Everyday Transcendence: The Way of Psychology

What if the simple application of logic to some of the more obvious facets of human psychology offers the best path to enlightenment, transcendence, and realising our true nature? What if it is also a key step in the development of a coherent science of experience and behaviour? This book offers support for both suggestions. A shorter, more accessible and informal follow-up to Nicholson's Self, Consciousness, and Being: The Transcendent Perspective, it presents a less complex presentation of the same basic case, offering new insights and clarifications and an easier read in the process.

The core argument is the same. We should use the mental exercises provided to replace the limited and restrictive self-views we acquire incidentally as we develop with the transcendent self-view – a perspective on the self that transcends ideas and viewpoints generally, seeing and treating them as subordinate facets of a total self that has empty consciousness, the underlying essence of consciousness itself, as its (arguably Zen-like) resting focus and core.

The result of adopting this self-view may be thought of as personal transcendence and even given a spiritual slant. However, it is best seen as an everyday kind of transcendence that is really nothing special – just a psycho-logically defensible and sensible endpoint to our inner development we should all arguably aspire to.