How Gandalf Transcends, The Lord of the Rings

1.
Saruman: Smoke rises from the mountain of Doom. The hour grows late and Gandalf the Grey rides to Isengard seeking my counsel. For that is why you have come, is it not… my old friend?
Gandalf: Saruman.
Saruman: You are sure of this?
Gandalf: Beyond any doubt.
Saruman: So, the Ring of Power has been found.
Gandalf: All these long years it was in the Shire, under my very nose.
Saruman: Yet you did not have the wit to see it. Your love of the halfling’s leaf has clearly slowed your mind.
Gandalf: But we still have time. Time enough to counter Sauron if we act quickly.
Saruman: Time?! What time do you think we have?
Saruman: Sauron has regained much of his former strength. He cannot yet take physical form, but his spirit has lost none of its potency. Concealed within his fortress, the Lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf… a great Eye… lidless… wreathed in flame.
Gandalf: The Eye of Sauron.
Saruman: He is gathering all evil to him. Very soon he will summon an army great enough to launch an assault upon Middle-Earth.
Gandalf: You know this? How?
Saruman: I have seen it.
Gandalf: A Palantír is a dangerous tool, Saruman.
Saruman: Why? Why should we fear to use it?
Saruman: The hour is later than you think. Sauron’s forces are already moving. The Nine have left Minas Morgul.
Gandalf: The Nine!
Saruman: They crossed the River Isen on Midsummer’s Eve, disguised as riders in black.
Gandalf: They’ve reached the Shire?!
Saruman: They will find the Ring… and kill the one who carries it.
Gandalf: Frodo!
Saruman: You did not seriously think that a hobbit could contend with the will of Sauron? There are none who can.
Saruman: Against the power of Mordor there can be no victory. We must join with him, Gandalf. We must join with Sauron. It would be wise, my friend.
Gandalf: Tell me, friend… when did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for madness?!
Saruman: I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly. But you… have elected… the way of… pain!

2.
Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.
Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.
Gandalf: Oh! It’s that way.
Merry: He’s remembered!
Gandalf: No, but the air doesn’t smell so foul down here. If in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose.

3.
Gandalf: I am Saruman… or rather, Saruman as he should have been.
Aragorn: You fell!
Gandalf: Through fire… and water. From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought with the Balrog of Morgoth. Until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside.
Gandalf : Darkness took me. And I strayed out of thought and time. Stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as a life-age of the earth. But it was not the end. I felt life in me again. I’ve been sent back… until my task is done.
Legolas / Aragorn: Gandalf…
Gandalf: Gandalf? Yes… that’s what they used to call me. Gandalf the Grey. That was my name. I am Gandalf the White. And I come back to you now… at the turn of the tide.

Saruman and Gandalf are transcendent beings. They are Maiar sent to Middle-earth—divine entities who have taken the form of men.

However, Gandalf the Grey has yet to achieve true transcendence. When Saruman proposed joining Mordor at Isengard, it was a piece of realpolitik born from acknowledging the sheer imbalance of power. It was a calculated “preservation of order”—provided, of course, that one holds the perspective that “lesser” beings like Hobbits or Men have little intrinsic value. Instead of analyzing or refuting this logic, Gandalf displays an emotional backlash: “Since when did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for madness?” This is not cold analysis; it is a manifestation of betrayal, moral superiority, a will to power, and judgment. This “Ego” is what binds Gandalf. He is trapped in the dualism of “I” and “You,” “Our side” and “The Enemy,” consumed by personal worry for Frodo and the condemnation of Saruman. Saruman is right; Gandalf’s mind is indeed “slowed.”

While lost and contemplating in the Mines of Moria, Gandalf preaches to Frodo. He tells Frodo—who wished Bilbo had killed Gollum—not to be too eager to deal out death in judgment. He says that even the very wise cannot see all ends, and that all we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us. Yet, the man giving this sermon is the same one who recently branded Saruman’s choices as “madness.”

Immediately following this, as if struck by an epiphany, he finds the path. It seems he realized that the very essence of his sermon applied to himself. He had branded Saruman as evil. He had been lingering, hesitant to face the Balrog. He was a man telling another not to do the very thing he himself was doing.

The suggestion that Gandalf feared the Balrog appears repeatedly. His long pause at the crossroads likely wasn’t because he was lost. Given how effortlessly he leads the company to the Bridge of Khazad-dûm once they are surrounded, it is highly probable he knew the way all along. What he could not decide was not the direction, but whether to confront his fear. He was searching for a way to solve the problem without having to face the Balrog.

When he suddenly announces that “the air doesn’t smell so foul” and finds the path, it isn’t the result of a logical calculation. It is the moment he lets go of his attachment to the outcome. It is about following intuition—“following his nose.” He finally makes the decision to tear down the boundaries of the “I” he had constructed. This is the beginning of transcendence.

And at the end of that path, what he had sought to avoid was waiting. Gandalf fights the Balrog, defeats it, and dies.

The Gandalf who faced the Balrog is no longer “Gandalf.” Upon his return, he speaks of darkness taking him, of straying out of thought and time, and of days that felt as long as an age of the earth. These expressions signify the complete collapse of a human cognitive system bound by time and space. In this process, the individual ego of “Gandalf” has weathered away and vanished. Only a faint sense of purpose remains—a state of having a purpose, yet being without personal desire.

When Aragorn calls out “Gandalf,” he replies: “Gandalf? Yes… that’s what they used to call me.” He remembers the name, but the sense that the name belongs to him is faint. The continuity with his former self has been severed.

He no longer moves out of personal ambition to defeat Sauron or private concern for his friends. He has become a mere proxy of the universal will, deployed to balance the scales of the world. Gandalf has become the First Cause. He is a phenomenon in itself, beyond the need for doubt. Like the sun rising or the wind blowing, Gandalf the White has entered a state of existing simply because he must be there.

In other words, he is a transcendental.