Religion has no monopoly on transcendent experience

(Jul 9, 2017 01:50 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Jul 9, 2017 05:04 AM)Syne Wrote:

(Jul 9, 2017 02:53 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Jul 8, 2017 11:14 PM)Syne Wrote: The concept of god sets the basis for things like objectivity and transcendence.

I don't understand.  How so?

Of course you don't, and I'm sure nothing I could say would ever enlighten you on the subject.
Science originally derived from religious ideas that the world was regular and fathomable enough to truly understand.
I've already explained the difference between awe and transcendence...which went completely over your head.

Semantics, it’s always semantics.  

Quote:Transcendence Without the Bull

A rush of powerful, transforming emotion. A bolt of altered perspective. A love that overwhelms. An unmediated encounter with pure beauty. A profound realization of significance—or insignificance.

When a humanist has a “wow” experience, by what name should we call it? Transcendence?

Transcendence is a word that makes many who embrace humanism and naturalism recoil. And for understandable reason, with its connotations to both supernaturalism and mumbo-jumbo. Can transcendence be expressed and understood in a way that is humanistic, rather than supernatural?

The answer is yes. For humanism to not explicitly embrace such experiences risks limiting humanism’s appeal and reducing its potential for personal meaning. If a culture does not provide explicit links between such profound experiences and a naturalistic interpretation, these powerful and possibly transformational experiences can easily be misinterpreted, by default, as being part of a provincial religious story.

The rush of naturalistic transcendence is available in several ways: when we glimpse universals, when we treasure particulars, and when we expand our consciousness. All these types of experiences can be both transcendent and fully understood as naturalistic phenomena in a naturalistic world.

One common understanding of transcendence is an encounter with a world beyond ourselves, beyond full comprehension. But why must this be interpreted as supernatural? A naturalistic world offers an abundance of experiences and understandings beyond our individual lives. There is deep time, extending unfathomably into the past and unfathomably into the future, with our entire lives constituting but a blip. There is deep space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies separated by incomprehensibly vast distances, in which Earth is but a speck. There are concepts of energy, mathematics, human history, and evolution. There is joy in the idea that consciousness even exists. There is the experience of love. Neither a deity nor a complete loss of individuality to a greater power is necessary to experience the grandeur of these great mysteries. There’s an awful lot that is bigger than any of us. And when we get it, really get it, when intellect and emotions come rushing together, transcendence seems a powerful word for that experience.

Quote:What a Transcendent Experience Really Means

This study is part of a growing body of work on what psychologists call “self-transcendent experiences.”

A new paper in the Review of General Psychology, “The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience,” defines these states as transient moments when people feel lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life, their sense of self fades away, and they feel connected to something bigger. In such states, people typically report feelings of awe and rapture; of time stopping; and of feeling a sense of unity with other people, nature, God, or the universe.

That was Janeen’s experience on psilocybin: “There was not one atom of myself,” she said, “that did not merge with the divine.”

Transcendence is a fundamental part of the human experience. Since the dawn of our species, people have been losing themselves in ritualistic prayer, song, and dance.

Mind-altering substances are one path to transcendence, but they’re not the only one. You can lose yourself in love, or feel awe watching a lightning storm from your porch. You can get into a state of flow at work, or take a break from the rush of everyday life by meditating. And these experiences exist on a spectrum, as Yaden points out: There are “major transcendent experiences,” where your sense of self completely dissolves and you feel at one with the universe — which is what Janeen experienced. And then there are more everyday experiences, like when you step outside of your head while listening to a beautiful piece of music, taking a walk through the woods, or attending a religious service. According to Yaden, most people have had some sort of transcendent experience at some point in their lives — and about a third of the population has had intense experiences of unity.

Quote:I’m asking and I’m listening, Syne.   Maybe it would help if you described your own personal experience.

Quote:I am the primary driving force in my transcendent experience.

(Jul 9, 2017 08:02 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:I am the primary driving force in my transcendent experience.

LOL! So when Syne beholds the vastness of the universe, he is impressed by his own vastness. Is this the narcissistic's version of transcendence?

Quote:No, it's called a life-affirming experience. You know, as opposed to your feeling of insignificance beholding an indifferent universe.

Quote:Again, being "impressed" is simple awe. I didn't mention any feeling of awe in my experience of such vastness

(Jul 10, 2017 12:12 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:No, it's called a life-affirming experience. You know, as opposed to your feeling of insignificance beholding an indifferent universe.

You mean as opposed to the feeling of awe and transcendence--the humbling contrast between the majesty and greatness of the cosmos and your own miniscule part in it. It has nothing to do with affirming your life. Attend a positive thinking seminar for that.

Quote:

Quote:Again, being "impressed" is simple awe. I didn't mention any feeling of awe in my experience of such vastness

Awe and wonderment and humility are the crucial emotions of a transcendent experience. If you didn't experience that, then you didn't experience transcendence. Which doesn't surprise me. You seem emotionally stunted to me..Most moralizing prigs are.

Quote:"Transcendence is the act of rising above something to a superior state." - https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/transcendence

But all your related experiences demonstrate you viewing a "superior state" from the outside or afar. That is simple awe - "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder."

(Jul 10, 2017 01:13 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:"Transcendence is the act of rising above something to a superior state." - https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/transcendence

But all your related experiences demonstrate you viewing a "superior state" from the outside or afar. That is simple awe - "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder."

Wrong. You are not the one doing the transcending in a transcendent experience. You are responding to a transcendent object. That is what is beyond you, in the superior state. And that's why awe and wonderment and humility are part of that experience. Empowerment isn't transcendence. You could probably talk alot about feeling powerful. Which is basically all you're doing. But you don't know shit about transcendence. This has been thoroughly made clear to you over and over again. But you still don't get it. If you haven't experienced it, then you will never understand it.

Quote:Objects are, by definition, mundane....not inherently transcendent. Claiming an object is transcendent is irrationally contradictory, since transcendent literally means "surpassing the ordinary; exceptional". You are not in the superior state unless you transcend the normal limits of something. If it's "beyond you", your state remains the same...or as you repeatedly relate...lesser or diminished.

(Jul 9, 2017 07:43 PM)Syne Wrote:

(Jul 9, 2017 01:50 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I’m asking and I’m listening, Syne.   Maybe it would help if you described your own personal experience.

Sure.
It's been decades since I've experienced anything akin to depression or even prolonged sadness. Part of the reason for this is because I had a personal epiphany that loneliness/sadness are largely the same experienced by everyone, which fostered a sense of connection that leaves little room for a feeling of personal self-pity.
While you may feel tiny or insignificant contemplating the vastness of the universe, I routinely view such vastness from the perspective of that vastness itself...not as greater than me, but as an extension of me.
These are experiences of significance and connection....as opposed to insignificance and indifference.
I am the primary driving force in my transcendent experience....rather than my environment or circumstances causing me to feel simple awe.