Self-transcendence is by no means invariably upward. Indeed, in most cases, it is an escape either downward into a state lower than that of personality, or else horizontally into something wider than the ego, but not higher, not essentially other. We are forever trying to mitigate the results of the Collective Fall into insulated selfhood by another, strictly private fall into animality or mental derangement, or by some more or less creditable self-dispersion into art or science, into politics, a hobby, or a job. Needless to say, these substitutes for self-transcendence, these escapes into
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