Transcendence is a word that invokes images of a rising above, passing the confines of the imprisoning nature of this reality. And we have no way of knowing if anyone has achieved anything approaching the desired end. Calling attention to Ken Kesey—the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest—his "Merry Pranksters" espoused the goal of Transcending the Bullshit, but in realizing that Kesey was a Taurus, we might speculate that his group was held together by the bullshit (and with the hindsight of time, we can say with certainty that none of them transcended anything). In my book I wrote about craziness substituting for transcendence; this travesty is still in evidence in the meetings of the evangelicals, but it attaches back to the primitive, tribal mind that tended to see mentally ill people as having a spirit of God. But how do I know? I'm going to play with the other side of the coin for a moment and speculate that (perhaps) the key to rising above this imprisoning, four-dimensional reality may indeed have something to do with a form of temporary insanity. This specialized path out of the norm is where normal human filters required to keep back all of the masses of vibrations and frequencies of the normal all of the universe are not there. The totality slams the victim at all times in a continuous "Satori" that the subject has no control over. As for the rest of us, over time we learn which of the doorways of our mind we can leave open, which are opened or closed upon receipt of key inputs, and those that we dare not open at all. But we should realize that there are categories of mental illness that are deficient in this ability and upon communicating with these people one may find out later that they weren't really blathering nonsense but were, in fact, talking about something else—something that our own internal restrictions forbade us to see at first. The mere form of our organization puts us in touch with segments of reality as it is—whether of the higher twenty-two or of the lower four dimensions—and thus, renders inoperative any ability to transcend for our very definitions stick us and hold us, right here.
In the Eastern religions a state of non-being is sought. But while I can see this as a vacation from the ties of this physical realm, any positive result is only a temporary gain. Also, those of the East are adept at physical control. But what good is it to them or anyone else? Are they able to extend their lives? Can they become wealthy?
In the examination of the past and the foreign elements I come back to a lack of positives; instead of any good to be found, there is only an absence of the negative, as if you are allowed a short period of time wherein the creation isn't stepping on your toes but when you come down to earth tomorrow you'll find that giant ogre squashing your tootsies again. Certainly peyote is like this, and the effects of opium and marijuana follow the same pattern. I arrived in Hawaii, fresh from Navy Radio School, in late '65. The service offered tuition assistance so I took my first night class at the university in early '66. It was Intro to Psychology and the professor was a PhD Clinical Psychologist; I thought the most interesting subject he got into was when he roamed a little off course and started talking about the experiments he was conducting with LSD-25. His theory was that most of his patients did not know there was anything wrong with them; they were in a groove, a routine of behavior that—no matter how strange to anyone else—they were used to, but when you slipped them a couple doses of acid suddenly everything became weird in an entirely different way, one they were not used to and one they were not in control of. He thought that this may give the patient the idea that there was, indeed, something wrong. Okay that's a specific category, but I can just as easily extrapolate that outward to what was happening to the American society at large if I include all the ones who took hallucinogens during the '60s and '70s and came away with a feeling that something may be wrong with their previous mental organizational behavior. LSD-25 was a game changer; it threw many doors of perception open, it affected the area of the brain that has to do with DTs in chronic alcoholics, and it opened up the mind to the feelings of religion associated with the "God-brain." And, it also scared the crap out of a lot of my generation, "The Baby Boomers." But, no matter how proponents such as Dr. Timothy Leary presented it, the stuff did not cause a transcendence to occur.
My childish patience is worn out; I am tired of this quest that only results in what is not. Yet this past of non-positive outcomes has still provided a good result of sorts: One of the character traits that comes to us as refined and educated adults is that of being able to know when to change course. Or to lessen the force of an aggressive attack toward a desired goal, and to take what the defense gives us instead of attempting to knock down an immovable object in an act of sheer stubbornness. And those of us reasonable in our observances of life have learned that many—including us—have often been foolish in seeking after ends that were the wrong things to want. Better we should back up and punt; there are ends that are flat-out unattainable, the wrong things to want, and it looks to me like transcendence is one of them.
There is no shame in reassessment, especially when the efforts toward a desired goal have not produced any result that—when reasonably examined—have ended in smoking-gun, irrefutable finality that cannot be effectively argued against. The childish pride and arrogance we carry is the enemy. It'll try to get us to go down the same useless paths: Sure, where all of the sages of the past have failed I am actually more endowed with the necessary make-up than them. Right, you idiot; about all you'll do is lie to yourself until you convince yourself of your own lies. But for those of more intellect than pride, there is an answer of sorts. The suggestion is in my book: Instead of seeking after the good, it is a plan of action built around the elimination of the bad possibilities, and if perchance this system results in some kind of a transcendent framework for the seeker to dwell in then the applier should rejoice, even as that benefit was not really intended.
Seek the removal of wrongs, for the evidences of past successes—in terms of sages and adepts achieving a higher plane of rightness—are subject to systems of enforced belief administered by more powerful humans over the weaker elements. If they're repeated often enough a person can believe anything, especially if the programming is accompanied by painful indoctrination. But no matter what any being says, the reality of this world is God, and God is not a liar.
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