CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ECSTASY. (+ Commentary of the “Memorial” of Blaise Pascal)
Obviously, in my case, I cannot speak of ecstasy when I receive a religious experience. For me, it would even be what makes the main difference between the experience of the sublime in art and the religious experience. If these two experiences can drive to the tears of joy, I always felt that they separate themselves very distinctly from each other. Heretofore I could explain difference between these experiments only by the difference of what causes them and by the difference of their preoccupations. But now I see more clearly a difference of texture between these two experiences: the mental procedures and categories involved by the subject who lives such experiences are not the same. Religious experience is not ecstatic because it leaves my conscience in the location and the time of the scientists (with a past a present and a future)... The location and, above all, the time do not come out of mental concerns, even at the height of the crisis. More: I saw systematically in the core of religious experience a form of disappointment which only accentuates the importance I grant to the crisis: "It will not last for long time, alas!” Yes, I have to talk about a special kind of sadness inside the core of the most intense experiences and the most enjoyable experiences of my life! This religious experience is truly and fully "alive" because consciously the experience is inside duration and not in eternity. I therefore cannot speak of ecstasy. On the contrary, the experience of the sublime momentarily separates my awareness of my physical existence. This experience has in common with sexual orgasm that she extracts me mentally of the duration and throws me out of any location. (More orgasm is of good quality, more that orgasm is out of any temporal concern, physical concern, sensual concern... It is also exactly what happens in experience of the beauty.) The consciousness of the “me” quits my body and enters in an undifferentiated bliss abyss. Into that abyss, the "I" is no longer in opposition with a "he" or a "you" ... There is a fusion of the mind with the cosmos. When my conscience is immersed in such experience I am immersed in a form of eternity. I can speak of ecstasy. Religious experience is the excitement of the "I" by the exaltation of a "you". That is just the inverse of the fusion. (I do not mention any "he" because I do not think that the "he" can exist in the consciousness at that moment! The overwhelming presence of Otherness, with a capital "O", prevents mental availability required to take into account a third person...). What surprises me in this new lighting of those moments (which were essential moments and which often re-engineered my life), is that I finally assume verbally what until now I was unable to say (or was not daring to say): the religious experience is marked by an incompleteness as a red iron mark which is also his sting! The main manifestation of this incompleteness is a temporal anxiety: the fear that he leaves, that he does not stay ... I count those perfect seconds which are given to me. ...God is front of me, in me, but not me! That is not what happens during the experience of sublime. When tears of pleasant emotions come because listening to a fugue of J.S.Bach for example, happiness is extreme but there is no "otherness", there is only one "me" whose boundaries seem to flee me. This happiness is a perfect intimacy or even a confusion between the "me" and the rest. There is definitely extension of my consciousness. For speaking about the sublime, some authors talk about an "oceanic feeling". That is even more suggestive to explain what the conscience experienced during the ecstasy We must also distinguish this ecstatic experience (which is also the orgasmic experience when we let us totally enter in the order of pleasure) from the other emotions, also very strong but not ecstatic, that each of us can feel in a cinema for instance, when the film is emotional without being particularly aesthetic. I am not referring here to the vulgar experience of empathy with the actor in a highlight of the scenario; I'm talking about this wag of soul that trouble us still when the movie is finished and which we can definitely qualify as egocentric. This last experience, unlike the religious experience or the feeling of the sublime, is primarily "critical" in the philosophical meaning of the word. This experience, art provokes it more often than it provokes the experience of the sublime (or the religious experience).
*** Out of all those kinds of 'crisis', it seems obvious to me that the religious experience is the most powerful and therefore it is that kind of 'crisis' which, more than the others, can transform life into roots. Religious experience would even be , according to my point of view, the strongest experience which a man can be subjected …after the experience of extreme suffering of course! I do not think that all the experiences that we call "mystical" correspond to what I call here a religious experience. I believe that some are ecstatic and as such are more similar to the orgasmic experience, or the oceanic feeling or even the epileptic crisis! But what Blaise Pascal wrote about his own mystical experience in 1654 and which is par excellence what we usually call a religious experience is clearly not an ecstatic experience. Must I remind here that Pascal starts the comment of his experience with the mention of precise temporal coordinates? After that mention, Pascal do not insist so much on his personal expanded feelings but, on the contrary, to very specific impersonal references common in the spiritual sphere of France at that time. Pascal was during his crisis in a relation and not in a fusion experience. The experience was so strong that he will never dare to talk about it publicaly. This modesty testifies that he had lived this experience almost as we live a sin (if not an illegitimate fondling at least a fondling of a God who is supposed, in good theology, to be supra-temporal and supra-spatial). This is without saying that he felt also that the experience could be consider not only as heretical but also insane. Pascal therefore will write this text exclusively for himself, to preserve the precious memory of the event on his body, as a fetish. Pascal will hide the paper in the lining of his garment. He will sewn up as many times as necessary until his death eight years later. That modesty, as much as the rest of his work, deliver him of the suspicion of psychosis: Pascal kept on alert its objective categories that enabled him also to smell how much what he had to live was out the categories of science. It is exactly that lucidity that the psychotic is missing! I also note that Pascal has not underestimate the "imperfection" of his experience; he was anxious because knowing in real time that what he was experimenting will be of limited time...
paul yves wery Sarapee - Augustus 2011
On the same website, you can read 3other articles about mystical experience (still not translated):
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L'EXPERIENCE RELIGIEUSE CHRETIENNE ET l'EXTASE. (+ Commentaire du "Mémorial" de Blaise Pascal) CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ECSTASY. (+ Commentary of the “Memorial” of Blaise Pascal)
Manifestement, en ce qui me concerne, je ne peux PAS parler d'extase lorsque je reçois une expérience religieuse. Pour moi, ce serait même ce qui fait la principale différence entre l'expérience du sublime en art et l'expérience religieuse. Si ces deux expériences peuvent conduire aux larmes de joie, j'ai toujours ressenti qu'elles se distinguent très nettement l'une de l'autre. Jusqu'ici je ne pouvais expliquer la différence entre ces expériences que par la différence de ce qui les provoque et par la différence de leurs préoccupations. Mais maintenant je vois plus clairement une différence de texture entre ces deux expériences: les procédures mentales et les catégories mise en jeu par le sujet qui vit ces expériences ne sont pas les mêmes. Obviously, in my case, I cannot speak of ecstasy when I receive a religious experience. For me, it would even be what makes the main difference between the experience of the sublime in art and the religious experience. If these two experiences can drive to the tears of joy, I always felt that they separate themselves very distinctly from each other. Heretofore I could explain difference between these experiments only by the difference of what causes them and by the difference of their preoccupations. But now I see more clearly a difference of texture between these two experiences: the mental procedures and categories involved by the subject who lives such experiences are not the same. L'expérience religieuse n'est pas extatique parce qu'elle laisse rigoureusement ma conscience dans le lieu et dans le temps des scientifiques avec un passé un présent et un avenir, …et je n'arrive même pas à m'en distraire! Le lieu et, surtout, le temps ne sortent pas des préoccupations mentales même au plus fort de la crise. Mieux, je vis systématiquement au coeur de l'expérience religieuse une forme de déception anticipée qui ne fait qu'accentuer l'importance que j'accorde à la crise: «Cela ne durera pas longtemps, hélas!». Oui, je dois bien parler d'une forme particulière de tristesse au coeur des expériences les plus intenses et les plus agréables de ma vie! En cela cette expérience est véritablement et intégralement «vivante»: elle est consciemment inscrite dans la durée et pas dans l'éternité. Je n'ai donc pas à parler d'extase. Religious experience is not ecstatic because it leaves my conscience in the location and the time of the scientists (with a past a present and a future)... The location and, above all, the time do not come out of mental concerns, even at the height of the crisis. More: I saw systematically in the core of religious experience an form of disappointment which only accentuates the importance I grant to the crisis: "It will not last for long time, alas!” Yes, I have to talk about a special kind of sadness inside the core of the most intense experiences and the most enjoyable experiences of my life! This religious experience is truly and fully "alive" because consciously the experience is inside duration and not in eternity. I therefore cannot speak of ecstasy. Au contraire, l'expérience du sublime sépare momentanément ma conscience de mon existence matérielle. Cette expérience a ceci en commun avec l'orgasme sexuel par exemple, de m'extraire mentalement de la durée, de me jeter hors des lieux. (Plus l'orgasme est de bonne qualité, plus il est hors de toute préoccupation spatiotemporelle, physique, charnelle… Il en va de même de l'expérience du beau.) La conscience du «moi» sort véritablement de mon corps et s'abîme dans une félicité indifférenciée où le «je» ne s'oppose plus à un «il» ou un «tu»… Il y a bien une fusion mentale à un cosmos dans sa globalité. Lorsque la conscience est plongée dans une expérience de ce type elle est plongée dans une forme d'éternité. Je peux parler d'extase. On the contrary, the experience of the sublime momentarily separates my awareness of my physical existence. This experience has in common with sexual orgasm that she extracts me mentally of the duration and throws me out of any location. (More orgasm is of good quality, more that orgasm is out of any temporal concern, physical concern, sensual concern... It is also exactly what happens in experience of the beauty.) The consciousness of the “me” quit my body and enters in an undifferentiated bliss abyss. Into that abyss, the "I" is no longer in opposition with a "he" or a "you" ... There is a fusion of mind with the cosmos. When my conscience is immersed in such experience I am immersed in a form of eternity. I can speak of ecstasy. Dans l'expérience religieuse, on a l'exaltation d'un «je» par l'exaltation d'un «tu», ce qui est juste l'inverse de la fusion. (Je n'ose pas parler du «il» car je ne pense pas qu'un «il» puisse exister dans la conscience à cet instant-là! L'écrasante présence de l'Altérité avec un grand « A », empêche la disponibilité mentale requise pour prendre en compte une tierce personne…) Religious experience is the excitement of an "I" by the exaltation of a "you". That is just the inverse of the fusion. (I do not mention any "he" because I do not think that the "he" can exist in the consciousness at that moment! The overwhelming presence of Otherness, with a capital "O", prevents mental availability required to take into account a third person...). Ce qui m'étonne sous cet éclairage neuf de ces instants (qui furent des moments essentiels et sans cesse repensés de ma vie), c'est que j'assume enfin verbalement ce que j'ai toujours ressenti sans pouvoir ou sans oser le dire: l'expérience religieuse est comme marquée au fer rouge par une incomplétude qui est aussi son aiguillon! La principale manifestation de cette incomplétude est une angoisse temporelle: la crainte qu'Il parte, qu'Il ne reste pas… Je compte les secondes qui me sont données… Dieu est devant moi, en moi, mais pas moi! What surprises me in this new lighting of those moments (which were essential moments and which often re-engineered my life), is that I finally assume verbally what until now I was unable to say (or was not daring to say): the religious experience is marked by an incompleteness as a red iron mark which is also his sting! The main manifestation of this incompleteness is a temporal anxiety: the fear that He leaves, that He does not stay ... I count those perfect seconds which are given to me ... God is in front of me, in me, but not me! Ce n'est pas du tout ce qui se passe pendant l'expérience du sublime. Lorsque je pleure d'émotion en écoutant une fugue de Bach par exemple, le bonheur est extrême mais il n'y a pas «l'Autre», il n'y a qu'un «moi» dont les limites semblent me fuir! Ce bonheur-là relève d'une intimité parfaite voire d'une confusion entre le «moi» et le reste. Il y a bien extension de ma conscience. Pour dire le sublime, certains parlent d'un «sentiment océanique», ce qui est encore plus suggestif de l'extase vécue par la conscience… That is not what happens during the experience of sublime. When tears of pleasant emotions come because listening to a fugue of J.S.Bach for example, happiness is extreme but there is no "otherness", there is only one "me" whose boundaries seem to flee me! This happiness is a perfect intimacy or even a confusion between the "me" and the rest. There is definitely extension of my consciousness. For speaking about the sublime, some authors talk about an "oceanic feeling". That is more suggestive to explain what the conscience experienced during the ecstasy. Cette expérience extatique (qui est aussi celle de l'orgasme sexuel lorsqu'il se laisse totalement aller à l'ordre du plaisir), il faut encore la distinguer de l'émotion très forte mais pas du tout extatique que chacun de nous a pu ressentir dans une salle de cinéma par exemple, lorsque le film est émouvant sans être particulièrement esthétisant. Je ne fais pas allusion ici à la vulgaire expérience d'empathie avec l'acteur dans un temps fort du scénario; je parle de ce remuement d'âme qui nous agite encore lorsqu'on quitte la salle de projection et que l'on peut bien qualifier d'égocentrique. Cette dernière expérience, contrairement à l'expérience religieuse ou au sentiment du sublime, est une expérience principalement «critique» dans le sens philosophique du mot. Cette expérience-là, l'art la suscite bien plus souvent qu'il ne suscite l'expérience du sublime (ou l'expérience religieuse). We must also distinguish this ecstatic experience (which is also the orgasmic experience when we let us totally enter in the order of pleasure) from the other emotions, also very strong but not ecstatic, that each of us can feel in a cinema for instance, when the film is emotional without being particularly aesthetic. I am not referring here to the vulgar experience of empathy with the actor in a highlight of the scenario; I'm talking about this wag of soul that trouble us still when the movie is finished and which we can definitely qualify as egocentric. This last experience, unlike the religious experience or the feeling of the sublime, is primarily "critical" in the philosophical meaning of the word. This experience, art provokes it more often than it provokes the experience of the sublime (or the religious experience).
***
De toutes ces "crises", il me semble évident que c'est l'expérience religieuse qui est la plus puissante et donc c'est elle qui est la plus susceptible de transformer une vie aux racines. L'expérience religieuse serait même, selon mon point de vue, la plus forte expérience qu'un homme puisse subir …après celle de la souffrance extrême bien entendu! Je ne sais pas si toutes les expériences que l'on dit «mystiques» correspondent à ce que j'appelle ici une expérience religieuse. J'ai envie de croire au contraire que certaines sont extatiques et à ce titre sont plutôt de l'ordre de l'orgastique, de l'océanique voire même de l'épileptique! Mais ce que Blaise Pascal a écrit de son expérience mystique de 1654 et qui pour d'aucun relève par excellence de ce qu'on a coutume d'appeler une expérience religieuse n'est clairement pas du tout une expérience extatique. Dois-je rappeler ici que Pascal commence par y évoquer très précisément des coordonnées temporelles. Out of all those kinds of 'crisis', it seems obvious to me that the religious experience is the most powerful and therefore it is that kind of 'crisis' which, more than the others, can transform life into roots. Religious experience would even be, according to my point of view, the strongest experience which a man can be subjected …after the experience of extreme suffering of course! I do not think that all the experiences that we call "mystical" correspond to what I call here a religious experience. I believe that some are ecstatic and as such are more similar to the orgasmic experience, or the oceanic feeling or even the epileptic crisis. But what Blaise Pascal wrote about his own mystical experience in 1654 and which is 'par excellence' what we usually call a religious experience is clearly not an ecstatic experience. Must I remind here that Pascal starts the comment of his experience with the mention of precise temporal coordinates? Ensuite, il ne s'en référe pas beaucoup à des sentiments personnels élargis mais, tout au contraire, à des références impersonnelles très précises de la sphère spirituelle qui fut celle de la France de son temps. Pascal était, durant ces moments de crise, dans une expérience relationnelle (et non fusionnelle). L'expérience était tellement forte qu'ensuite il n'osera pas en parler. Cette pudeur témoigne de ce qu'il avait vécu cette expérience presque comme on vit celle d'un péché (sinon celui de l'étreinte illicite, au moins celui d'avoir chipoté un Dieu qu'en bonne théologie on supposait supra-temporel et supra-spatial). C'est sans dire qu'en plus du risque d'être jugé hérétique, parler publiquement d'une telle expérience l'aurait exposé au risque d'être jugé fou… Pascal va donc écrire ce texte exclusivement pour lui-même, pour en préserver la précieuse mémoire contre son corps comme on préserve un fétiche. Il cachera le papier dans une doublure de son vêtement décousue et recousue autant de fois que nécessaire jusqu'à sa mort huit ans plus tard. After, he do not refer so much on his personal expanded feelings but, on the contrary, to very specific impersonal references common in the spiritual sphere of France at that time. Pascal was during his crisis in a relation and not in a fusion experience. The experience was so strong that he will not dare to talk about it publicaly. This modesty testifies that he had lived this experience almost as we live a sin (if not an illegitimate cuddle at least a cuddle of a God who is supposed, in good theology, to be supra-supra-temporal and supra-spatial). This is without saying that he felt also that the experience could be consider not only as heretical but also crazy ... Pascal therefore will write this text exclusively for himself, to preserve the precious memory of the event on his body, as a fetish. Pascal will hide the paper in the lining of his garment that he had sew up as many times as necessary until his death eight years later. Cette pudeur-là, autant que le reste de son œuvre, le délivre de la suspicion de psychose: Pascal a gardé en alerte ses catégories objectives qui lui permettaient aussi de sentir à quel point ce qu'il venait de vivre était hors des catégories de la science. Or c'est justement cette lucidité-là qui manque chez le psychotique! Je note aussi que Pascal n'a pas éludé l'incomplétude de son expérience; lui aussi s'inquétait de sa durée limitée... That modesty, as much as the rest of his work, deliver him of the suspicion of psychosis: Pascal kept on alert its objective categories that enabled him also to feel how much what he had to live was out the categories of science. It is exactly that lucidity that the psychotic is missing! I also note that Pascal has not underestimate the imperfection of his experience; he was also anxious because knowing that what he was experimenting will be of limited time...
The year of grace 1654, L'an de grâce 1654,
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