioning. As a young child, when I would become suddenly submersed into the divine, I would be unable to maintain any continuity of whatever it was I was doing. So if I was carrying a plate of food, I would just drop it. It is like losing consciousness; the consciousness of normal behaviour and functioning within a physical world. The social fear of doing wrong forces us into overriding these transcendences until we no longer have them.  Most people cannot even remember this period of their lives. It has been censored by their ego. 

The world is truly beautiful in this state of egress — dropping our plates on the way — but it isn't a place to always be in as this would also be called madness. Only with the ability to refold into our conditioning will give us the justification of our unfolding in the first place. There is no permanent state that is good for us; even enlightenment. The nature of being is for change to occur and it is only in the divine that there is an unchanging absolute.

~

There is a man in India who has completed mammoth sessions of meditation to try to emulate what the Buddha did. Despite achieving weeks of continuous and undisturbed meditation he still was not satisfied he had achieved the ultimate state and later got himself walled up and entirely enclosed without any entrance or exit to prevent any disturbance. But  after a couple of weeks the authorities found out and tore down the walls to release him. Still he did not believe he had done enough. The poor man had transcended everything except his religious indoctrination, and had failed to transcend the stories he had been told about the Buddha and was forlornly chasing an impossible desire. His concept of the Buddha was an illusion and he had failed to realise this. He had already achieved the highest that was possible from his meditation, but the aggrandised stories didn't fit his experience and rather than recognise that the elders who had passed on the texts, were not the ones who actually knew what they were talking about — as is the case with most gurus who are but the pupils grown old — he tried to go ever further into what he had already surpassed. It is a typical tale of those who pretend to know, leading others into chasing a new state of being that cannot be found because they have already had it.

These stories of impossible to reach states of being, defeat the very purpose of their telling. The fanatical followers create a pedestal too high to reach and condemn themselves and everybody else to failure.  Anyone who claims to know what the experience is like is likely to be stoned to death for what is seen as heresy to those who insist that their esteemed holy men are supernatural, possessing abilities that prove their transcendence but failing to actually prove anything. It is because these holy men are just normal people and it is only their confidence and stillness that fools others into thinking they are special. We are all this underneath our self-doubting and although the glimpses of it can make us think that it goes on to become something much greater, it doesn't. Our imagination of the extrapolation of the possibilities of our potential, create the pantheon to which we are not allowed to enter. The guardians of this fictional gateway are the religious zealots that have made it socially impossible to recognise our divinity. They unknowingly sabotage and destroy the very thing they think they are defending. Maybe they're right and we all should be pulled down into the ditch to avoid our self-aggrandisement. Maybe the old stories of pantheonic squabbles is what is happening here now, but now there are over 8 billion and each one of them know that they are valid and believe that they are right. 

~

Some people have just one experience which flips their world upside down and their whole paradigm changes and cannot again see how they used to see it. These instances are called enlightenment, but they are not the only way it can be experienced and others have had this experience and not become fixed in it. It certainly is not necessary to be fixed in it for it to be important. In fact it is better to be able to switch paradigms and so be better able to communicate the states of experience with empathic justification.

To these people their paradigm shift is such an amazing revelation that is completely life changing. Their epiphany is sacred and uncompromisable and is spoken of as being the highest thing. But to another it might be no big deal and could be something fairly regularly experienced, but because of the insistence that this is a new thing and their belief that others haven't had it, it is presented in an overblown and fantastical way, usually by some follower who is actually unaware that they have had such transcended states before, because they have been convinced by others that it is something else. Something so special that they couldn't possibly have ever experienced it because it is reserved only for special people. We are presented with a gem to devote our lives to try and find not realising that our pockets are already full of them, and any mention of these gems that we already have are denounced as not being the real thing.

The calmness of mind due to meditation and the detachment from habitual attitudes produces a grace of being. It is these people who are acclaimed as enlightened because of their completeness. But there is no knowledge there that wasn't there at the beginning. They don't know more; they just seem to. It really is no big deal.