We need to look at
our culture’s view of transcendence. Our consumer-oriented life often conflicts
with the natural rhythms of the psyche obscuring our genuine needs and desires
that push us towards transcendent wisdom.
Culturally, secular society’s views on transcendence are negative.
Several times in
my psychotherapy practice, I have witnessed a client’s struggle with inner
yearning for the transcendent and the dictates of cultural conditioning. I had a
session with a client in which it was apparent to me that she was a yearning
for the transcendent. Yet, when I probed
further to see if I could take our work to a deeper and more spiritual level, I
heard the same complaints that I used to make myself. An example – a client was describing the
transcendent experience of being with her mother as she was dying. I asked her why she had raised it in the
current context, since we were not discussing this topic at that time. I queried – are you perhaps yearning to gain
that experience again? She replied – yes, but no – you’d have to take me off to
the looney bin! In other words, one cannot remain a functioning practical
person in our culture and allow oneself the luxury of a transcendent mind set. One had to keep one’s wits about oneself to
deal with life as it is in our culture.
There is a view
that somehow, transcendence is unnatural.
However, Buddhists would say that transcendence is natural:
P.53-54 “One of the greatest Buddhist traditions calls
the nature of the mind ‘the wisdom of ordinariness.’ I cannot say it enough:
Our true nature and the nature of all beings is not something extraordinary.
The irony is that it is our so-called ordinary world that is extraordinary, a
fantastic, elaborate hallucination of the deluded vision of samsara. It is this ‘extraordinary’ vision that blinds
us to the ‘ordinary,’ natural, inherent nature of mind. Imagine if the buddhas were looking down at
us now: How they would marvel sadly at the lethal ingenuity and intricacy of
our confusion!” Chogyal Rimpoche
In
today’s world indeed, for those who are spiritually inclined, there is a
constant struggle seeking the transcendent, yet staying present to the
immanent. The definitions of immanent are, from the Latin immanēre
to stay in remaining within; indwelling;
inherent - naturally part of something; existing throughout and
within something; inherent; integral; intrinsic; indwelling; restricted
entirely to the mind or a given domain; internal; subjective; (of Deity)
existing within and throughout the mind and the world; dwelling within and
throughout all things ... often used in tension with the term “transcendent,”
such that the God who is supremely elevated in majesty (i.e., is transcendent)
is at the same time actively involved in human affairs (i.e., immanent).
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