There is a place within atheism for mystical experience. By this I mean those sublime moments in which we feel a deep awe and a sense of connection to humanity and the universe. I’ve had a number of such instances throughout my life, and I treasure the lasting sense of inspiration, peace and sense of interconnectedness that they provide.
Romain Rolland, Nobel Laureate and a friend of Sigmund Freud’s called this sense of connection and awe an “oceanic feeling.” Freud summarizes Rolland’s concept of the oceanic and its relation to religion in the first few pages of Civilization and its Discontents:
…the true source of religious sentiments…consists of a particular feeling… which he would like to call a sensation of “eternity,” a feeling as of somthing limitless, unbounded-as it were, “oceanic.” This feeling, he adds, is purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into particular channels, and doubtless also exhausted by them.
I like this quote because it both affirms the subjective nature of such experiences and points out how institutions can co-opt individual euphoria and manipulate their interpretation for their own ends. I was even an agent for such interpretation when I served as a missionary for the LDS Church sixteen years ago. We were taught to take almost any positive emotion potential converts felt when they came to religious meetings or prayed or read the scriptures and to attribute it to God. Negative feelings were dismissed or explained away (often pointing to Satan as their source).
There is always a space between the experience and its interpretation, and in this space we insert the explanation our context provides (if we can find one). The summer I left home for college, I had my first deeply euphoric experience. Although it is still difficult to describe how I felt, at the time I relied entirely on the metaphor of my newly adopted religion. I felt as though the “heavens had opened up” and “choirs of angels” were singing all around. At the time, I translated this as God’s attempt to communicate with me the truthfulness of Mormonism, since I was continually being reminded by my Mormon friends, Church leaders and holy writings that God would witness this to me.
I still pursue and occasionally am pleasantly surprised by such experiences (just so you know, they are never induced by ingesting foreign substances, unless you count listening to Bad Religion), but I no longer use religious imagery to describe them. When they do wash over me, I try to keep the interpretive layers as thin as possible–it is enough to immerse myself in their peaceful waters, and to float in a warm ocean of connectedness.
9 responses so far ↓
1 xJane // Dec 18, 2007 at 8:05 am
heh, when you said “oceanic” I thought “like the feeling you get when you stand at the ocean, the wind whipping your face & the waves crashing at your feet” but yeah, that too
I was on a walk with one of my sisters once when I saw what I described then as “seeing someone else’s miracle”: the clouds (it was Seattle) parted and a shaft of light pierced through. There was rainbow along the edges of cloud, just like when God talked to Moses in my Picture Bible (my first comic book!). But there were no choir of angels, no booming voice going straight to my brain & demanding I remove my shoes (I always wondered if Moses had to remove his socks, too). No, just beauty; awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping beauty. And it was kinda nice that it there was no one yelling at me about how great they were…
2 Lessie // Dec 18, 2007 at 8:24 am
It was feelings like this creeping in at odd times that made me wonder if “the Spirit” was really only a gift given to Mormons. I was sitting at a Soweto Gospel Choir concert, totally caught up in the joy and exuberance that these singers obviously felt and I realized that we weren’t all that special after all–that others could rejoice in the hope for peace and mutual respect that both religions spoke of.
As my confusion about God progressed, I would have these feelings at art galleries, modern dance concerts, etc. and I realized that what I was feeling was awe at the beauty that humanity was capable of producing and finding in that continued faith that maybe we could eventually overcome our differences and connect on a different level. But it was also around this time that I realized religion often isn’t helpful in this connection, but harmful to it as we expect each other to come around to our different ways of thinking before we finally extend our mutual regard.
3 Lessie // Dec 18, 2007 at 8:25 am
Ahem, that was clear as mud, huh? I should re-read for clarity before I post.
4 catBonny // Dec 18, 2007 at 4:41 pm
This is something that I have thought about a lot as a continue my journey figuring out religion. I stil have euphoric experiences like the ones your describe, and I don’t atrribute them to the Holy Spirit anymore, but moreso to a sense of being to look both inward and outward at the same time and to connect the two.
What I have thought of though is that these feeling are ultimalely these really positive feeling that different religions have tried to channel and tried to put up words and concepts around. And yet, this original positive feeling tends to turn out to be expressed in an overly zealous and very restrictive way a lot of times. It’s like people get so enthustiastic about their belief that they feel that the only way the can give others a sense of this positive thing in their life is to be overbearing and to try and fit people into that mode.
I think that I try to find comfort on the fact that a lot of different religions are started from this central concept of unity and out of these euphoric experiences that people have, and to take it in stride and realize that even though people can seem to be very judgmental they are just trying to share something that they have found positive in their lives- I don’t know if that makes sense, and I am not trying to excuse it, but I like to think about the fact that maybe the origin of things that are different are birthed out of this human spirit that bounds us altogether.
5 John // Dec 19, 2007 at 10:22 am
Lessie, that made perfect sense to me.
I came to a similar realization when I discovered that my Buddhist and JW friends had similar “witnesses.”
Bonnie said:
to a sense of being to look both inward and outward at the same time and to connect the two.
Beautifully written. This summarizes my personal experience of Quaker silent meditation.
I like that even while institutions (and many followers) are trying force others’ experiences into their mold, there are open-minded folks who look for and accept experiences across faith boundaries. I guess you could say that this post is an attempt to include atheists in that comparison.
6 Elaine // Dec 19, 2007 at 12:11 pm
The interesting thing, for me, about these experiences is that even when I was actively practicing a religion, I did not really classify them as religious experiences.
It is difficult to describe exactly how I think of them. I suppose the best thing to say is that I have always thought of them as times when my energy is in tune with the energy of the universe to put me in a place aside from normal time and space. Like I said, the experience is hard to characterize because it is usually…at least for me…so overwhelming but so fleeting.
7 Elise // Dec 19, 2007 at 1:24 pm
As I started thinking about my own euphoric experiences, I quickly realized/remembered that they always take place in nature. It’s interesting to me that it is relatively easy to explain, for example, the causes and make-up of the red canyons in Zions National Park - the weather patterns over the past few thousands of years and minerals depsoited in the soil are understandable and make sense - but the way I feel when I stand on the top of Observation Point, with a view of the entire park that took several hours of effort to reach is SO difficult to communicate. In fact, the only way I’ve found to explain it is to take someone to that very same place and say “Look!” and then wait for their face to express the same sense of awe that I feel. I don’t have any metaphors or descriptive words that do it justice.
And, I love the deeper feeling of kinship/relationship/connection I feel with someone when we experience that kind of awe and wonder toegether.
8 Elise // Dec 19, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Oh, and I wanted to tell John specifically something that Pastor Paul at IUCC said that I loved - he was speaking in the context of God, but what he said applies here too. He was talking about God’s love and the saving power of love, and he pointed to the stained glass window at the front of the sanctuary and said that if God’s love is the sunshine, then the religions/philosophies of the world are simply the different panes of glass. Different colors, different sizes, different shapes, but the same light - the same euphoric experience and I’d say the same power - shining through each.
Who is to say the blue pane shines that experience better than the red pane, or vice versa? Maybe what one calls God and another calls Allah and another calls atheist mysticism are all one shared human experience that many of us want very much to attach meaning to.
9 xJane // Dec 19, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Two quotes from Elise:
Awesome sentiment. I wish some of the religions of the world thought that way, too.
Amen, sister-in-atheism
Leave a Comment