What is a transcendent experience?

What exactly is a transcendent experience?

If I had to describe this kind of experience I’d say that it is a moment or moments when you step outside of yourself and it’s as though something from beyond “speaks” to you. You might get a clear message or just a feeling. The impact is that you feel very small – but in a good way. And you get “perspective”. You focus on a greater narrative compared to the little narrative that you might be living. After these moments pass everything seems to return to normal. Sometimes the trigger for these experiences is obvious like a sliver of light hiding behind a dark cloud or standing at a mountaintop overlooking the vastness of a valley. Other times it’s hard to know what the trigger is. I can remember moments when all of a sudden I have felt great love for everyone and everything around me. I feel compassion and a tenderness for humanity. And there has not been a significant trigger discernible to me. I attribute those moments to God “finding” me. But others might see it as something else.

I was interested in what psychologist David Yaden had to say about transcendent experiences in an online article in the New York Magazine 2017 written by Emily Esfahani Smith. She writes:

His research has led him to believe that the magic of transcendence lies in its “annihilational” aspect, or the way it induces a feeling of self-loss. Neuroscience research shows that during transcendent states, there is decreased activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, the area of the brain that locates the self in space and distinguishes it from everything else. When the neuronal inputs to this part of the brain decrease, the brain can no longer separate the self from the surrounding environment — which is why people feel their sense of self diminish, while also feeling connected to everyone and everything around them.

It’s also why transcendent experiences often lead people to feel better about their lives. So many of us spend so much time ruminating and worrying about problems large and small: What’s going to happen if I lose my job? What if he dumps me? I’m worthless. Nothing I do matters. How come she brushed me off? One day I’m going to die … In most cases, a transcendent experience washes these destructive thoughts out of our minds. “When the self temporarily disappears,” Yaden and his colleagues write, “so too may some of these fears and anxieties.”

Transcendent experiences, in other words, bring perspective, helping us to abandon the conceit that we are at the center of the world. “We can experience union with something larger than ourselves,” as William James put it, “and in that union find our greatest peace.”

I love this thought that transcendent experiences help us to unite with something larger than ourselves and in that we find our peace.

Does this resonate with you?

Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski, Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions, Uniting Mission and Education. Karina also blogs at An Ordinary Mystic.