Freud described it very well, but I didn't read his definition until a few months ago! It's about language. It creates information, it is very likely what F. David Peat described is an 'interactive force'. I have to be cautious about saying it 'is' anything specific, but it does create unique specificity in an individual life.
When I read Synchronicity, The Bridge Between Mind and Matter in 1989, I noticed as I read the book, a sense of familiarity, of knowing already what he wrote about, from a non-mathematical viewpoint. As I read I remember a thought occurred: "The heart of and the bottom line of quantum physics is hearts desire." When I understood that thought comment I realized it was statement about particles and waves but it includes the importance of an observer, a witness, a recorder, some body that sees and can remember.
I read the book before I knew anything about particles and waves and the importance of an observer. The thought formed as though some alert part of my mind had something to say to me, in a language it knew but I barely had begun to suspect existed.
I think of myself as a recorder of some events in my past now, a selection of events that I noticed and remembered as a result of the transcendental function doing its work.
All language is not actual words, it has to become words at some point but in the beginning there are no words that convey the information that arises from so called 'coincidences' (such as reading F. David Peats book when I read it, just when that information 'resonated within me') when they are recognizable. Individual events are recognizable. Strings of related events are not. F. David Peat wrote that book, Paul Davies wrote Other Worlds, Wilson van Dusen wrote The Presence of Other Worlds and The Natural Depths of Man, Herman Hesse wrote Steppenwolfe and after reading those books myself, there was an understanding of "The heart of and the bottom line of quantum physics is 'hearts desire'. Hearts desire is what the transcendental function works with.
About language P. D. Ouspensky says better than I can say it: "It must be admitted that language is a weak and inadequate vehicle even for the expression of our usual understanding of things, to say nothing of those moments when the understanding unexpectedly expands and becomes deeper, and we see revealed an entire series of facts and relations for the description of which we have neither words nor expressions. But quite aside from this, in ordinary conditions of thinking and feeling, we are frequently at a loss for words, and we use one word at different times to describe different things"
"No study of occult philosophy is possible without an acquaintance with symbolism, for if the words occultism and symbolism are correctly used, they mean almost one and the same thing. Symbolism cannot be learned as one learns to build bridges or speak a foreign language, and for the interpretation of symbols a special cast of mind is necessary; in addition to knowledge, special faculties, the power of creative thought and a developed imagination are required. One who understands the use of symbolism in the arts, knows, in a general way, what is meant by occult symbolism.
But even then a special training of the mind is necessary, in order to comprehend the "language of the Initiates", and to express in this language the intuitions as they arise.There are many methods for developing the "sense of symbols" in those who are striving to understand the hidden forces of Nature and Man, and for teaching the fundamental principles as well as the elements of the esoteric language. The most synthetic, and one of the most interesting of these methods, is the Tarot"
(The word 'synthetic' is intended to be understood as 'synthesize' not the more modern understanding as in 'synthetic fabric'. This was a problem I had very much trouble becoming aware of, using both definitions is a necessity. pimoebius) .
It's my opinion that ancient symbols and their meaning do not convey the kind of information we in our modern age need to learn from the transcendental function. What is physically present is where meaning is hidden but it's not in every moment's content. I think of a lighthouse with it's beacon always moving but the beam can be fixed, held captive in an obsessive, compulsive activity. Theodore Reik was obsessed with reading everything he could find that Goethe had written when he was 18 years old but he was embarrassed to reveal his 'obsession'! When he was middle aged he wrote Fragment of A Great Confession, which he believed was about Goethe's life when he wrote it. Later he recognized details of his own life had been the foundation for the story of Goethe's relationship to a young Fredericke.
There's a scene in a movie, Little Buddha in which the starving Siddartha overhears two men passing in a canoe say: "If the string is too tight it will break, if it is too loose it will not play." They're talking about a musical instrument but the words detach from their context and Siddartha slowly rises, hearing them in a new way that is literally a statement to him, useful and necessary.
That is a 'function' of the transcendental function.
He goes to the river, and repeats the words to a bullock in the river, joyfully but with understanding: "If the string is too tight it will break; if it is too loose it will not play." The 'middle way' was revealed in that incident. I'm not certain that's exactly how Siddartha became aware of the necessity for balance because extremes can be deadly and destructive. But that kind of event has happened to me often enough to use it as an example.
888888888888
I remember reading an article in Seventeen Magazine when I was about that age (1949) about intelligence, and how intelligent individuals have certain characteristics. They had erect posture, bright eyes, eagerness to learn new things and curiosity. A sentence in the article remained with me afterwards, occurring into my mind often enough that I noticed it and remembered where I'd read it: "Intelligence is the ability to identify isolated but related facts and to form them into theories that explain the universe." The sentence was one of a very few 're-occurring memories' of events that happened only once but for some reason was regenerated afterwards often enough that I noticed them and had a minor degree of curiosity about them.
The first paragraph in the introduction of A New Model Of The Universe by P. D. Ouspensky is about certain re-occuring memories that were marked by a certain 'singular sensation peculiar to them' and that those memories were essentials in his life. I believe my re-occurring memories were critical moments in my earliest years.
What is the 'transcendental function' if it's not an 'effect' added to every day real world events...., that operates in life....., on particular events for some purpose that has it's origin in what I think of now that I've experienced it myself, as the 'ongoing endeavor in Time'. That is probably what has been recognized centuries ago as 'perennial philosphy' at work, moving 'like' a signal, through Time as we experience Time. There's lots of variety in Time, I've experienced that myself. More about that later.
What is the 'transcendental function' if it's not an 'effect' added to every day real world events...., that operates in life....., on particular events for some purpose that has it's origin in what I think of now that I've experienced it myself, as the 'ongoing endeavor in Time'. That is probably what has been recognized centuries ago as 'perennial philosphy' at work, moving 'like' a signal, through Time as we experience Time. There's lots of variety in Time, I've experienced that myself. More about that later.
If that long paragraph doesn't make sense consider this example that illustrates the concept: Laying nearby me is a book published in 1895 A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom by Andrew White. It has 78 pages in the index of names the author mentions and quotes from. There are 50 names approximately on each page, so there were 50 x 78 = 3900 sources for the ideas that Andrew White compressed into his book.
The process of abstraction of relevant material occurred through the operation of the transcendental function, that seems reasonable to me now. I have witnessed in my self, that there's some part of 'me' that is always alert, awake and waiting until the right situation. I am an observer to it, it is not me. It is abstract itself, it's not tangible itself and it abstracts relevant information holding it in some mental storage area until it's complete or close to making sense. Mr. White wrote a large book about a topic that's as much at the center of life on this planet in 2010 as it was in 1895. Having abstracted here and there information that caught his attention, fragments from 3900 authors are cached in this book. Some modern authors have a bibliography that's more than a 100 pages long.
The process of 'abstracting relevant information' from so many sources is difficult to discern and identify, it happens because attention is not usually focussed on what's going on in our 'head'. It's likely the transcendental function has functioned as it is supposed to do but perhaps the 'next level' requires becoming detached from the body, and becoming an observer to it and that information generating function.
Until an individual knows as much as possible about history, philosophy, the origins of psychiatry itself, it may be difficult or impossible to learn to get new meaning when it emerges in the mind, until a change occurs that creates distance between 'me' and my thought, so that I observe it, the way I observe what's outside of my body.
What if Siddartha had heard the boatmen in the same way he had obviously heard everything until that 'extra sense' caused him to hear differently?
The process of 'abstracting relevant information' from so many sources is difficult to discern and identify, it happens because attention is not usually focussed on what's going on in our 'head'. It's likely the transcendental function has functioned as it is supposed to do but perhaps the 'next level' requires becoming detached from the body, and becoming an observer to it and that information generating function.
Until an individual knows as much as possible about history, philosophy, the origins of psychiatry itself, it may be difficult or impossible to learn to get new meaning when it emerges in the mind, until a change occurs that creates distance between 'me' and my thought, so that I observe it, the way I observe what's outside of my body.
What if Siddartha had heard the boatmen in the same way he had obviously heard everything until that 'extra sense' caused him to hear differently?
Knowing more about the history and evolution of psychiatric ideas is critical. Theodore Reik mentioned that Greek milkmaids knew already what Freud wrote down as psychiatry.
More about that later.
