Transcendence

“ Yea, we bless thee that thou art the substance of things material, the motion of all that moves, the spirituality of what is spirit, the life of all that lives, and while thou occupiest the world of matter and the world of man, yet transcendest even our transcendence, and hast thine arms around this dusty world, this spiritual sphere, and the souls of good men made perfect. ”

“ By His transcendence is meant—not as is sometimes represented—that He is outside and views the universe from beyond and above, but that He is not shut up in it or limited by it, not required in His totality to maintain and order it. ”

“ But the conception of transcendence is capable of taking two forms. It may be that of a God who passes beyond all the classes into which sensible phenomena are divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind, cognizable only by mind ”

“ All these, and the calm, strong, far-reaching life that these imply and contain, are the rich experiences of the transcendent man, along with all the new and varied resources, the vast powers, the quickened abilities, and enlarged capacities that spring to life in the new consciousness.
Transcendence is transcendent virtue. Evil and good cannot dwell together. ”

“ If one wants the ultimate truth regarding what motive it is that forces us to transcend our fragmentary experience, in idea if not in fact, and to seek in the beyond for something missing in the stream of consciousness, nowhere can one better satisfy one’s curiosity than in taking account of this aspect of experience and of this motive in favour of transcendence. ”

“ But such accomplishments alone have never satisfied the human spirit, whose mysterious nature inclines it towards transcendence, a reaching towards an invisible realm, towards the ultimate reality, that unknowable essence of essences called God. ”

“ And of the theologian we feel that he gives us the grammar, not the spirit, that he does not help us toward the supremely important act of experiencing, but only to understanding experience if we chance to have had it.
One word on the problem of transcendence. The mystic will tell us that transcendence is a hall-mark of religion at its highest. His mode of experience transcends normal experience; things of everyday life become surcharged with new, transcendent values; he has transcended from a plane of disharmony to one of harmony. ”

“ He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that centre, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow nor misery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, the reality, there is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless, He the Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to everyone what he deserves. ”

“ But how dost thou transcend all? In what way dost thou transcend those beings which will have no end? Is it because they cannot exist at all without thee; while thou art in no wise less, if they should return to nothingness? ”

“ He, nearest of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my soul.—I am Thee and Thou art Me. That is your own nature. Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already. Every good thought which you think or act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the Infinity, the God behind, manifests itself—the eternal Subject of everything, the eternal Witness in this universe, your own Self. Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degradation. ”

“ What would the soul in its perfection mirror? Would it reflect within itself the myriad life of humanity? Would the spirit mirror the heavens, and the imaginations of the Divine Mind well up within it in mystic and transcendental ideations? ”

“ Through the power of Thy transcendent might lift me up unto the heaven of Thy holiness, O Source of my being, and by the breezes of Thine eternity gladden me, O Thou Who art my God! Let Thine everlasting melodies breathe tranquillity on me, O my Companion, and let the riches of Thine ancient countenance deliver me from all except Thee, O my Master, and let the tidings of the revelation of Thine incorruptible Essence bring me joy, O Thou Who art the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden! ”

“ Into his spiritual sight will come the Principles of the divine Life, and as he approaches them, their incomparable beauty and majestic symmetry will astonish his vision, and gladden his heart with a gladness hitherto unknown. ”

“ By means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful.
“The soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. If we will, we can turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence. ”

“ What dignity, what grandeur, what Divine nobility there would be in every thought, in every word, in every deed of all our life on earth, were the consciousness ever glowing in our hearts that we too came from God and are going back to God! ”

“ Yet are they fitting to the time; it brings
Unnumbered thoughts like these! The human soul
Created in God’s image seems to share
In His infinity. Evolving thought,
For ever growing, can within it dwell,
And oft ascending and ascending still
To higher points of elevated Truth,
View things around it with extended glance,
And with more god-like insight. What can fill
Its vast capacity, or quench the thirst
It bears for knowledge. It was born to rise
For ever upward into brighter light! ”

“ So, according to the Transcendentalist, the spiritual being of man—which apparently is a heap of lifeless ashes on the surface [Pg 200] of material existence—when graciously shone upon by knowledge and love, puts on divine attributes, glows with beauty, palpitates with joy, gives out flashes of power, distils odors of sanctity, and exhibits the marks of a celestial grace. ”

“ But to enter the spiritual is not simply to provide those essentials through which we may realize the ideal in the physical and the mental; to enter the spiritual is to enter another and a greater world—the transcendent kingdom of the soul—the sublime world of cosmic consciousness. ”

“ Beneath our experience of life which changes there is this great Living Essence. "I am that I am," profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with whom is no beginning of experience or purpose, yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will. ”

“ One step beyond self.—Behind the veil of self shines unseen the beauty of the Beloved.— (Aphorisms.)
Soul of the soul! Neither thought nor reason comprehend thy essence, and no one knows thy attributes. Souls have no idea of thy being. The prophets themselves sink into the dust before thee. Although intellect exists by thee, has it ever found the path of thy existence? Thou art the interior and the exterior of the soul.— (Attar.) ”

“ It seemed like a monitor from heaven sent to calm my troubled soul by leading it to that eternal sense of Beauty which is the source of all inspiration, forming an indissoluble bond between man and his Creator; as it is through it the divine perceptions are shadowed forth in visible types of the Infinite, and recognized by a corresponding artistic combination of the immortal attributes of the human soul. ”

“ The heart in its own purity, tenderness, and strength recognizes the Divine Presence. "The soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it." The order of physical nature is the symbol and the instrument of a moral order. The beauty and sublimity of nature are the manifestation through sense of the Divine Reality. ”

“ Then, the actual unchanging ground of life, the eternal and unconditioned Whole, transcending all succession: a world inaccessible alike to senses and intelligence, but felt--vaguely, darkly, yet intensely--by the quiet and surrendered consciousness. ”

“ It has excluded from us the grace, the beauty, the light, the liberty, the eternity of the spirit, and prevented us from recognizing ourselves as integral parts of the universe and of the causes which sustain it and sustain us. ”

“ Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He [God] ... chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him--a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. ”

“ But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who would wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morning of the real—this transition from life as it is imagined through hopes and dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? ”

“ And when the sanctified souls rend asunder the veils of all earthly attachments and worldly conditions, and hasten to the stage of gazing on the beauty of the Divine Presence and are honoured by recognizing the Manifestation and are able to witness the splendour of God’s Most Great Sign in their hearts, then will the purpose of creation, which is the knowledge of Him Who is the Eternal Truth, become manifest. ”

“ And the enfranchised intellect, who can guess the grandeur of its destiny—what new provinces of thought, new discoveries of truth, new revelations of science, new disclosures of the mysteries of nature and of God? And the spirit—the ransomed and purified spirit—who can imagine what perfection of love, what affluence of joy, what transports of worship and of song, what society and fellowship with the saints in light, it shall enjoy when it has entered its eternal rest? ”

“ Let excellence be reckoned by thee as the body, contemplation as the soul. The two [form] one complete spiritual man, composed of sensible and intelligible parts. And as it is not possible that the soul reach existence and birth without the accomplished formation of the body, so it is not possible that contemplation, the second soul, the spirit of revelations, be formed in the womb of the intellect which receives the fulness of spiritual seed, without the corporeal performance of excellence, the dwellingplace of the knowledge which receives revelations. ”

“ Upon that achievement it built an unprecedented form of life, a super-“natural” edifice of infinite power, as yet but dimly realized, but which in its full beauty and perfection will be nothing less than Divine. ”

“ How to assert the eternal and objective reality of that Presence, the consciousness of Whom is alike the beginning and the end, the motive and the reward, of the religious experience, is not altogether clear in an age that, for over two centuries, has more and more rejected the transcendental ideas of the human understanding. ”

“ Thy soul has infinite relations with this God, which thou canst never realize in thy being, or manifest in thy practical life, save by a devout reverence for him, and his miraculous, awful universe. This reverence, this deep, abiding religious feeling, is the only link which binds us to the Infinite. ”

“ We recognize in the manifestation of each one of them, whether outwardly or inwardly, the manifestation of none but God Himself, if ye be of those that comprehend. Every one of them is a mirror of God, reflecting naught else but His Self, His Beauty, His Might and Glory, if ye will understand. All else besides them are to be regarded as mirrors capable of reflecting the glory of these Manifestations Who are themselves the Primary Mirrors of the Divine Being, if ye be not devoid of understanding. No one hath ever escaped them, neither are they to be hindered from achieving their purpose. ”

“ He who resolves that he will not rest satisfied with appearances, shadows, illusions shall, by the piercing light of that resolve, disperse every fleeting phantasy, and shall enter into the substance and reality of life. ”

“ What seems to be contemplation—that consciousness which the spirit acquires of itself, and, acquiring which, realises itself—is a creation: a creation not of things but of its own self. For what are things but the spirit as it is looked at abstractly in the multiplicity of its manifestations? ”

“ The worlds of spirit and of soul are co-eternal with the Absolute, the inevitable and unceasing expressions of its creative activity. The utterly transcendent Perfect manifests as Mind or Spirit (Nous) ; and this is the world of being. ”

“ He proclaimed the absolute vitality of nature, the endless change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual things in contrast with the eternal Being—the supreme harmony which rules over all. ”

“ Wherefore contemplative men should rise above reason and distinction, beyond their created substance, and gaze perpetually by the aid of their inborn light, and so they become transformed, and one with the same light, by means of which they see, and which they see. Thus they arrive at that eternal image after which they were created, and contemplate God and all things without distinction, in a simple beholding, in Divine glory. This is the loftiest and most profitable contemplation to which men attain in this life. ”

“ How much more reasonable is it to conceive the Divine Essence to subsist in a plurality of persons, and thus to conceive, consistently, of the eternal, immense, and immutable activity and happiness of the Divine Being? ”