ECSTATIC MEANING

Of course ecstasy is a physical state, maybe something like an orgasm or a drug high.  Rats crave it.  So do humans and most other mammals, but it’s not clear that other animals get that way.  If it’s something physical, they probably do, since we evolved out of them.  Maybe a songbird in a mating and territory song frenzy.  No one knows whether a bull elephant in musth is feeling anything good -- his actions are outright dangerous and look like rage though the scientists say it’s sex. Even in humans it can be hard to separate sex and rage, down there in the ancient dark brain there are no words for. 

Clearly “ecstasy” (oh, yeah, it’s a drug and all that) is a mental/emotional state, claimed by emotion-based institutional religion as well as “spiritual” individual experience.  Clearly, it is experience-based, not related to dogma except for bookish prescriptions about how to get into that state.  But it’s attractive and impressive enough for people to go seeking institutions and leaders who promise to create the state.  To the individual person it is very real.  It feels privileged.

Pentecostal groups include ecstasy in their meetings, in what could pejoratively be called “self-hypnotism.”   In the Christian tradition “it marks the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and their transformation from frightened and confused people to men who would face martyrdom for what they believed.”  Sounds Islamic to me.  Actually, it is characteristic of any human movement based on intense emotional states, particularly those dependent on drugs like peyote or ayahuasca or psilicibin -- or come to that -- alcohol.  Even adrenaline as in battle or extreme sports or something as risky as walking a tightrope or driving fast or “base jumping.”  Photos of people about to be killed as martyrs or criminals often look dazed and transported, like a mouse confronting a cat, and probably in just about the same blood molecule state.

Pentecost is this Sunday, May 24, 2015.  Rev. Mark Woods is a Baptist minister and journalist.  He says,“Pentecost is from the Greek word 'Pentekostos', which means 'fifty'. It's the 50th day after the Sabbath of Passover week and in Judaism is called the Feast of Weeks (Leviticus 23:16).”  It’s traditionally a good day for baptism or joining a church.  Or starting summer.

Some exotic practices are attached to the Pentecostal movement, which is popular on Native American reservations and often expressed in other denominations.  It is the flame on the cross at the entrance of Methodist churches.  Strangely, though it is an individual experience, it becomes a force for joining a community.

A number of phenomena are associated:  one is speaking in tongues, a kind of babbling that’s interpreted as an unknown language (a bit of a contradiction in terms.)  Another is snake-handling which ought to boost adrenaline.  The idea is that God is protecting the handler of the rattlers.  Partly because such things are considered weird and dangerous enough to justify stigma and persecution, they are tagged with scripture quotes but also by claiming that they are from contact with a supernatural world: a great wind, a huge fire, or bones that come alive -- all human metaphors that are exaggerations of the real.  Supersized.  Other.

Clearly, if you take the drug called “ecstasy” but more technically MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine)  which is the chemical found in the synthetic "club drug" ecstasy, a drug with stimulant and hallucinogenic effects, you are likely to trigger a flood of serotonin.  The catch is that it’s only borrowed against the future and therefore causes depletion of serotonin which is pretty painful, maybe damaging.  “Drug” levels in the blood are meant to swing back and forth between more and less, not too far in either direction.  If that loop is addled -- either too much or too little -- behavior is affected and may take the person into extremes of high and low that persist, keep rolling though unwanted.

The problem with the ecstasies of emotion or the reciprocating despair is in the tension between the life of an individual and the life of the community, which can also be both intensified or destroyed.  Power and fittingness in the culture must allow the self-regulation that is located in the pre-frontal “ethical” cerebrum.  That is, the ideas and practices that promote survival of self and group, even if a powerful charismatic leader is encouraging everyone to jump into a volcano in order to get to Heaven.  (End of the World Syndrome.)  The fancy of being a “Saving Remnant,” opposed to the rest of a depraved world, is a direct route to terrorism.

Hope makes stigmatized minorities vulnerable to ecstatic states of mind, the ethical/emotional reward for a religious context.  If that can be successfully recorded in dogma, housed in institutions, and rewarded with prosperity, then you’ve got yourself a church at least, maybe a denomination, and possibly a world-changing conflagration people call “religion.”  The political power, as we see, is enormous and can destroy whole populations through violence or sheer disruption, sending masses of people into the “deserts” or seas to starve and die.  

I’m interested in all this, how it happens, and how vivid metaphors change the way we interact with the world and other people.  A denominational seminary is likely to oppose the ideas, because they are disruptive and challenge loyalty.  “Just follow our rules.”  But a university with a strong comparative religion program will be friendly, up to a point.  Many fear that without a boundary, “religion” can become destructive, as history has shown again and again.  Art, I might reflect later, has fewer boundaries because it is considered harmless unless it begins to show icons as cartoons or -- what is “Piss Christ,” the crucifix standing in urine?  Deconstruction, iconoclastic or oxymoron?

Claiming specialness on the evidence of access to another world -- either supernatural or poetic -- can provide a sense of safety that may not be realistic but can satisfy an individual that they need not struggle anymore.  Christians' claim that their access to another world amounts to the denial of death, because those with the privilege will reincarnate -- literally become meat again.  

Making a metaphor this real introduces a lot of problems, as even Osama Bin Laden realized when he told only one wife of his many earthly spouses that she could be his wife in Paradise.  (So much for all those promised virgins.)  Then there’s the “monkey’s paw” dilemma in which a person torn apart by machinery comes back to life in the same ghastly state as he was in when he died.  Someone went to the trouble of figuring out how much physical space each human occupies and discovered we’d have to be piled up in layers if we’re all going to be reincarnated at the same time on this planet.  In philosophical circles, this is called “misplaced concreteness.”

What people know on this planet is what supplies the metaphors of religion with ideas, thought projections.  But in the very beginning, it is pre-verbal felt meaning at the animal level, rooted in ecology, that supplies the emergence of cultures of survival.  Individuals fit themselves into these patterns or, if they can’t, search out or invent new patterns either as a part of the whole or by finding a new basis of community.  It might be small and unique, in which case it is likely to be unknown, or if it responds to a felt need, it might eventually sweep the continents, as a new religion.

We are told, in fancy language, that there are two approaches to the understanding of religion: one is at the level of theories about existence, and the other is a matter of simply “doin’ it:” praxis.  In the best of all possible worlds, the two fit together.  But the human brain is still newly evolved and the planet is full of both limits and possibilities. Some of us get high on ideas, but they aren’t always in words.

LIBERAL CORRUPTION OF SPIRITUALITY

Montreal demonstrations against Quebec Liberals raising tuition.

So if spirituality is corrupted and prevented by rightwing Mancheism forcing everything into good/bad, thumbsup/thumbsdown, light/dark boxes, excuses for stigma and the relentless need for control, what are the equal opportunities for corruption from the left hand side of the culture: the liberals and do-gooders.  A moment of googling and I can make a list.  I’m not even counting mommieism.

1.  Spirituality becomes causes and causes mean institutions, marches and endless money raising.  Competitions, awards, speakers.  They have so much fun, they forget the issue.

2.  It’s always a great opportunity to be “holier than thou.”  Personal leadership often means personal arrogance.

3.  Spirituality sells, esp. if it’s from some anthropological “other” source like the Native Americans, the Tibetan Buddhists, ancient Chinese ideograms, etc.  Dream catchers, prayer wheels, little statues of Buddha or Ho-Ti.   Vids full of water, clouds and trees.

4.  Lots of things to do:  Classes, therapies, Tai Chi in the park, yoga at home, meditation.  Travel to exotic places.  (Tip: spirituality is never about things to do.)

5.  Discounting and ignoring the daily realities of life that need tending, all the while claiming to “rise above” all that dish-washing and bill-paying.  (No wonder there's nothing to do.)

6.  The always dependable short-cut through drugs.  (Alcohol works, but it’s a little downscale.  No liberal would be caught "huffing," would they?)

7.  Elitism.

All this is particularly obvious when it comes to the environment.  For many people “nature mysticism” almost defines spirituality and they will tell you solemnly that the mountains are their church.  But in the next breath they are wanting to pass laws about wilderness, march to preserve the plants and animals in the state they would like (lots of big predators, no game hunting, save every fish species), and make idols of sun phenomena like rising, setting, rainbows, sun dogs.  Pretty soon there’s a business conducting groups of worshipful people to watch wolf packs slip through the trees or whales make a big splash.

This is not spirituality.  Spirituality is when you aren’t apart from anything, observing it, but rather a shift of one’s internal consciousness so that you are participating, not even that -- in fact, you’re not even you anymore.  The boundary is gone.  You are being everything.

Nail down those boundaries.

Do I believe that?  Well -- I admit it’s more of a working premise than a developed way of life.  My boundaries are pretty tough and thick.  But I’ve had glimpses and they were vivid enough to make me work towards understanding.  I’m pretty sure that if there’s a rule, an institution, a course to take, a march, or any hint of bureaucracy -- that’s not spiritual.  I look at ads for books about “deep ecology,” “deep time,” despair work and so on, all promoted by attractive wise old women, and I think, “Wow, I’d better read that book,” but when I get them they are empty.  Full of the obvious.  The works of the entitled.  They talk about the rage and trauma, but it’s not really about them, even when they claim it causes them to have PTSD.  They are living nice lives, blameless, or they wouldn't be able to find a publisher.  I always think of that gaunt Somali woman with the dying baby, walking barefoot for miles on cracked hardpan in search of water.  Her cultural advantages are woven fabric, uncut, tied as a garment, and an old tin or plastic container for the water.  She might know a song.

Spiritually liberal folks like green things, they don’t like nuclear power, they ignore most science and math, they love Buddhism in its more theoretical aspects -- not detachment -- and they don’t climb mountains.  That’s for guys.  These spiritual women prefer the Elm Dance or the Spiral Dance and will give careful detailed instructions about how to do it properly.  They compose poems and songs.  They claim and dominate spirituality and it is all about humans.  Except other people's babies.  Other people should not have babies.  If they aren't raised properly with every advantage, who knows what they might do?

I go to a website about “simple living” and it announces a meeting at Starbucks to discuss what rewards and punishments might force corporations to make the world a better place -- meaning more like what they want it to be.  They worry about bees and arctic ice and they wear really elegant handmade jewelry.

Deep spirituality -- the deepest of any deep thing, the abyss -- is not about human beings.  There is an ancient approach called “kenosis” that is a dark vein through most major schools of thought, including all the sciences.  It means empty.  Nothing.  No meaning, no matter.  It’s not comforting nor is it meant to be.  It may require acceptance.

None of this means you’re off the hook for daily functioning.  You still need to do it all and do it as well as you can.  It doesn’t mean you should start a mail-order business about emptiness.  Spirituality means lots of don’t and doesn’t.  Not doing.

I don’t know what comes next.  In terms of brain development, I think what counts as evolution now is the brain/body/society complex interacting altogether as a whole, but I think it’s intriguing that new sensitivity and capacity seems to be arriving through single cells, the spindle cells.  Spindle neurons, also called “von Economo neurons” (VENs).  Will the next step after the bulging of the forehead to make room for the prefrontal cortex be the extension of antennae to escape the bony skull?  That’s sci-fi.  So far.

Ven spindle cell

In more practical terms, how do we get people to use the potentials they already have?  How do we grow into a culture that doesn’t encourage blows to the head?  (Ours DOES.  Also between men’s legs.  If I were a sneering feminist I might say "their second brain.")  I suspect a lot of people are being born without having that most recent mutation of VENs.  But it interests me that so much recent change is not the result of a whole new organ -- just more individual cell specialization in the society of collaborating cells that is a human body.  Fractal theory would suggest that society is the same: single human beings slowly accumulating change rather than institutions having a committee meeting and recording the ideal on newsprint taped to the wall.

As I sort all these stacks of paper, VERY slowly, I come across useful documents.  Just now, “Mapping a field: Why and How to Study Spirituality” by Courtney Bender and Omar McRoberts, Co-chairs of the Working Group on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life at the Social Service Research Council.  It’s an attempt at capturing the definition, the history, the political use of the concept of spirituality in various times and places, including a quick dip at magic, all that looking for ghosts in the spiritualist Eastern US.  They point out a sequence of trendy influences:  the Transcendentalists -- esp. Emerson -- trying to pull Hindu and Buddhist thought into their philosophy;  then the mystical wilderness (Muir) and the use of Native American thought (or what was thought to be NA thought); lately our love affair with love and the idea of orgasmic/drug-high access to transcendence; and now the engagement with theories of the cosmos and the ravishing telescopic views of the universe -- all supposedly spiritual sources and powerful enough to give rise to a new religious category:  the “nones,”  the people who declare they belong to no religion, attend no church, but consider themselves to be spiritual.

Maybe they just want to say that they are virtuous (love God and all that) but they do NOT want to be on a committee or attend potlucks or -- least of all -- pledge.  What relationship does this have to the Asian disconnect between being “spiritual” and undertaking social action, a relationship that is strong (almost obligatory) in the U.S.?  Mother Theresa just accepts suffering; Martin Luther King Jr. does not. 

Possibly my idiosyncratic insistence that the spiritual is an abyss, an indescribable depth not at all human, much less individual, is not that different from the Islamic refusal to picture God, to leave that metaphor totally undefined.  But Bender and McRoberts suggest that if only they had access to the social media evidence --  they might be able to capture a reliable description of the nones.  Maybe they should sit down for a talk with Ogi Ogdas and Sai Gaddam to come up with a “billion inspiring thoughts” about how to capture this information.  But no one goes to internet “spiritual sites” the way they go to sex sites -- do they?

Steve Jobs: "enlightened but cruel."