Religious ecstasy

“ Many trance states are revealed in the patient's movements, but for the present I shall speak only of those which are remembered and described afterward.
The attainment of ecstasy has been the aim of many religious sects in ancient and modern times, by whom it is conceived to be a direct union with the Divine; these form an important branch of the group of religious mystics, all of whom believe that the human soul is capable of direct union with God during this present life. But our information as to the various possible types of ecstasy is very defective. ”

“ The best known cases are those of religious ecstasy, but religious ideas do not invariably furnish the material for “ecstatic vision.” Philosophers, artists, and others whose habit of mind tends to deepen certain channels of thought, are also liable to such visitations. Any and every object of longing or desire, no matter how trivial, grotesque, or perverse, may become the object of ecstasy.— (P. 38.) ”

“ Thus religious enthusiasm leads to ecstasy, to a condition in which consciousness is so preoccupied with feelings of mental pleasure that the concept of suffering endured can only be apperceived without its painful quality. ”

“ On the contrary, however, the literature of ecstasy may be both religious and patriotic, and still appeal to the world at large. I suppose the best illustration of such kind of literature is the psalms in the Old Testament. They strike a universal note and move Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, free thinkers alike. The ecstasy here does not depend upon the author's attachment to a dogma, but springs most frequently from a love of righteousness and humanity; hence the emotional appeal of the poet touches even those who are not deists. ”

“ It is obvious in both cases that, as no one understands the tongue, no one can determine whether the interpretation of it be accurate or not. But it is easily conceivable that a sympathetic nervous listener might suppose that he understood the broken and incoherent speech of ecstasy and might interpret it according to his own stimulated imagination. The mysterious and unknown are suggestive texts, and there is nothing more infectious than religious excitement. ”

“ Ecstasy is an invariable concomitant of religious enthusiasm. In the endeavour to break through the 10narrow bounds which confine the human spirit pious and credulous natures are only too easily led astray. ”

“ Fourth Degree:—The Prayer of Rapture, or Ecstasy. This estate is the most privileged, because the most unnatural of all. The bodily as well as mental powers are sunk in a divine stupor. You can make no resistance, as you may possibly, to some extent, in the Prayer of Union. On a sudden your breath and strength begin to fail; the eyes are involuntarily closed, or, if open, cannot distinguish surrounding objects; the hands are rigid ”

“ More frequently there is violent emotional excitement which may find expression in impassioned utterances, and in extravagant bodily movements and gesticulations. Ecstasy usually presents itself as a kind of temporary religious insanity, and has frequently appeared as an epidemic. ”

“ The phenomena of hysteria, faith-cure, openness to suggestion, subjective imagery, mysticism, are not indications of spiritual strength, but of decay and disintegration of the nerves. The ecstasy of unbalanced religious excitement and a stupor of a drunken debauch may belong to the same category of mental phenomena. ”

“ She lay prostrate on her prie-dieu weeping from ecstasy, lying on the rim of heaven held by angels, wanting to die, now bathed in bliss or aching intolerably with spiritual joy, but she was only twelve and her old nature often reasserted itself. Religion at that time became an intense emotion nourished on incense, music, tapers, and a feeling of being tangible. ”

“ The mystic who thinks he is in personal communion with God, the lunatic who thinks demons are prodding him, the spiritualist who imagines he talks to his dead son, the child who is in communication with animals and supernatural creatures, are all victims of some form of ecstasy. ”

“ Hence we Ecstasy; communion with the invisible. should struggle to free ourselves from everything low and mean: to cultivate truth, and devote life to intimate communion with God, divesting ourselves of all personality, and passing into the condition of ecstasy, in which the soul is loosened from its material prison, separated from individual consciousness, [214] and absorbed in the infinite intelligence from which it emanated. "In ecstasy it contemplates real existence ”

“ Indeed, in all countries and in all ages, some form of physical enlargement—singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement—has been intimately associated with worship. Even the momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise.... Whenever an impulse from the world strikes against the organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous expansion or aspiration of the whole soul—there is religion. ”

“ Have not at least some of the saints of this definitely ecstatic type shown more psycho-physical abnormality than spiritually fruitful origination or utilization of such things, so that their whole life seems penetrated by a fantastic spirit? And have not many others, who, at their best, may not have been amenable to this charge, ended with shattered nerve- and will-power, with an organism apparently incapable of any further growth or use, even if we restrict our survey exclusively to strength-bringing ecstasy and to a contemplative prayer of some traceable significance? ”

“ It was an affection, the mental substratum of which consisted in a mixture of overheated religious sentiment and unrestrained medical superstition. The extent to which this belief in demoniac possession was disseminated during the first centuries of the Christian era is shown by the fact that a number of persons busied themselves with the cure of this affection. In the first place, [110] most Christian communities owned an exorcist, or official caster-out of demons. ”

“ The character of these cults is shaped, in a decisive measure, by other influences, whose source is to be found in the hopes of a beyond. Even in the vegetation festivals of the semi-cultural peoples of America, with their elements of totemism and ancestor worship, an important place is occupied by ecstatic features—by the orgiastic dance, and by the ecstasy that results from sexual excitement and from narcotic poisons, such as tobacco. Conjurations, prayer, sacrifice, and other cult ceremonies aid in stirring the emotions. ”

“ Distinction Between Religion and the Ecstasy Derived from Eroticism.—It would be quite false to maintain that religion in itself arises from sexual sensations. The terror of death and the enigmas of existence, the sentiments of human weakness and insufficiency of life, the want of consolation for all miseries, the hope of a future life, all play an important part in the origin of religions. ”

“ For the word ecstasy, which is added to the title, signifies a transport of the mind, which is produced either by a panic, or by some revelation. But in this Psalm the panic of the people of God troubled by the persecution of all the heathen, and by the failing of faith throughout the world, is principally seen. ”

“ Religious Delusions—The seizures giving rise to them shown to have been forms of trance brought on by fanatical excitement—The Cevennes—Scenes at the tomb of the Abbé Paris—Revivals in America—The Ecstatica of Caldaro—Three forms of imputed demoniacal possession—Witchcraft; its marvels, and the solution.
There have been occasions, when much excitement on the subject of religion has prevailed, and when strange disorders of the nervous system have developed themselves among the people, which have been interpreted as immediate visitings of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ Far more suggestive, however, than the association of religion with what we may call the normal social forces, is its connection with conditions that are now clearly recognised as abnormal. From the earliest times we find the use of drugs and stimulants, the practice of fasting and self-torture, with other methods of depressing or stimulating the action of the nervous system, accepted as well-recognised methods of inducing a sense of religious illumination, or the feeling that one is in direct communion with a supernatural order of existence. ”

“ Yet it should be remembered, that, in many signal and well-attested instances the fervor of the religious affections has almost or entirely obliterated the consciousness of physical suffering, and has proved its power to vanquish every inferior emotion, and to fill the heart with heaven, even amid the utmost intensities of pain. ”

“ My body is so broken that it can no longer support the intellect. I will eat and drink and strengthen this tortured body that it may still be the servant of the higher in me, no longer complaining of its own griefs and diverting attention from the goal. For it is possible that what I have already learned has prepared the way to Right Ecstasy and that in ecstasy I may behold the beginning of the Wisdom which in all the methods I have tried has been hidden from me. ”

“ The diviner, like the magician, sometimes performs various ceremonies for the purpose of bringing himself into relation with the gods, and his utterances are frequently given in an ecstatic condition. In this condition he is said in some instances (as among the Todas1592) to speak a language not his own, with which in his ordinary state of mind he is 408unacquainted, or to utter words that are not understood either by himself or by others. Ecstasy means possession by the deity ”

“ An ecstasy is, in the usual understanding of the word, an abnormal, transient condition of excitement in which the subject's natural capacity for thought and feeling, and therewith all impressions from without, are suspended, being superseded by an intense mental excitation and activity. Jesus may possibly have been in an ecstatic state at His baptism and at the transfiguration. ”

“ It makes us new creatures, created anew in Him. This revelation is what the Devil cannot counterfeit. From hence proceeds the only safe transport of ecstasy, which is operated by naked faith alone, and dying even to the gifts of God. ”

“ The substitution of the transient and unreal, for the real and enduring objects of prayer, brings with it often that sort of ameliorated mysticism which consists in a solicitous dissection of the changing emotions of the religious life, and in a sickly sensitiveness, serving only to divert attention from what is important in practical virtue. There are anatomists of piety who destroy all the freshness and vigor of faith, and hope, and charity, by immuring themselves night and day in the infected atmosphere {40} of their own bosoms. ”

“ The ground which they have in common with merely human forebodings and divinings, is the state of trance in which alone prophets seem to have foretold the future, whether we believe this ecstatic condition to have been caused by music, long-protracted prayer or the direct agency of the Holy Spirit.
This ecstasy was in the case of almost all the oracles of antiquity brought on by inhaling certain gases which rose from the soil and produced often most fearful symptoms in the unfortunate persons employed for the purpose. ”

“ It is true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory—e.g., sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Saviour in a few Christian mystics. But then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive function, and prove one's point by the worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints about the Eucharist? ”

“ The existence of that evil, which, knowing the constitution of man, we should expect to find prevalent in mysticism, the experience of all ages has shown following, dogging its steps inevitably. So slight is the film that separates religion from sensual passion, that uncontrolled spiritual fervour roars readily into a blaze of licentiousness. ”

“ MY Lord Jesus Christ, who for love of us didst suffer the agony of thirst upon the Cross, grant we beseech thee, through the merits of thy sacred passion and death, that we may subdue our sinful desires, and may never have the misfortune to commit the sin of drunkenness. This most grievous sin has cast innumerable souls into hell. It brings in its train innumerable other sins. It closes the heart against sanctifying grace, gives loose reins to the vilest passions, destroys Christian peace in families, leads to fighting and quarrelling, to cursing and swearing, to improper and sinful words. ”

“ In this part of the Lord's vineyard more particularly, we need not only the spirit of love and of wisdom and power, but also of a sound mind, a spirit of Scriptural sobriety, not dissociated from a true Holy Ghost enthusiasm, for the salvation of a people in whom is bound up the hope of the world, but in whose midst Satan is entrenched more powerfully at the present day than in any other nation. ”

“ Among the lower races, and high above their level, morbid ecstasy brought on by meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement, or 306disease, is a state common and held in honour among the very classes specially concerned with mythic idealism, and under its influence the barriers between sensation and imagination break utterly away. A North American Indian prophetess once related the story of her first vision: At her solitary fast at womanhood she fell into an ecstasy, and at the call of the spirits she went up to heaven by the path that leads to the opening of the sky ”

“ To put the matter briefly, if a spirit from outside can enter the organism, the spirit from inside can go out, can change its centre of perception and action, in a way less complete and irrevocable than the change of death. Ecstasy would thus be simply the complementary or correlative aspect of spirit-control. ”

“ Is not a doctrine which possesses its panacea in the good feeling of Christian hearts based on religious feelings? Does a sober expression of religious feeling cease to be an expression of religious feeling? ”