To transcend means to "go beyond," but this need not compel us to an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (e. g. , the spiritual level) to be not of this world. We can "go beyond" the "ordinary" powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Rather than a materialist, I would prefer to consider myself a "patternist. " It's through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend.
The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it.