Spirituality & Religious StudiesReligious Ecstasy
This is a reported form of altered state of consciousness that’s characterized by greatly reduced external awareness & purportly expanded interior mental & spiritual awareness. It’s frequently accompanied by visions & emotional (& sometimes physical) euphoria.
Even though this experience is usually a brief period of time, there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more. There are also recurring experiences of ecstasy during a person’s lifetime.
In Sufism, this is called: wajd. In Buddhism, it’s called: piti. It’s usually translated as “joy” or “rapture,” & is an element of jhana, a state of oneness with an object that 1 focuses on in meditation.
With the adjective “religious” means that the experience occurs in connection with religious activities or is interpreted in the context of a religion.
In yoga, it provides certain techniques to attain a state of ecstasy called: samadhi. Practitioners say that there are various stages of ecstasy. The highest one being Nirvikalpa samadhi. Bhakti Yoga, in particular, places emphasis on ecstasy as being 1 of the fruits of its practice.
In Buddhism, especially in the Pali Canon, there are 8 trance states, called absorption. The first 4 states are: Rupa (materially oriented). The next 4 states are: Arupa (non-material). These 8 states are preliminary trances which lead up to the final saturation. In the Visuddhimagga, lots of effort & years of sustained meditation are practiced to reach the first absorption. Not everyone can do this at all.
In monotheistic traditions, ecstasy is normally associated with communion & oneness with God. Some charismatic Christians practice ecstatic states (like “being slain in the Spirit”). They view these as being given by the Holy Spirit, or gifts of the Spirit.
However, such experiences can also be a quite personal mystical experience with no significance to anyone but the person experiencing them.
Religious ecstasy in certain Christian movements has also been seen as: squealing, shrieking, an inability to stand/sit, uttering apocalyptic prophecies, holy laughter, crying, & barking. Some have made some interesting claims of seeing “gold dust,” “angel feathers,” “holy clouds,” or precious gem stones spontaneously showing up during ecstatic worship events.
In hagiographies (writings about Christian saints), there are plenty of records in which saints are granted ecstasies. Some Modern witchcraft traditions call themselves “ecstatic traditions.” They focus on reaching ecstatic states in their rituals. The Reclaiming Tradition & the Feri Tradition are 2 modern ecstatic Witchcraft examples.
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