Spiritual transcendence is the capacity to step back from the immediate moment and sense a larger, sacred meaning to life. Psychologist Ralph Piedmont introduced it as a possible sixth dimension of personality — one that sits apart from the Big Five — and measured it across three facets: prayer fulfilment (the joy and peace found in prayer, meditation, or contemplation), universality (a belief that all life is interconnected), and connectedness (a felt bond and responsibility toward humanity across generations and groups). It describes how strongly a transcendent outlook colours your life, in religious or secular terms alike — not whether any belief is right.
The Spiritual Transcendence Scale (Piedmont, 1999) is a validated measure that treats spiritual transcendence as a stable personality trait — one found to be statistically independent of the Big Five. Its three facets, prayer fulfilment, universality, and connectedness, are offered here as gentle self-ratings that fit religious and secular outlooks alike, not a test score or a measure of how 'spiritual' anyone should be. (Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS))