I am sure you might have read the word transcendence somewhere or at least heard somebody talking about it. The moment people hear about it, they go into some sort of imagination because for them this is just a fanciful word with no existential meaning. However, if you look carefully, there is no person in the world who has not had a taste of it. In some way, each one of us has known it at some point in time. Whether we were aware of it or not, that’s a different question. The only challenge with people is that they experience it and as soon as they experience, they seem to lose it at the same time. For people, with every happy moment, there is always a fear of loss attached to it which is unfortunate. In this article, I would talk particularly about transcendence so that all of us can experientially realize what it really means and how it can become one of the greatest possibilities in terms of living a peaceful, happy and joyous life.

The meaning of Transcendence: This simply means to consciously obliterate the boundaries of our own physicality, i.e when our experience of life is not limited to just our physical body and mind, then that experience is referred to as Transcendence. You might have seen that many times I have used this phrase, Going beyond the body and mind. When you experientially realize that there is something in your life which is more fundamental than just being a body and the mind, that’s what we refer to as Transcendence.

I know for many people it would be difficult to grasp, so let me take real-life examples from our day to day life so that they can identify with what I am talking about.

• Love is the best example of the experience of Transcendence. Love blossoms when two people experience a deep sense of unity within themselves. I am sure you must have heard that phrase, Two bodies, and one life. Now this is metaphorically used almost everywhere in the world. But if you look at the nature of this sentence, then you will realize that people are actually referring to the experience of transcendence. Two people who are in love with each other, in their life, they don’t experience themselves as separate. Although their bodies may be separate; in their experience, there is a strong bond of something which is deeper than just the physicality. If you ask me, I would not even call it an emotion, because True Love just simply exists, True Love Doesn’t need the backing of an emotion to sustain it. When you are truly in Love, your bodies don’t matter anymore, you are ready to keep your mindset aside. And there are various other aspects which kind of realign themselves in order to sustain your love. That’s what Transcendence is.
• If you are a woman & have been a mother, then you are not devoid of a transcendent experience. Even when the baby is in mother’s womb, there is a strange bond which a woman develops with the baby. The experience of love, emotion, and care which a mother displays for her baby is not merely a physical act, this is the outpouring of the inherent quality of unbounded love which she has for the baby. Because the feminine quality is more dominant in Women, it makes them more empowered to have a transcendent experience. Having said that, this doesn’t mean that men cannot have it; for sure they can because ultimately there is no human being on this planet who was born just like that. Only when the masculine and feminine energies come together, a Human being is born. So this possibility is equally open to the entire humanity irrespective of their gender.
• Music is also one of the most important ingredients which lead to the experience of transcendence in someone’s life. I am sure each one of you who is reading this article, you have your favorite songs which you love to listen when you are free or you are in a certain mood. The moment your favorite piece of music is played, suddenly you become calm and peaceful. As you keep listening to the music which you like, suddenly you would lose the sense of time, suddenly you wouldn’t know where you are. The music literally takes you to a different dimension of experience. When that happens, That’s the experience of transcendence. I have heard people talking about ‘Trans Music’. The word Trans itself has been derived from Transcendence, which means to go beyond. A logical mind can never understand what this going beyond means because logical mind tries to dissect everything and then try to know. That’s a wrong approach when it comes to life. You can experience transcendence only when you include somebody or something as a part of you.
• When you are deeply involved in any activity (Be it a physical or mental) that could also lead to the experience of transcendence. I am sure this has happened with almost everybody. Let’s say you were working on a project and that project was very dear to you. You started working on that project and as you involved yourself more and more you found that you got deeply engrossed in it. For a filmmaker the project could be making a movie, for an artist, it could be creating a piece of music, for a painter it could be painting a picture, for a housewife it could be as simple as cooking. You will find that when you get deeply involved with an activity which you love to do, then that gives you a great sense of peacefulness and fulfillment. Many times when you get involved in your work, you don’t know when the whole night passed by and you even missed your dinner. Similarly, there are many instances where you go beyond your usual day to day life experiences. These experiences are also one of the forms which lead you towards transcendence.

Now if you carefully look at all of the above-mentioned examples, you will find that there is a common thread which binds all of them. You will find that in all of these experiences, you are not paying any attention to the grosser aspects of your life which is the case otherwise. When you are really in Love and in a sense of union with somebody else, do you think, Oh, this is too much love, let me save it for future? The answer is NO. Once you are in a state of love you want to expand it more and more. You want to go deeper into this aspect of life. And if you are thinking of saving your love for future, then you are not in love, you are still in a transaction mode thinking how much to give and how much to take. Similarly, when you listen to a beautiful piece of music, does your mind has to play any role in that? The answer is No. If you say, yes mind plays a role, then you are simply saying that I am not interested in the beauty of the music. That’s a clear sign that you don’t really care about the music, the music is just an object of observation for you which you want to logically dissect and understand. In doing so, you will totally miss the point of life. If you invest just a little bit of your time in Yoga and Meditation, then being in a transcendent state will be the natural way of your life. Transcendence happens to you when you are happy and joyous within yourself. If you think your life is important to you, then you must spend some time understanding the nature of it. Once you understand and experientially realize it’s nature, the experience of transcendence cannot be denied to you……!

Peace & Love!

🙂