Art Reboot

43 familiar day-to-day way of being, but such glimpses are fre- quently dismissed as somehow ‘unreal’ or, in religious contexts, are considered to be divine experience or revelation. But the inherent need for the transcendent survives despite all attempts to minimise or eradicate it, particularly in the East. Recognition of a transcendent source of all phenomena is at the core of – and indeed unites – Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism and Jainism. In Hinduism, for example, Brahman represents the high- est universal principle, or the ultimate reality; a unity that exists beyond the explicable and beyond the gods, encompassing them along with all other phenomena. And there is Atman : the infinite, eternal self beyond the egoic self, uniting the individual with an indefinable source, which can only be Brahman . Transcendence is at the heart of the Perennial Philosophy, documented and popularised in the West by Aldous Huxley. In this philosophy, all exoteric and esoteric knowledge and doctrine, including all religions, are considered to be masks or metaphors of a single transcendental truth, a multiplicity of paths to one source or origin. The goal of each individual is to realise their already existent identity with this origin, and to experience it directly by transcending the egoic, intellectual self.