Whilst reading through Andy Mitchell’s memoir Ten Trips, one of several recent attempts to take the temperature of the rapid rise of the ‘psychedelic renaissance’, in which he visits ten retreat centres;  – some in quiet suburban homes, others in registered, government supported treatment centres and others in South American jungles, where a large variety of mind altering brews are grown, prepared and administered to fee-paying applicants, he reflects on the consciousness alterations he found there and how they infiltrated his earlier spiritual practices, mostly temple bound meditation weekends or weeks over his youthful years of questing.

     In these reflections he used the phrase “the transience of experience”, a category often referred to by committed meditators and temple retreat attendees of various traditions.  Yes, I thought, it is a stage that one traverses on the inner journey as you realise your numerous attachments to experiences, – desirable, pleasurable, educative  – and so on, are to be regularly severed, and often harshly.  Everything comes and goes, relationships, riches or their lack, status, power, serenity, happiness, joy.  It’s your uphill battle, on the way to being free, to let it all go.

     In the challenging and troubled acceptance of the remorseless insistence on transience that the pursuit of the inner life delivers, the aspirant can easily plunge into what used to be called ‘the slough of despond’, that hopeless melancholy on the uselessness of striving to improve or understand as the trivia of the days seems to enclose us.  At some point though the mist clears and you can see the transience of experience cannot successfully be placed into discrete chunks for delectability or dissection.  The movement from one type of experience to another, with all its inherent wrenching, is itself the Experience.  It has to be swallowed and digested as a whole; nibbling at preferences can be persuasive as an appetizer, but the entire banquet has to be tasted and digested.

     Once you accept that this train of transience cannot be stopped but only observed on this plane, you can then see it is much the same on the other planes of form, – astral, mental, causal etc.  On the planes of form, it is always the path of polarity, self and other, even when blissful merges are entered in these areas of light and lack of gravity.

     Even suspending character and personality when blending/merging with Higher Self/Monad, prior to plumping for some nirvana or further incarnation, is an experience that could be termed transient when viewed in contemplation.  Being in the bliss of nowhere, all radiant, golden and desireless, can be seen as just passing through

     Experience in all its transience is eternal, infinite and unending.  Get used to it, it’s not going to go away with its tail between its legs.  Apologetic is not in its repertoire.