I love transcendence stories.
The gospels of the new testament are a classic example. The movie powder would be another. Stranger in a strange land another.
The basic elements are a naive/pure outsider with an important life-and-paradigm changing message. Some hear and follow, including some wise and jaded, others do not.
But the ending is always the same. Death, dispersal, ascension, whatever. Removal from the material world made physical. Maybe it’s commentary on the impermanence of transcendence. Maybe it’s expressing a fundamental truth that it is to be valued and perhaps even cultivated, but that it does not sustain life.
I’ll say this for bujold in her chalion series. She shows people changed but still there after transcendence. Yay for partial transcendence, I suppose. Even if it is impermanent.