Why So Glum?

Church Pew with Worshippers by Vincent Van Gogh

Part Two: Christianity as an Ecstatic Tradition 

In the last few decades, there have been thousands of studies and hundreds of books published with the goal of increasing happiness and helping people lead more satisfying lives. More people are in therapy, support groups, and mentoring relationships than ever before.

So why aren’t we happier? Self-reported measures of happiness have stayed stagnant for over the 40 years they have been researched. We don’t seem to be getting any happier, despite all our efforts. Most people would settle for just feeling a little better and don’t even consider the possibility of something even more significant such as ecstasy. 

As Christians, do we think our Christianity makes us a lot happier? What about ecstatic? Unfortunately, most Christians will have a similar answer there. The author of Sacred Ecstasy, Bradford Keeney, says, “It is vitally important to acknowledge how spiritual ways too often and too quickly become emotion-less, motion-less, sense-less, heart-less, body-less, soul-less, spirit-less, mystery-less, and divine-less as they devolve from ecstatic embodiment to the abstract discourse of talking heads and the routines of ritual guardians.”

I want to focus on this deep, expansive, happiness and joy we call ecstasy, and how we might discover it once again in our Christian spirituality. Let’s begin by looking at how the Christian tradition began in riots of joy and mystical events of ecstasy—and then changed down through the centuries, sometimes evolving, sometimes regressing.

The Fire of Sacred Ecstasy

The driver of original Christianity was the fire of ecstasy. It was ignited at Pentecost and reignited again and again with new believers and in house-church gatherings. Christianity would not have thrived in a hostile world without the mind-blowing, heart-opening, emotional fire of sacred ecstasy.

John the Baptist predicted that Jesus would be the Firestarter, saying, “I baptize you with water. But Jesus will baptize you with holy spirit and fire (Luke 3:16).

Tongues of Fire

The initial, full-fledged baptism of spirit and fire took place on the Jewish festival day called “Pentecost.” Jesus’ followers had gathered together and were so overcome with the energetic flow of sacred emotion that they looked and acted like they were boisterously drunk (Acts 2:1-13). The primary visual metaphor Luke used in describing this time was of seeing something that looked like fire, which divided up into parts or individual “tongues” with an individual flame settling on each person. The Greek word for “tongue” means a literal physical tongue and also a language, thus serving to describe both what was seen—flames of fire—and what was heard—people from many different parts of the world, looking on and hearing the local Galileans praised God in their native languages.

The scene was viewed differently by the many onlookers, depending on their viewpoint —some were amazed, while others dismissed it as a drunken riot. Interestingly, this is much like people do today concerning religious ecstasy. Perhaps you might even look on these experiences with a degree of suspicion, caution, or distance.

The Apostle Paul, who was not present here, would have seen similar scenes later on throughout his ministry. He was to eventually suggest that becoming “filled with the Spirit” was actually an effective alternative to getting drunk! (Eph. 5:18). Pretty wild compared to the buttoned-up Christianity many of us are used to!

Drunk on God

This “fire in your bones” ecstasy is described as spirit-filling, charismatic worship, visions of Jesus, trances, and other numinous spiritual experiences. The Greek word “ἔκστασις — ekstasis, is translated as “trance” three times in the book of Acts and with words like “astonishment” and “amazement” the other four times. When people decided to become followers of Jesus, the early church leaders were careful to make sure they had their own Pentecost –the release into the ecstasy found in expanded, awakened consciousness (Acts 10:44; 19:6). When Peter and Paul found some who believed in Jesus but had not yet had an experience of sacred ecstasy, they immediately placed their hands on them, and they experienced being “drunk on God.” And as the mystic Catherine of Siena would write fourteen centuries later that with “that light I sense my soul once again becoming drunk!”

Paul, the ecstatic mystic

After Paul’s dramatic experience on the road to Damascus, Jesus told Ananias, in a vision, to go to Paul and pray for him to be “filled with holy spirit” (Acts 9:10-11,17). This follows the early pattern of new believers engaging in an initial experience of the release of the energy flow of sacred consciousness called “holy spirit” that opened their minds and hearts in a revolutionary new way to God and others.

Paul’s ecstatic religious experience was a major part of his life and thought. It begins with him being knocked to the ground by light flashing from heaven and hearing Jesus talk to him. Later he visits heaven and looks around, has ecstatic modes of worship, auditory experiences, ecstatic prayer, more talking with Jesus, singing in the spirit, and performing amazing signs and wonders. He was accused of being out of his mind or “beside himself,” ecstatic for God. No doubt, Paul experienced sacred ecstasy often and profoundly. (Acts 9:1-9; 1 Cor. 9:1; chapters 14–15; 2 Corinthians 3-5; 5:13; 12:1-4, 7-9, 12; 8:26; 15:18–19).

WHAT IS SACRED ECSTASY?

Sacred ecstasy is a flow of the energy of an awakened state of consciousness characterized by reduced external awareness and expanded interior and spiritual awareness, frequently accompanied by visions and euphoria.

Einstein called ecstasy the “mystic emotion” and spoke of it as “the finest emotion of which we are capable,” “the germ of all art and all true science,” and “the core of the true religious sentiment.”

The defining feature of ecstasy is letting go of our ego boundaries while sinking into overflowing, emotion-filled love and oneness with all.

In his classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James argued that ecstatic emotion is central to religious transformation. He described such experiences as “illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance.”

Spiritual ecstasy is the experience of the fullness of Self beyond the mental screen of chatter that is usually at the forefront of our experience. 

States of ecstasy and bliss are moments when you lose your ordinary sense of self and feel connected to something greater than you. You feel connected to all living things, that you are within all of creation, and that all of creation is within you.

What happened to all that sacred ecstasy in Christianity?

Gradually, mystical ecstasy was replaced by doctrine and religious authorities. Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament states, “The ecstatic became more and more heretical. Orderly ministry assumed control. This might mean impoverishment, but as things stood, it brought clarity and security.”

In the medieval Church, it was risky to claim to have had an ecstatic encounter with God, Mother Mary, or some other divine entity. You might be mocked, locked up as mad, or condemned as a demoniac, or even burned alive.

In the late nineteenth century, psychiatrists argued that religious ecstasy and demonic possession were both really symptoms of a brain pathology they called ‘hysteria.’ Sigmund Freud thought ecstasy was a form of infantile ego-regression. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ecstasy continues to be pathologized by much of mainstream psychology.

Today, if you tell a psychiatrist you are in communication with God or a spirit, there is a good chance you would be diagnosed as suffering from a psychiatric condition such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As a result, even with friends, there is a taboo around discussing ecstatic experiences.

Academics and ecstasy

Christian scholars often dismiss these ecstatic events by saying, “God no longer operates that way. That was useful in getting Christianity started, but we don’t need that anymore.” This is difficult to argue with since all we have to do was look around and see the absence of the ecstatic in the Christian path. Even when traditional Christians visit a Pentecostal church and look at the fervor and ecstatic behavior, they don’t often think, “Oh my, what a wonderful display of God’s work.” They are more likely to think, “Someone should call an ambulance.”

Professor of New Testament, Colleen Shantz, at Toronto School of Theology, in her book, Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought, writes that the suspicion of mysticism and religious experience is rooted in theological fear of the dynamic unpredictability of the mystical and the experiential in Christianity. The consequence of cultural biases against religious ecstasy and their influence on New Testament studies is that Paul’s ecstatic religious experience has been minimized or altogether downplayed.

Chances are, most of you, if you grew up in the Christian faith, were part of a tradition that didn’t embrace or experience the ecstatic. If you did, you also likely saw its abuses such as “chasing feelings,” experience manipulation, or using types of ecstatic expression as egoic signal markers for elite or special status. Is ecstasy something worth pursuing, despite all these seeming problems and lack of respectability?

Yes! The Christian life is designed for moments and times of the ecstasy that come from the burning love and joy of friendship with God, Jesus, and others, as well as awakened and transcendent states of consciousness. 

Next week we will explore the way forward to experiencing sacred ecstasy. Be sure you are signed up to our mailing list to receive this writing.