Part of the problem Transculturalism faces is that the West, since the Greeks, has increasingly granted governance to the intellect, the rational, reasoning faculties of mind. In the so-called Age of Reason (confusingly also known as The Enlightenment)¹ in eighteenth-century Europe the intellect reached for, and almost achieved autonomy. Any alternative way of knowing was dismissed as meaningless and consigned to the occult. But there is major difference between our other, authentic way of knowing and the tooth-fairy, witchcraft and tea-leaf literacy.

The intellect tends to consider everything from the perspective of the self, fortified by its sibling, ego, even when considering what might lie beyond its limitations, if any are recognized. The intellect is a tool of self-consciousness; a vital faculty without which civilization could not have evolved, but it is servant not master, and we confuse those two at our peril.

The other way of knowing transcends intellect and its limitations, including the sense of separate self and ego. It can only be experienced individually and directly. It is transcendent, but, despite the implications of the name, it is not the highest way of knowing, it is simply one of two alternatives that, integrated, provide the full bandwidth of consciousness. The highest way of knowing is when it is integrated with the intellect, when consciousness regains its capacity for intellectual fragmentation of the direct experience. The transcendent way of knowing has informed eastern thought for far longer than the intellect has gained its power in the West.

The full-on, paradigm shifting, transformative Enlightenment experience may be relatively rare, but glimpses of it are not. Anyone who has briefly lost their sense of self and separation in experiencing music, while watching a sunset, or meditating will have glimpsed this other way of knowing. The intellect and the Transcendent are incompatible, it is one or the other as all meditators understand who attempt to still the chattering sound-track of thought, but they are complementary, essentially so if we are to fulfil the evolution of consciousness. After the direct, ineffable experience we return to the intellectual domain in order to interpret what it means to self and others.

This remains true of the entire range of trans-personal experience from brief glimpses to full Enlightenment. In the presence of music many have experienced the state where the distinction between music and separate self momentarily dissolves; we become the music. Then we are brought back to the domain of separation when the analysing intellect starts up again. We find this unified musical experience exciting and deeply satisfying. The same is true of brief transcendent glimpses in the presence of the grandeur of nature, or through meditation. These glimpses offer a momentary hint of the possibilities of what lies beyond the confines of the separate self. We seek it again and again. The state is obviously joyous, meaningful and deeply rewarding. It changes our perspective even if only in the small increment of a glimpse.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Enlightenment experience itself, changes our perspective for ever. It is transformational; paradigm-shifting; life-altering. It makes final sense of the intellectual domain. The perspective of the transcendent way of knowing vastly enhances our capacity to understand and deal with the fragmented meaning of the intellectual mode.

The Transcendent has been a focus of aspiration ever since the advent of self-consciousness. It represents the unity and harmony that we gave up in order to become self-conscious and our religions and myths seek to regain that unity but with the added capacity to understand and delight in it. We see signs of the aspiration to unite with something that transcends self throughout recorded history. We see its reflection tens of thousands of years ago in paintings in the dark womb-like caves of the world and in our gods and comforting faith in paradise where individual personality lives on.

But we don't need to rely on extrapolating such glimpses to recognize the full-on experience, we have only to look at the conviction of half the world before the hegemony of the West spread the intellectual bias around the globe.

The moment we integrate our two ways of knowing, we immediately open the doors to resolving confusion in the art world as well as in our other main vehicles of evolving consciousness. By allowing the ineffable as being beyond adequate explanation rather than conflating it with our intellectual interpretations and then granting them authority over what we try to interpret we can begin to bring clarity instead of confusion.

In the domain of art, by recognizing our two ways of knowing and seeing art as one of our most powerful conduits between them, we render it infinitely more efficient in all its roles; we transcend the confusion caused by a focus on the objects of art and their surface meaning. The deeper meaning in art exists beneath its surface, in the entire process which transcends the products, facilitating art in its highest role in evolving consciousness. But until we realize that, we are in danger of first scratching only at its surface, then scratching our heads.

The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat.
November 2023.