Three definitions of transcendence. First definition:
Classically it is the word used for periods of time of "no ego." This is a very common status for the normal human operation called "consciousness." It is everyone's experience that many times per day, everything is flowing "on automatic" and the ego is not "doing" something such as "mindfully managing" that which is happening. This happens hundreds of times per day but goes largely unnoticed. We get most of life done without an ego pretending that it's the author of all thoughts and emotions. We can drive our car home and never break a traffic law, but yet we might have had our minds on other topics and the braking, steering, and signaling still has happened correctly, no accidents, etc. Who was driving? Second definition: If you watch your mind's actions, you'll see that all your "mental life" is as if coming out of thin air -- you're not the maker of thinkingness, instead, you're the witness of thinkingness. This distinction informs us about a second, more subtle, definition of transcendence: by observing the mind as something happening to one, it GRADUALLY becomes obvious that one is not in any manner involved with reality as most folks define it. By realizing ones witness status as "the real me," the ego is as if "tamed," and becomes but another echo in the mind. From the standpoint of the witness, the ego, the emotions, and the so-called "soul," are all massively immense processes of biological systems which are intricately interdependent such that causality is impossible to suss out. Everything causes everything, but the witness YET REMAINS UNTOUCHED by any of it. It is beyond doingness. Therefore: we see that this status of "witness" is a much purer state of transcendence -- this is where the witness is seen as the sole identity, and the personality is seen as if it were some character in a dream -- being had by a smart ape or meat robot (your choice.) Now, as witness only, meaning itself has been "gone beyond," in that the witness no longer can be allured to identify with an ego and all its trappings -- the witness has zero desires, is eternal and infinite, and consciousness, by comparison, is an insane cacophony of merely an "almost infinite" ocean of Rorschach patterns upon which ANY meaning can be projected. Third definition: With the death of the body/mind, the witness, which is half real and half illusory, also disappears. The real part of it is called awareness -- not consciousness. When solely pure awareness is all that remains, even time and space have been transcended. Every form of "real" is but a potentiality of awareness, but expression is zero -- awareness is not an expression, not an experience of a nervous system, not a result of consciousness. It is -- all else seems. The ancients tell us: from this awareness comes ALL THIS, yet awareness never becomes illusory, never becomes dual, never becomes "a part of" what is commonly called "reality" by those who have not yet discovered the levels of transcendence. To see the utter interconnectedness of all things is to reveal the illusion that they are truly separate entities. Clarity about this fact results in an experience of unity. Typically only monks etc. have had the time to dwell within themselves enough to discover and enliven the above truths such that their hearts and intellects could act upon them. Such personalities are called saints. Some folks are blessed at birth with a heightened ability to learn how to transcend, but most folks are chasing the carrots on sticks and "devoting" time to such a quest is easily abandoned in today's hectic modernity.
