Art Reboot

49 8 transcendent exper ience People who experience transcendence, however fleetingly, have always struggled to make sense of it intellectually. Countless people from all walks of life have attempted to explain their experiences, to themselves and others. All face the challenge of explaining the inexplicable. A single testimony means little, but when we find a vast body of accounts recorded transculturally and throughout recorded history, the case is persuasive. It seems reasonable to explore the possibility that the experience is both real and a vital part of consciousness. The struggle to explain such experience can only be indiv- idual and entirely subjective, and will be coloured by socio- cultural context. We see what we expect to see, and cultural bias runs deep. The God of Judaeo-Christianity is usually imagined as a wise old man with a big beard wearing loose robes and sandals. Had monotheism arisen in Lapland, he would undoubtedly have been imagined clad in reindeer hides, with big boots and a fur hat. And it is predominantly Catholics who see images of the Virgin Mary in a pizza or the stains on a church wall. But if we strip away local sociocultural and religious bias from our explan- ations, we can recognise a core of common experience.