Self-transcendence occupies a contested and richly differentiated terrain within the depth-psychology corpus, spanning empirical phenomenology, existential biology, integral spirituality, and clinical critique. Yaden’s phenomenological taxonomy anchors the contemporary scientific discussion, defining self-transcendent experiences (STEs) as transient states characterized by decreased self-salience and increased felt connectedness, decomposed into an ‘annihilational’ component and a ‘relational’ component that may vary with some independence. This rigorously experiential account contrasts markedly with Aurobindo’s integral metaphysics, wherein self-transcendence names an ontological ascent through successive planes of being — vital, mental, supramental — culminating in the gnostic individual who simultaneously exceeds and embraces both individual and cosmos. Thompson, following Jonas and Heidegger, roots transcendence at the very threshold of life itself: the organism’s self-production necessarily requires a perpetual surpassing of its present state, linking existential phenomenology to autopoietic biology. Cooper translates the concept into a Zen-psychoanalytic frame, where the dissolution of the ‘small self’ constitutes a perceptual shift dissolving exclusive self-orientation. Masters introduces the critical countermove, distinguishing authentic transcendence — which illuminates and decentralises the ‘believer’ — from spiritual bypassing, which mimics transcendence while evading psychological depth. Across these positions the fundamental tension is between transcendence as phenomenological event, as ontological structure, as biological imperative, and as ethical aspiration.