Transcendence

Although it is a favorite word of mine, transcendence has its problematical aspects. It suggests a radical difference between two regions of reality when, in truth, the difference may simply be due to ignorance, thus to the limits of our innate perception.

This thought occurs to me—can occur—because I am a child of the twentieth century. In that time we’ve expanded our perceptions most notably into the virtually invisible regions of the electromagnetic, indeed we’ve managed to exploit the powers of that dimension effectively enough to give us a system of communications unthinkable in former times. We’ve also expanded our view into the extremely small so that we speak of the physicist’s view of the metal table—which becomes a network mostly of voids—and we have successfully released the force hidden in the core of the atom to stage the miracles of Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

Now it is a simple fact that familiarity will breed contempt, thus whatever we manage to understand—never mind control, exploit—loses is aura of mystery, leaves the transcendent realm and becomes just ordinary physics and ho-hum chemistry. Conversely, those who are committed to the notion that radical transcendence is genuinely real would here chide me for suggesting that electromagnetism be labeled transcendent in any sense at all. But why not? Merely because we’re able to control it? We’re able to control it only because we obey the laws that rule it, and then with great effort and skill. And neglecting precaution, we’ll be electrocuted.

The trend of my own thought these days is to see reality as seamless. To be sure, it depends on the day of the week: it’s difficult to shed old habits of interpretation. In this process I’ve retained my strong sense of dualism, but apply it across the board. Body and soul, yes. But I’d frame that more abstractly as a passive and an active principle, always everywhere interacting and everywhere constrained by law, thus by an Ultimate from which reality springs.

By passive I mean matter—but not necessarily only matter as we know it. It is governed by physical laws—but I’d speculate that we’re only seeing a range of those laws’ applicability; in other ranges they may be more forgiving to the action of minds than at this level. By active principle I mean agencies, minds. They are free but governed by moral law; call it karma. Being always associated with the passive principle, agencies are also governed by limitations placed on “matter”.

It’s a Tuesday so I’ll illustrate this more. On days like this it seems to me that these two principles are just as present at the subatomic level as anywhere else. There is the particle and its guiding wave—proposed to explain the paradoxes of the two-slit experiments in physics. There is a guiding intelligence within the living cell where chemical civilization builds its astonishing structures. It’s there in us as soul. And angels too have bodies of some subtle kind and thus are not, using an ancient hierarchical schema, “pure” intelligences. And we’ll experience the familiar passive principle in a more rarified form after we die and cross the border into another range of perception. But no, I won’t drop the word “transcendence” just yet. It’s an old, old friend. And I know what I mean when I use it.