Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

Seeking Self-Transcendence:
A Uniquely Human Trait
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

The experience is ephemeral, nebulous, takes many forms; and it’s difficult to talk about with clarity: even though all of us have encountered it in one form or another; some of us with considerable intensity. Thoreau, for example: Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American pencil maker, surveyor, huckleberry picker, naturalist, poet, writer, lecturer, and general ne’er-do-well. A Harvard graduate, a some time hermit, a man who, as he put it, had traveled far in the neighborhood of his home town.

Still, it is apparent to me as I read what he set down on paper, that Thoreau knew experiences of self-transcendence with some frequency, (though he may never have used the term). I find that his experience resonates with my own. I know what he means to say, though the words can’t fully express it. He once stated it for me with some precision. Listen closely to what he said in a couple of brief, scattered passages.

“If for a moment we make way with our petty selves [if we set the self aside], wish no ill to anything, apprehend no ill, cease to be but as the crystal which reflects the ray — what shall we not reflect! What a universe will appear crystallized and radiant around us!.... We then realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”

A universe radiant around us and we realize the infinite extent of our relations with the cosmos. Thoreau’s observation here points to one of the peak experiences of self-transcendence. The language is still only suggestive rather than definitive. Elsewhere, in a single sentence, Thoreau reported a specific experience: “Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see the sap falling in large, clear drops from the wound.”

Why in the world would any man rejoice at seeing the sap dribble from a wounded maple tree? I would myself think that Thoreau rejoiced because, in that moment, he had, as he put it, set his self aside, wished no ill to anything, perceived no ill, became like a crystal which reflects a ray, and the universe appeared radiant around him as he realized where he was and the infinite extent of his relations with the cosmos. And, as a result, he rejoiced. “Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see the sap falling in large clear drops from the wound.”

However, as I expect you have noticed, even a specific and moving experience, when reported in words. then becomes abstract. What we say is inevitably more abstract than what see — or feel or sense. Everything we say is abstract, is not the whole, full, living experience itself, but a verbal skeleton of the experience itself. Words can’t tell others all that we know, and they can’t tell us what we want to know.

The fact is, if we are to be fully alive, aware, and in touch with reality, we must know much more than words can tell us. When we do expand our awareness in this way, we move toward self-transcendence.

II.
An extraordinary thing happened at one period in the development of human culture. It was a turning point, occurring in the six or seven hundred years preceding the death of Christ. We know from history that this development took place, but we still do not understand clearly how or why it came to be. It marked a key turning point in human cultural evolution.

By about 1000 BCE humans had clumped together in fertile river valleys at several places in the world, and had established complex civilizations in urban centers. This development occurred in parts of China, India, and the Near East. Societies developed that were in fundamental form much like the ones we live in today, with many of the same advantages, as well as similar problems. Both the advantages and the problems arose from the nature of large, complex social organization.

These civilizations were spread out across much of the earth, having little if any contact with each other. Yet, in many of them this cultural mutation occurred during that 700 year period. Each of these societies trained its people, as they grew up, to speak its language, adopt its world view, its ethical standards, and its life goals; to fit into a useful role somewhere in its complex hierarchical patterns of social organization. Just as we still do today.

Each society created a self in each of its people, a self that would generally mesh and merge with all its other members. This is how it is in any society: each one defines the kind of selves it requires to carry on its life, to ensure its survival. That’s how civilized life is structured, and is a major source of its vitality and creativity.

Yet, oddly enough, almost all of these ancient societies, in the thousand years before the death of Christ, produced at least a few remarkable individuals who somehow rose above their social conditioning, who developed within themselves a vision of a higher self than those already defined by their various societies. That is, instead of what might be called a “locally defined self,” these individuals conceived a kind of universal self, one that grew out of a relationship, not just to a single society but to existence as a whole. They were initiating a cultural mutation.

There was Buddha who appeared in India in the 7th century BCE, and, in the same period, the Hebrew prophets in Israel, then Lao-tze in China. Socrates emerged in 4th century Greece; and then later Jesus appeared, again in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets. The details of the teachings of these men varied somewhat, but the basic form was the same in each case. Each of the men examined the selves defined by their civilization, and found them wanting, found them inadequate, incomplete, lacking in life enhancing properties, in survival value. Each one had a vision of a new, more advanced self and of a pattern of ethical relationships that would create such selves over time, would create a higher level of existence.

When you look closely, you see that the import of the message of Jesus, Socrates, Buddha, Lao-tze, and the prophets alike is basically: if you seek the good life, transcend yourself. Don’t let yourself be trapped in the limited, distorted, crippled form your life in society created in you, a form that separates you from reality. You have greater potential than that. There is a far better and higher way of life than the one your society taught you, and if you live that higher way of life, you will transcend yourself.

As Lao-tze put it in the 6th century BCE: “Whoever follows the way of life feels alive... whereas he who loses the way of life feels lost.... Let life ripen and then fall; force is not the way at all: deny the way of life and you are dead.”

Basically, that is the form of the teachings each of these conscious and creative individuals, scattered across the world, delivered to the members of their societies; and their words, their vision of a life-giving self, struck a responsive chord in humanity. Their words were written down and cherished for centuries by millions of followers. Indeed, the general import of their teachings is briefly summed up in our Order of Service every Sunday: “Love is the spirit of this church, and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in freedom, to tell the truth with responsibility, and to help one another — this is our covenant.”

I suppose their teachings have been cherished for centuries because inherent in the nature of our species is this uniquely human trait, the gentle but persistent drive toward self-transcendence. It’s not an urgent drive like greed or sex, but rather is quiet, tender, often overshadowed by the more insistent drives that we humans experience in ourselves. And yet, it has remained alive for almost 3000 years now. We continue to yearn for this cultural mutation to permeate human life. “Force is not the way at all,” said Lao-tze — Buddha and Jesus agreed. Love is the way, they said: that is, caring about the well-being of each other, friends and enemies alike. One of the Hebrew prophets put it like this: “what does the Lord require of thee but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

III.
The drive toward self-transcendence stirs in us today, and in our people. In people all over the earth. Humanity seems to be approaching another turning point. It appears that our society like many others today has lost its sense of identity. The selves that it forms in our people as they grow up in it have grown increasingly dysfunctional. It is very hard for many people to feel fulfilled, to be at peace with the self that emerges in them from existence in our society.

But fortunately we have in ourselves, we human creatures, this drive for self-transcendence, this yearning to rise to higher levels of self-realization, above and beyond those that our society defines in us. Inherent in our nature is the will, the wish to live as fully, as completely as possible. If we fail to move in this direction, we are restless, frustrated, unfulfilled. We leave potentialities in ourselves unrealized, have unlived life buried in our being, quietly longing to find expression.

Out of his rich, deep, creative nature, Thoreau put into words this drive that is in us. The words are those of an individual who was not imprisoned in his social conditioning, was not a mere conformer to the life patterns instilled in him by his people. He found his own way, and the words are precious, especially to Universalists and Unitarians. They have been incorporated for many years in our hymnal as a reading.

Thoreau said: “I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived. I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear. Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary. I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

That’s a powerful expression of the drive for self-transcendence, which ran especially strong in Thoreau. All of us experience it, though with varying degrees of intensity. Some of us feel it only faintly much of the time, as we move with the established patterns of life in our society; but then again, at some points in the history of the species, at some points in the life of each individual, we may experience it more powerfully. We may then move toward some mode of self-transcendence. This is an inherent part of the experience of being human and alive.

The establishment of civilized life many centuries ago was itself a turning point, an upward movement, a widespread mode of self-creation. Yet, after several centuries of the initial forms of civilization, gifted individuals (similar in nature to Thoreau) began to crop up in several of the early societies. They had a vision. They saw clearly, urgently that, though our species had perhaps advanced, there were heights lying beyond this level of achievement that would generate a finer, more harmonious quality of life.

People like Buddha, Lao-tze,Socrates, Jesus, and the prophets evidently experienced the drive strongly in themselves, and by their teachings gave expression to it. Millions of people in generation after generation found that these teachings struck a responsive chord in them, touched them in a deep, tender place. So moved were they that they came to venerate these gifted individuals, even to worship them.

This is how it is with humans in every generation. They are moved to search, now and again, for an opening into self-transcendence. It has been the task of religion to foster this gentle drive in our species, to celebrate it, to find ways of encouraging it. It must find satisfaction in some way if we are to be wholly alive, wholly our selves.

IV.
Last June our choir sang the following words: “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, as the swift seasons roll: — leave thy low-vaulted past. Let each new temple, nobler than the last, shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, till thou at length art free, leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”

There it is again, the drive toward self-transcendence, stated this time on a grand scale by a 19th century American writer and physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes. It finds expression in some way in every age, in every individual. Holmes here expresses it in majestic phrasing in this prayer addressed to his own soul or self. Not his socially defined self but rather his essential self — potential in him. Actually, while the goal does have a sublime character, we each of us pursue it in a wide variety of relatively minor ways, rarely conscious of what we are pursuing. We do it almost instinctively.

1. For example, many of us use our minds in order to expand our understanding and awareness, and in this way we can gain perspective on the social forces that have shaped our initial identity. We then need no longer be passive to them, but, like Thoreau, “live deliberately,” intentionally. We UUs especially are inclined to move along this avenue in the direction of transcendence.
2. Second, many of us are moved to tap the rich mine of insights available to us in literature, drama, music, dance, and art. The arts may help us rise above the limits of the self that emerged in us in early adulthood.
3. Third, education may serve as another avenue to transcendence. I profited greatly from this myself, I can see now on looking back; though even when I was immersed in it, there was a sense of excitement at what seemed to be happening to my nature.
4. Fourth, religion may also serve as an avenue of transcendence, though it does not invariably. Indeed, as I have pursued the study of religion over the past 50 years, it has appeared to me to serve more often as a means of adjustment and adaptation to the world as it is. This has considerable value in human life. Always has. But some of us in every age have sought out a different kind of religion. This was true of those who brought the early forms of UU religion to colonial America from England in the 17th century.
5. Still another source of transcendence is found in the people we move among, especially those to whom we grow close. As we relate to others, diverse in their natures, our own self expands in response. Some of the potential in ourselves is drawn out.
6. Then there is the practice of meditation, known in many cultures around the world as a creative avenue toward self-transcendence.
7. There is, however, one experience of self-transcendence that brings with it a sense of completion, of meaning, fullness, and even bliss. Einstein once put it into clear, concise, though abstract language. He described it as “the experience of all things as a meaningful unity.” It was this experience to which Thoreau was referring when he said (as I mentioned earlier): “If for a moment we make way with our petty selves, wish no ill to anything, apprehend no ill, cease to be but as the crystal which reflects a ray, — what shall we not reflect! What a universe will appear crystallized and radiant around us!.... We then realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”

Consider that Thoreau’s society did not teach him to rejoice at the sight of falling drops of sap. It taught him only to cut wood and make bridges. That sudden deep awareness that swept over him emerged out of the depths of his own being as he related to all that is, was, and is to be. For a moment he had transcended the self his society had created in him; and he had, as Einstein put it, experienced “all things as a meaningful unity.”

This is the peak experience of self-transcendence. It unites the self with the interdependent web of all existence which is the ultimate context of our lives.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com

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