Louisville Process Theology Network

Transcendence

Jul 10, 2009

From Page 285.


?“The popular idea that the spiritual is a realm outside the universe that ?‘transcends?’ the universe is a holdover from an earlier picture of the universe. But the concept of transcendence is not meaningless ?– it is merely misunderstood.

Transcendence is not an imaginary jump to some place ?‘outside?’ the universe. Transcendence is what happens many times within this universe, every few powers of ten. For example, on the atomic and subatomic scales, ?‘human?’ means nothing. There is no humanness to our atoms. Whether our atoms are inside us, inside a rock, or drifting through space, is all the same to them. On the atomic scale, therefore, even inside own our bodies, we do not exist.

?‘We?’ are something that transcends atoms. In the same way, the universe as a whole transcends our world. It is possible that from the perspective of some size-scale substantially larger than our world, we humans are playing a role as far beyond our imagination as that which atoms and cells are playing for us.

The experience of transcendence, understood this way, might be described as the feeling of exponentially increasing complexity suddenly making sense to the imagination.

Let us dig a little deeper. By the ?‘spiritual?’ we mean the relationship between a conscious mind and the cosmos. It?’s not the study of the cosmos ?– that?’s science. It?’s the way we relate to it. Given this definition of spiritual, we want to bridge the spiritual to the physical.?”