In 1969, the British writer Philip Pullman was walking down the
Charing Cross Road in London, when his consciousness abruptly shifted.
It appeared to him that ‘everything was connected by similarities and
correspondences and echoes’. The author of the fantasy trilogy
His Dark Materials
(1995-2000) wasn’t on drugs, although he had been reading a lot of
books on Renaissance magic. But he told me he believes that his insight
was valid, and that ‘my consciousness was temporarily altered, so that I
was able to see things that are normally beyond the range of routine
ordinary perception’. He had a deep sense that the Universe is ‘alive,
conscious and full of purpose’. He says: ‘Everything I’ve written has
been an attempt to bear witness to the truth of that statement.’
What
does one call such an experience? Pullman refers to it as
‘transcendent’. The philosopher and psychologist William James called
them ‘religious experiences’ – although Pullman, who wrote a
fictionalised biography of Jesus, would insist that God was not
involved. Other psychologists call such moments spiritual, mystical,
anomalous or out-of-the-ordinary. My preferred term is ‘ecstatic’.
Today, we think of ecstasy as meaning the drug MDMA or the state of
being ‘very happy’, but originally it meant
ekstasis – a moment
when you stand outside your ordinary self, and feel a connection to
something bigger than you. Such moments can be euphoric, but also
terrifying.
Over the past five centuries, Western culture has
gradually marginalised and pathologised ecstasy. That’s partly a result
of our shift from a supernatural or animist worldview to a disenchanted
and materialist one. In most cultures, ecstasy is a connection to the
spirit world. In our culture, since the 17th century, if you suggest
you’re connected to the spirit world, you’re likely to be considered
ignorant, eccentric or unwell. Ecstasy has been labelled as various
mental disorders: enthusiasm, hysteria, psychosis. It’s been condemned
as a threat to secular government. We’ve become a more controlled,
regulated and disciplinarian society, in which one’s standing as a good
citizen relies on one’s ability to control one’s emotions, be polite,
and do one’s job. The autonomous self has become our highest ideal, and
the idea of surrendering the self is seen as dangerous.
Yet
ecstatic experiences are surprisingly common, we just don’t talk about
them. The polling company Gallup has, since the 1960s, measured the
frequency of mystical experiences in the United States. In 1960, only 20
per cent of the population said they’d had one or more. Now, it’s
around 50 per cent. In a
survey
I did in 2016, 84 per cent of respondents said they’d had an experience
where they went beyond their ordinary self, and felt connected to
something greater than them. But 75 per cent agreed there was a taboo
around such experiences.
There’s even a database of more than
6,000 such experiences, amassed by the biologist Sir Alister Hardy in
the 1960s and now mouldering in storage in Wales. They make for a
strangely beautiful read, a sort of crowdsourced Bible. Here is entry
number 208: ‘I was out walking one night in busy streets of Glasgow
when, with slow majesty, at a corner where the pedestrians were hurrying
by and the city traffic was hurtling on its way, the air was filled
with heavenly music, and an all-encompassing light, that moved in waves
of luminous colour, outshone the brightness of the lighted streets. I
stood still, filled with a strange peace and joy … until I found myself
in the everyday world again with a strange access of gladness and of
love.
Dissolving the ego You don’t need drugs or a church for an ecstatic experience that helps transcend the self and connect to something bigger
Read More from His Dark Materials
I find it interesting that we are deeply involved with the spiritual world in movies, books and video games. Why does it seem that so much of today's life does want to keep our brains from questioning what used to be our deep connections with our spirits. Reading the above it's is very apparent that human beings are deeply connected to something greater than ourselves.
That discovery is wonderful.
