Religious Ecstasy - Exclusive and Inclusive Views

Exclusive and Inclusive Views

Religious people may hold the view that true religious ecstasy occurs only in their religious context (e.g. as a gift from the supernatural being whom they follow) and it cannot be induced by natural means (human activities). Trance-like states which are often interpreted as religious ecstasy can be deliberately induced with techniques or ecstatic practices; including, prayer, religious rituals, meditation, breathing exercises, physical exercise, sex, music, dancing, sweating, fasting, thirsting, and psychotropic drugs. An ecstatic experience may take place in occasion of contact with something or somebody perceived as extremely beautiful or holy. It may also happen without any known reason. The particular technique that an individual uses to induce ecstasy is usually one that is associated with that individual's particular religious and cultural traditions. As a result, an ecstatic experience is usually interpreted within the particular individual religious context and cultural traditions. These interpretations often include statements about contact with supernatural or spiritual beings, about receiving new information as a revelation, also religion-related explanations of subsequent change of values, attitudes and behavior (e.g. in case of religious conversion).

Achieving ecstatic trances is a shaman activity, who induce ecstasy for such purposes as traveling to heaven or the underworld, guiding or otherwise interacting with spirits, clairvoyance, and healing. Some shamans take drugs from such plants as Ayahuasca, peyote and cannabis (also see cannabis (drug) or certain mushrooms in their attempts to reach ecstasy, while others rely on such non-chemical means as ritual, music, dance, ascetic practices, or visual designs as aids to mental discipline.

Read more about this topic:  Religious Ecstasy

Famous quotes containing the words exclusive and, exclusive, inclusive and/or views:

    Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one’s mother’s womb.
    Italo Calvino (1923–1985)

    Many women are reluctant to allow men to enter their domain. They don’t want men to acquire skills in what has traditionally been their area of competence and one of their main sources of self-esteem. So while they complain about the male’s unwillingness to share in domestic duties, they continually push the male out when he moves too confidently into what has previously been their exclusive world.
    Bettina Arndt (20th century)

    We are rarely able to interact only with folks like ourselves, who think as we do. No matter how much some of us deny this reality and long for the safety and familiarity of sameness, inclusive ways of knowing and living offer us the only true way to emancipate ourselves from the divisions that limit our minds and imaginations.
    bell hooks (b. 1955)

    The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.
    William James (1842–1910)