Religion has no monopoly on transcendent experience

[Magical Realist]

LOL! You're the last person I'm going to accept any advice on spirituality from. You wouldn't know transcendent if it slapped you in the face.

Says the atheist.  

See? You have no concept of how spirituality can exist separately from theism. That's how stunted you are.

I'm not sure you even understand the word, considering your "spiritually transcendent" experience....that makes you feel insignificant. Sounds more like nihilism.  

So says the moron whose concept of cosmic transcendence is an invisible man in the sky.

[Secular Sanity]

I've had a couple of those panontic mystical moments in my own life. My encounter with the Grand Canyon was one. Being on the cusp of a summer thunderstorm. Looking out over the Atlantic from my ship at the gigantic mountain of the Azores looming over the horizon. One is humbled and dazed by such vastness. A sense of presence to some force or reality hugely beyond your own life going on indifferently to you. A universe that could smash you like a bug if it had a mind to but that somehow enters your flickering microscopic experience.

None of that sound anything like a transcendent religious experience.  

Transcendent experiences are life-affirming, not life-negating.

What are you talking about?  The Grand Canyon could easily provoke a state of self-transcendence. The capacity for awe requires us to accommodate the vastness, and consequently reduces our tolerance for uncertainty, which automatically increases our agency detection.  To be aware of your insignificance and mortality isn’t necessarily nihilistic.  It’s a blessing.

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would create such a complex and fancy worm food?
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

To have emerged from nothing and to know?  Aw, poor little guy.  All dressed up with no place to go.  

Life and death:  two thoughts clashing creates tension, but terror?  Really, Becker?

No. This is the terror: ETERNITY!

Lest he put forth his hand and live forever.

Our mortality itself provokes envy from the gods.

[Magical Realist]

What are you talking about? The Grand Canyon could easily provoke a state of self-transcendence. The capacity for awe requires us to accommodate the vastness, and consequently reduces our tolerance for uncertainty, which automatically increases our agency detection. To be aware of your insignificance and mortality isn’t necessarily nihilistic. It’s a blessing.

Precisely. The sense of transcendence, in one of its many modes, is when you experience something so beyond yourself it makes you feel miniscule by comparison., Contemplating the vast stretches of starry space has that same effect. Syne is just nitpicking in his usual asshole mode. Feeling insignificant isn't nihilism. It's reality. I simply expressed the awe and wonderment I feel in the presence of nature's majesty. The only negating going on here is his own pathetic attempt to invalidate my personal experience.

[Syne]

So says the moron whose concept of cosmic transcendence is an invisible man in the sky.

Says the degenerate who conflates theism with religion...even though theism (belief in a god) was never mentioned and religion includes spirituality.

I don't believe in a single personified deity. But you know that if you weren't such an ignorant bigot.

I've had a couple of those panontic mystical moments in my own life. My encounter with the Grand Canyon was one. Being on the cusp of a summer thunderstorm. Looking out over the Atlantic from my ship at the gigantic mountain of the Azores looming over the horizon. One is humbled and dazed by such vastness. A sense of presence to some force or reality hugely beyond your own life going on indifferently to you. A universe that could smash you like a bug if it had a mind to but that somehow enters your flickering microscopic experience.

None of that sound anything like a transcendent religious experience.

Transcendent experiences are life-affirming, not life-negating.

What are you talking about? The Grand Canyon could easily provoke a state of self-transcendence. The capacity for awe requires us to accommodate the vastness, and consequently reduces our tolerance for uncertainty, which automatically increases our agency detection. To be aware of your insignificance and mortality isn’t necessarily nihilistic. It’s a blessing.

Precisely. The sense of transcendence, in one of its many modes, is when you experience something so beyond yourself it makes you feel miniscule by comparison., Contemplating the vast stretches of starry space has that same effect. Syne is just nitpicking in his usual asshole mode. Feeling insignificant isn't nihilism. It's reality. I simply expressed the awe and wonderment I feel in the presence of nature's majesty. The only negating going on here is his own pathetic attempt to invalidate my personal experience.

Both of you seem to be conflating awe with the transcendent....likely because neither of you have experienced the latter.
Compare:

transcendent
1 a : exceeding usual limits : surpassing
b : extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience
c in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge
2 : being beyond comprehension
3 : transcending the universe or material existence

and:

awe
1 : an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime

Both of you fail to mention any qualities expressed in the OP article:

In 1969, the British writer Philip Pullman was walking down the Charing Cross Road in London, when his consciousness abruptly shifted. It appeared to him that ‘everything was connected by similarities and correspondences and echoes’. The author of the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials (1995-2000) wasn’t on drugs, although he had been reading a lot of books on Renaissance magic. But he told me he believes that his insight was valid, and that ‘my consciousness was temporarily altered, so that I was able to see things that are normally beyond the range of routine ordinary perception’. He had a deep sense that the Universe is ‘alive, conscious and full of purpose’. He says: ‘Everything I’ve written has been an attempt to bear witness to the truth of that statement.’
...
The most common word used when describing such experiences is ‘connection’ – we briefly shift beyond our separate self-absorbed egos, and feel deeply connected to other beings, or to all things.
- https://aeon.co/essays/religion-has-no-m...experience

Instead of "connection" and "purpose", you find "indifference" and "insignificance". Sounds wholly empty.

[Magical Realist]

"awe
[aw]
Spell Syllables
Synonyms Examples Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
noun
1.
an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like:

2.

Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence."

Sounds exactly like the transcendence I experienced. Not that you would know a thing about being humbled by the awe-inspiring.

"Think about a time you’ve experienced awe. Maybe you were gazing up at a massive mountain range, or looking down into the depths of an infant’s eyes, or watching lightning as it seemed to crack the sky open. Maybe you felt humbled, or shaken; maybe you were struck by the vastness of the universe and your own tiny part in it. Psychologists consider awe a form of “self-transcendence”: you temporarily blur at the edges, feeling a connection to something greater than yourself."---http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/sci...f-awe.html

Who said I didn't feel connected to the transcendental? How could I not feel connected to it while experiencing its very presence?

"Scientists have analyzed the statements that astronauts have made when they see Earth from above, and landed on a common, powerful theme: a sense of awe and transcendence.

David Yaden, a research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, examined the quotations from astronauts that appeared in places like interviews or books.

The awe the scientists detected “seems to be triggered by viewing Earth from orbit,” Yaden told FoxNews.com. “It seemed to be this unique context for triggering this very overwhelming experience.”

While feelings of awe and transcendence— a connection to something much bigger— are frequently associated with religion, what’s interesting about awe in spaceflight, Yaden said, is that it occurs in a scientific, secular context.

Awe gets triggered, Yaden said, when people perceive a sense of vastness. In space flight, that happens in two ways— both perceptually, in terms of what the astronauts actually see, and conceptually."----http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/2...g-awe.html

[Secular Sanity]

Both of you seem to be conflating awe with the transcendent....likely because neither of you have experienced the latter.

You’re talking about ego-dissolution, oneness with the universe, that sort of thing, right?  The "experience" is not a single entity resulting from a single cause.  

Religious Experience
Religious Ecstasy
Altered State of Consciousness
Your Brain on LSD

Our brain is embodied in matter.  In that sense, we are a part of the universe, and we are conscious entities, but we’re not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.  Even simple single cell organisms interact and obtain information on the state of their environment. Nothing to do with God, though. 

I don't believe in a single personified deity.

You're altering the definition, moving the goalposts.  When are you going to stop playing the game and drop the ball, Syne?

I am who I am

That I am who I am
That I am who I am!
I do not like that I am who I am
If we find him when we search
Would you like him in a church?
We will not find him when we search
I would not like him in a church!
Would like him in a disguise?
Would you like him if he was wise?
I would not like him in a disguise.
I would not like him if he was wise.
What if he was love, knowledge, or arts
or greater than sum of his parts?
I would not like him in our hearts
I do not like any parts
I do not like his fits and starts!
What if he was within range
with just a dash of semantic change?
I do not like semantic change
I do not like it!  It is strange!!!
Would you like him as a lamb?
How would you like I am who I am?
Would you like him in a hearse?
Would you like him as the universe?
Not in a hearse
Not as the universe
Not as a lamb.  It is a goddam scam!!!
I will not accept I am who I am.

Take a look at Tillich’s definition.  He’s even taken "The Courage to be" as a "God above God", which supposedly transcends the theistic idea of God.  

Transtheism  

JesusFuckingChrist!  Why can’t we toss out all of these pre-packaged ideologies and do away with isms altogether? No one killed God, not even Nietzsche. Secularism may be couched in rational language, but it, too, is cloaked in sacred cloth. 

[Syne]

"awe
[aw]
Spell  Syllables
Synonyms Examples Word Origin
See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
noun
1.
an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like:

2.

Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence."

Sounds exactly like the transcendence I experienced. Not that you would know a thing about being humbled by the awe-inspiring.

Exactly, you really think awe and the transcendent are the same. Sad, but thanks for verifying your conflation. Again, where is the "connection" and "sense of purpose" mentioned in the OP...or other actual descriptions of transcendent experiences?

"Think about a time you’ve experienced awe. Maybe you were gazing up at a massive mountain range, or looking down into the depths of an infant’s eyes, or watching lightning as it seemed to crack the sky open. Maybe you felt humbled, or shaken; maybe you were struck by the vastness of the universe and your own tiny part in it. Psychologists consider awe a form of “self-transcendence”: you temporarily blur at the edges, feeling a connection to something greater than yourself."---http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/sci...f-awe.html

LOL! What, couldn't be bothered to read any more of that article than what you thought affirmed your existing bias? O_o

"In his research, White found that many of the astronauts had undergone “truly transformative experiences including senses of wonder and awe, unity with nature, transcendence and universal brotherhood.”" - http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/sci...f-awe.html

See how they list the various experiences? O_o
See where "awe" and "transcendence" are separate entries?

Who said I didn't feel connected to the transcendental? How could I not feel connected to it while experiencing its very presence?

If you actually felt connected, you would have felt vast rather than insignificant. Poor thing, do you even see in color?

"Scientists have analyzed the statements that astronauts have made when they see Earth from above, and landed on a common, powerful theme: a sense of awe and transcendence.

David Yaden, a research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, examined the quotations from astronauts that appeared in places like interviews or books.

The awe the scientists detected “seems to be triggered by viewing Earth from orbit,” Yaden told FoxNews.com. “It seemed to be this unique context for triggering this very overwhelming experience.”

While feelings of awe and transcendence— a connection to something much bigger— are frequently associated with religion, what’s interesting about awe in spaceflight, Yaden said, is that it occurs in a scientific, secular context.

Awe gets triggered, Yaden said, when people perceive a sense of vastness. In space flight, that happens in two ways— both perceptually, in terms of what the astronauts actually see, and conceptually."----http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/2...g-awe.html

OMG! You've resorted to Fox News.

Again, awe and transcendence are two different things, and he only talks about the former in relation to "secular context":

"While feelings of awe and transcendence— a connection to something much bigger— are frequently associated with religion, what’s interesting about awe in spaceflight, Yaden said, is that it occurs in a scientific, secular context. "

---

As for "Psychologists consider awe a form of “self-transcendence”":

"Self-transcendence is a personality trait associated with experiencing spiritual ideas[1] such as considering oneself an integral part of the universe. It is one of the "character" dimensions of personality assessed in Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory. Self-transcendence is distinctive as the first trait concept of a spiritual nature to be incorporated into a major theory of personality...Although there has not been a great deal of research into the validity of self-transcendence as a measure of spirituality, one study found that self-transcendence was significantly related to a number of areas of belief and experience that have been traditionally considered "spiritual"." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-transcendence

And:

"Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) was an American psychologist best known for creating a theory of psychological health known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
...
What is less well-known is that Maslow amended his model near the end of his life, and therefore the conventional portrayal of his hierarchy is inaccurate, as it omits a description of this later thought. In his later thinking, he argued that the we can experience the highest level of development, what he called self-transcendence, by focusing on some higher goal outside ourselves. Examples include altruism, or spiritual awakening or liberation from egocentricity. Here is how he put it:

"Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos. (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, New York, 1971, p. 269.)""
- http://reasonandmeaning.com/2017/01/18/s...scendence/

Again, connection and purpose.

Both of you seem to be conflating awe with the transcendent....likely because neither of you have experienced the latter.

You’re talking about ego-dissolution, oneness with the universe, that sort of thing, right?  The "experience" is not a single entity resulting from a single cause.  

Religious Experience
Religious Ecstasy
Altered State of Consciousness
Your Brain on LSD

Our brain is embodied in matter.  In that sense, we are a part of the universe, and we are conscious entities, but we’re not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.  Even simple single cell organisms interact and obtain information on the state of their environment. Nothing to do with God, though. 

LOL! Notice your last two make no mention of transcendence.

And no, I'm not talking some Buddhist pamphlet selflessness. Again, you're talking "dissolution", which is an antonym of "connection", where transcendence is more an enveloping by the ego (in pop-Buddhist terms).

I don't believe in a single personified deity.

You're altering the definition, moving the goalposts.  When are you going to stop playing the game and drop the ball, Syne?

No, I was countering MR's bigoted "invisible man in the sky" crap. Are you trying to argue that an "invisible man in the sky" is NOT a "single personified deity"? O_o

I am who I am

I can only assume your misquote of the phrase is just your secular derision creeping in. No wonder you conflate awe as the closest thing you can experience to transcendence.

Take a look at Tillich’s definition.  He’s even taken "The Courage to be" as a "God above God", which supposedly transcends the theistic idea of God.  

There's good reason that Aquinas is well known and Tillich is not.

Contemporary New Age catchphrases describing God (spatially) as the "Ground of Being" and (temporally) as the "Eternal Now,"[54] in tandem with the view that God is not an entity among entities but rather is "Being-Itself"—notions which Eckhart Tolle, for example, has invoked repeatedly throughout his career[55]—were paradigmatically renovated by Tillich, although of course these ideas derive from Christian mystical sources as well as from ancient and medieval theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
...
Martin Buber criticized Tillich's "transtheistic position" as a reduction of God to the impersonal "necessary being" of Thomas Aquinas.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich#Reception

Seems mostly recycled.

JesusFuckingChrist!  Why can’t we toss out all of these pre-packaged ideologies and do away with isms altogether? No one killed God, not even Nietzsche. Secularism may be couched in rational language, but it, too, is cloaked in sacred cloth. 

"The death of God didn’t strike Nietzsche as an entirely good thing. Without a God, the basic belief system of Western Europe was in jeopardy, as he put it in Twilight of the Idols: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole.”" - http://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/wha...od-is-dead

Humans are fundamentally significance creators. You may wish to sterilize that as "pattern recognizers" or something, but no staid phrase seems to capture the inherent creativity in man's desire and search for meaning.

[Magical Realist]

See how they list the various experiences? O_o
See where "awe" and "transcendence" are separate entries?

No I don't see that, especially after they just defined awe as a self-transcendence. lol! Just admit that in your excited haste to bash someone's personal transcendental experience you fucked up again. Awe and transcendence are intimately related and part of the same experience. I just proved it with two references. And I'll prove it again with a third one.

Again, awe and transcendence are two different things, and he only talks about the former in relation to "secular context":

"While feelings of awe and transcendence— a connection to something much bigger— are frequently associated with religion, what’s interesting about awe in spaceflight, Yaden said, is that it occurs in a scientific, secular context. "

Nope. They're described as referring to the same thing and as giving one a sense of connection to the universe. You lose again.

"If you want to feel transcendent, you can fly to space and get a dose of the overview effect. Or head to a monastery and do some meditating. Or trek up a mountain and take in the landscape. Or, like David Yaden, a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, you can wander down to your local body of water — the Delaware River, in his case — and catch the sunset. “It’s not a stunning overview, but there’s beauty to it,” he says, and enough to inspire awe. This is part of a healthy phenomenological diet, he maintains; as his and others’ research has found, experiences like awe — called “self-transcendent” in the literature — have all sorts of positive consequences for the people who get into them...

STEs ( self-transcendent experiences} tend to have two distinct yet interconnected qualities: They are both relational and annihilational. The relational bit is the interconnectedness that you get with awe or flow; consider the “oneness” you felt at your last good concert, sports match, or protest. The annihilational component is how these STEs have a way of making you feel tiny compared to the immensity of the ocean, space, music, or whatever medium your mind is caught up in; they also have a tendency to dissolve the sense of self. Awe provides these qualities, but at a less intense, and possibly more palatable level, than a full-blown mystical adventure. “It’s not unfortunate that [awe] is the gateway drug,” Yaden says. To further the research of STEs, Yaden is building a database of people’s experiences with them — if you’d like to add yours, head here."----http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/03/why...r-you.html

[Syne]

See how they list the various experiences? O_o
See where "awe" and "transcendence" are separate entries?

No I don't see that, especially after they just defined awe as a self-transcendence. lol! Just admit that in your excited haste to bash someone's personal transcendental experience you fucked up again. Awe and transcendence are intimately related and part of the same experience. I just proved it with two references. And I'll prove it again with a third one.

Of course you don't see the obvious...but swear by aliens, UFOs, and ghosts.

Self-transcendence as assessed in the Temperament and Character Inventory originally had three subscales,[2] but two more were later added:[3]

Self-forgetful vs. self-conscious experience.
Transpersonal identification vs. self-isolation.
Spiritual acceptance vs. rational materialism.
Enlightened vs. objective
Idealistic vs. practical

An independent study found that the five subscales proposed by Cloninger were difficult to replicate using factor analysis and suggested that the self-transcendence scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory is better represented by four sub-dimensions:[3]

Spiritual and religious beliefs (e.g. belief in the existence of a higher power)
Unifying interconnectedness (i.e. an experienced sense of connection with other living beings, the environment, and a higher power)
Belief in the supernatural (e.g. belief in paranormal phenomena, such as extrasensory perception)
Dissolution of Self in experience (e.g. absorption, or a loss of sense of separate self while immersed in experience).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-trans...Components

Secularists naively assuming awe and transcendence are the same tried and failed to reliably measure it without relation to religious beliefs.

If they're the same, why are "indifference" and "insignificance" so contrary to "purpose" and "connection"? You don't know because you have no clue. And if they are the same, you are claiming that any experience of awe is, defacto, also transcendent...like the awe of something as crass as meeting a celebrity. Again, that sure is a pathetic excuse for transcendent.

And yet again, what you consider "proof" is laughable.

Again, awe and transcendence are two different things, and he only talks about the former in relation to "secular context":

"While feelings of awe and transcendence— a connection to something much bigger— are frequently associated with religion, what’s interesting about awe in spaceflight, Yaden said, is that it occurs in a scientific, secular context. "

Nope. They're described as referring to the same thing and as giving one a sense of connection to the universe. You lose again.

"If you want to feel transcendent, you can fly to space and get a dose of the overview effect. Or head to a monastery and do some meditating. Or trek up a mountain and take in the landscape. Or, like David Yaden, a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, you can wander down to your local body of water — the Delaware River, in his case — and catch the sunset. “It’s not a stunning overview, but there’s beauty to it,” he says, and enough to inspire awe. This is part of a healthy phenomenological diet, he maintains; as his and others’ research has found, experiences like awe — called “self-transcendent” in the literature — have all sorts of positive consequences for the people who get into them...

Nope, you're just trying to justify your own sorry excuse for an understanding of transcendence with other similarly sorry secular justifications. Nothing more.

STEs  ( self-transcendent experiences} tend to have two distinct yet interconnected qualities: They are both relational and annihilational. The relational bit is the interconnectedness that you get with awe or flow; consider the “oneness” you felt at your last good concert, sports match, or protest. The annihilational component is how these STEs have a way of making you feel tiny compared to the immensity of the ocean, space, music, or whatever medium your mind is caught up in; they also have a tendency to dissolve the sense of self. Awe provides these qualities, but at a less intense, and possibly more palatable level, than a full-blown mystical adventure. “It’s not unfortunate that [awe] is the gateway drug,” Yaden says. To further the research of STEs, Yaden is building a database of people’s experiences with them — if you’d like to add yours, head here."----http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/03/why...r-you.html

LOL! "concert, sports match, or protest" are all circumstances of herd behavior....again, losing yourself passing as connection among the secular. And notice how he says "Awe provides these qualities, but at a less intense, and possibly more palatable level, than a full-blown mystical adventure" and then only references instances of awe while seeming to avoid the "full-blown" transcendent.

But go right ahead and keep trying to convince yourself that your simple awe is somehow more significant.

[Magical Realist]

LOL! You're making an embarrassing fool out of yourself arguing against the undeniable. You lose chump..Now run along and go grovel before your god or whatever it is you think of as transcendence.