Transcendence Quotes

“If you don’t accept yourself, you can’t transcend yourself and the world: first, you need to increase your awareness, then you need to accept what you learn, then you need to take action.”
― Oli Anderson, Shadow Life: Freedom from Bullshit in an Unreal World

“The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him; he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. The Law lives in him with his unreserved consent.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“Can a person crave to destroy himself and at the same time wish to transmute himself into a fuller being? Is destruction of a central part of us necessary in order to transform ourselves? How do perceptive people fend off their destructive impulses, through insensibility or with greatness of mind? How can an ordinary person such as me, deficient in natural talent and ignorant in the ways of the world, blunt the self-doubt and the fear that nips at my heels? How does a vegetative character such as me express the vivacity of life while counterbalancing the immutable sorrows that accompany our struggles to glean meaning in life? How does anyone function rationally knowing that his or her life will ruefully end with death?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The nihilist attitude manifests a certain truth. In this attitude one experiences the ambiguity of the human condition. But the mistake is that it defines man not as the positive existence of a lack, but as a lack at the heart of existence, whereas the truth is that existence is not a lack as such. And if freedom is experienced in this case in the form of rejection, it is not genuinely fulfilled. The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly. Instead of integrating death into life, he sees in it the only truth of the life, which appears to him as a disguised death. However, there is life, and the nihilist knows that he is alive. That’s where his failure lies. He rejects existence without managing to eliminate it. He denies any meaning to his transcendence, and yet he transcends himself. A man who delights in freedom can find an ally in the nihilist because they contest the serious world together, but he also sees in him an enemy insofar as the nihilist is a systematic rejection of the world and man, and if this rejection ends up in a positive desire destruction, it then establishes a tyranny which freedom must stand up against.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“When done right, a sandwich can absolutely lead to transcendence.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“There are numerous Starseeds on this planet and they are here to illumine all of the dark corners of this earth.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“God doesn’t hate good music any more than He hates sex or drugs. All are paths to transcendence.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite”
― William Blake

“Today the minute researches of science no longer produce anything but an artificial stereophony, stereonomic and holographic effects (the DNA double helix is one of these), and this mere shadow-play is all one needs to manipulate appear ances. But the real that is caught in that way is eversive, if not indeed reversible. Under the subtle torture of science, all it ever confesses is its nonexistence.

The more profound things become, the more they slip away, as they do in a concave mirror. The escape into transcendence, the assumption of the world into some upper realm (the Law, the Idea, God, the Truth) has been replaced by a process of evanescence toward the lower reaches, the narrow escape into immanence.

Where the feminine resuscitates, without ideology, and without sexual hysteria either, in a joyous provocation, in a lascivious form of gratuitous self exhibition, of ironic scenography of a sex without desire. Light, transparent perversion. New allegory of the body.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“The masks will drop down automatically in the event of the cabin being depressurized. If this occurs, put out your cigarettes.' Must we really prepare to die in a mask, remaining unrecognizable to ourselves even into the next world? I think there are thousands of dead people still hanging around on flights because they haven't been accepted on the other side on account of their masks. They go on travelling around in the most awful conditions and we brush up against them without knowing it.

I could never travel in an aeroplane with God, nor with anyone who thought he was God (Verdiglione). It is too dangerous. It's not so much that you might crash as that you might never come down again.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“The ability of future superintelligent machines and enhanced humans alike to instantly transfer knowledge and directly share experiences with each other in digital format will lead to evolution of intelligence from relatively isolated individual minds to the global community of hyperconnected digital minds. The forthcoming phenomenon, the Syntellect Emergence, or the Cybernetic Singularity, is already seen on the horizon, when Digital Gaia, the global neural network of billions of hyperconnected humans and superintelligent machines, and trillions of sensors around the planet, 'wakes up' as a living, conscious superorganism. It is when, essentially, you yourself transcend to the higher Gaian Mind.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution

“The Intelligence Supernova wouldn't happen simultaneously for everyone at once, though. Some people may choose to stay in their biological form longer than others who would choose to 'migrate' to the Metaverse. For individual human minds, this 'Novacene' event would basically signify a 'pseudo-death,' i.e., self-transcendence. It's when you suddenly become 'someone bigger.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence

“In recent years my work has been praised for transcending identity categories. I know this is a well-intentioned compliment, and I feel fortunate to be read with enthusiasm. But I wonder if a white dude has ever been praised for transcending his white dudery.”
― Chen Chen

“There is a broader way to look at consciousness, beyond the parameters of modern medicine and neuroscience. Consciousness can be known as an all-encompassing life force or energy, yet this still does not even scratch the surface of possibilities. Consciousness is the field out of which arises the orchestrator, the orchestrated, and the orchestrating. It is therefore the entirety of the undivided backdrop out of which phenomena appear to happen, where all forms and expressions exist in potentiality, as well as the apparent act of creation and destruction.”
― Vic Shayne, Consciousness: The Potentiality of All Existence: Exploring reality and belief as a subjective experience

“Do people who love more suffer more? Is love merely a tinted simile for accepting ourselves and unequivocally embracing other people’s ululating heart songs? Is hate the failure to love? Is evil merely the absence of good? Alternatively, is the root of hate and evil more than the lack of love and absence off goodness? Is darkness the absence of light, or does darkness encapsulate its own dynamism? Does the interaction of piousness and sinfulness along with the intermingling of knowledge and ignorance shadow our souls similar to how darkness interferes with light to create shades of opaqueness? What is self-love? Is it important to love oneself? Alternatively, is no self the ultimate test?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“It is important to apprehend the full gamut of emotions that are available to all thinking, feeling, and compassionate human beings? Does self-love open a person’s gracious heart and mind enabling them generously to love and genially to care for other people? Without self-love, does a person lack the emotional quotient necessary to feel both genuine affection and empathy for our brethren? Must I commence a fundamental transformation of the self by eliminating a toxic dosage of self-hatred? Will newly discovered self-respect place me on the path towards obtaining personal enlightenment? Alternatively, is eliminating any concept of the self the fundamental charter that I must devote all days and nights to achieve?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Do I live out the remainder of my life striving to increase a mental storehouse of intellectual knowledge or by expanding a state of conscious awareness? Should my ultimate goal be to decode all the paradoxes in life or nurture a state of cognitive awareness? Should I strive to develop internal peace, silence, and tranquility? Must I rely upon the intuitive self to reconnect innate root structure and link myself to the essential means of living life deeply? By courageously striving to conquer illicit personal desires, can I develop a state of mirror-like purity of consciousness that allows a person to serve as a gracious and unbiased witness to the surrounding world?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person who sets goals is a hopeful person, whereas a person whom fails to achieve their goals might despair. Why do both hope and despair fill my inner world? Who cannot despair when inducted into a world filled with cruelty? Who cannot despair when serving as the serf in a seigneur’s regime that bestows legal and economic power, financial rewards, social status, and related societal prizes upon feudal lords who exhibit the ravenous instinct for power and accumulation of wealth? Who cannot despair when stranded alone with their personal thoughts, unable to imagine a better earthly life, and flooded with uncertainty of a redemptive afterlife? Why would not any person despair his or her failure to etch a mindset that serves to alleviate their present-day suffering?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Let the games begin. I shall commence an Olympian contest by attempting to conquer my fiendish ego, slay the warty toad that is destroying a peaceful sanctuary, and endeavor to reach a heightened state of personal awareness. The deepest chamber within commands me to either change or die; I can no longer survive as a loathsome creature that is repugnant to every aspect of humanity and civilization. To do or die, because money does not make a man, no one cares when I die or how much money a person banked. I need to resist the endless commercial propaganda and political doggerel spewed by television and social media sites that encourage stifling conformism in order to advance philistine cultural values. I shall honor this moment of intuitive realization by endeavoring to exterminate the toad that unwittingly governs me before this ghastly beast kills me by spewing its contemptible poison.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Not by adding more information, or more learning, or more study, can we now enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather by letting go, by ceasing this continual mental movement, and finding out what lies behind the movement.”
― Paul Brunton, Advanced Contemplation: The Peace Within You

“It’s about love. Plain and simple. That’s God: love. And it transcends mere goodness.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Books will only get you so far; it’s vital to trust in what’s there outside of your comprehension, that which you can’t really know: God. Even the books about Him don’t come close.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“It has been said that man was made in the image of God. We want “God” to be made in the image of man: fully actualised man. It’s time for HyperHumanity.”
― Michael Faust, The Case for Meritocracy

“Screw the social ladder. Choose to levitate.”
― Omar Cherif

“Old is subjective. Maybe your lives are so wild or unearthly that age is an unknown transcendence.”
― Amy Wolkenhauer

“...Lewis's mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted and that it was this openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life---his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story, whether written by an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, by Beatrix Potter, or by himself.......an openness to delight, to the sense that there's more to the world than meets the jaundiced eye, to the possibility that anything could happen to someone who is ready to meet that anything.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis

“Let's make one more sand castle, not for ourselves, but to offer it to the waves of Time.”
― Shunya

“A lot of my work is born in transcendence.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Karadeniz Chronicle: The Novel

“Wrap me in colours that cannot be described, patterns that change with each movement like a kaleidoscope. Give me a world beyond what is here. Give me a body in flames dancing in a place where there is no shame. Give me lies, if you like, but take me there, to that other world where language can only play games of hide and seek with what is really going on.”
― Jonathan Kemp, Twentysix

“I sit by the lotus-lake, eat God,

& count water-pearls over waxy
petals. Again, I unpeel

the black sky & trace teal mountains.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta