Experiencing Transcendence

An experience that is intensely moving is a natural reward system in the brain to impose certain patterns indelibly in the memory. Lets define these experiences as transcendental in the general non-religious sense. Music seems to be fundamental in this regard in some theories even preceding speech.

Such experiences are so fundamental to human experience that shamans, priests, pastors and poo-bahs do their level best to co-opt them to whatever it is they are selling, usually a god. I find any such co-option fundamentally degrading.

I will take my transcendent experiences straight. I might try to explain them in retrospect, using physics or music theory, or training but such explanations in no way subtract from the transcendence. I can explain a rainbow perfectly with optics and refraction. But being at the focus of all that beauty and color is a transcendent experience even though I know why it happens. But I can guarantee that I never have and never will think of a rainbow as Gods promise that he won't exterminate all life on earth ever again.