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Concept
Religious ecstasy
Summary
Religious ecstasy is a type of altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and reportedly expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness, frequently accompanied by visions and emotional (and sometimes physical) euphoria.
Although the experience is usually brief in time, there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more, and of recurring experiences of ecstasy during a person's lifetime.
In Sufism, the term is referred to as wajad and the experience is referred to as either jazbah (jadbah o jedbah for Maghreb) or majzoobiyat.
The adjective "religious" means that the experience occurs in connection with religious activities or is interpreted in context of a religion. Journalist Marghanita Laski writes in her study "Ecstasy in Religious and Secular Experiences", first published in 1961:
Epithets are very often applied to mystical experiences including ecstasies without, apparently, any clear idea about the distinctions that are being made. Thus we find experiences given such names as nature, religious, aesthetic, neo-platonic, etc.. experiences, where in some cases the name seems to derive from a trigger, sometimes from the over belief.
Yoga provides techniques to attain a state of ecstasy called samādhi. According to practitioners, there are various stages of ecstasy, the highest being Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Bhakti Yoga in particular places emphasis on ecstasy as being one of the fruits of its practice.
In Buddhism, especially in the Pali Canon, there are eight states of trance also called absorption. The first four states are Rupa or, materially-oriented. The next four are Arupa or non-material. These eight states are preliminary trances which lead up to final saturation. In the Visuddhimagga, great effort and years of sustained meditation are practiced to reach the first absorption, and not all individuals are able to accomplish it at all.
In the Dionysian Mysteries of ancient Greece, initiates used intoxicants, ecstatic dance and music to remove inhibitions and social constraints.
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