June 2008

During the conference “Gestures: religion qua preformance” of the NWO programme “The Future of the Religious Past” I had very interesting discussions. One question pups up imediatly: Is mystical experience possible without normative contraints, concepts and a concept of otherness (religious experience is in my eyes already intertwined with concepts)?

Here are some humble thoughts

First I Think that the concept of experience is in this question a bit confusing because in most theory experience is already internalised by the worldviews people have. So a better question in my eyes is: Can people have mystical feelings or feelings beyond themselves?

Second I think that this concept of otherness and how it is used has something to do with the processes of individualisation and the subjectivation of the self and how these processes are used in scientific theories. In this time where the focus is mostly on personalised identities it is not strange that one askes how selfconciencesness and identitymaking takes place. The basic assumption in this proces of identitymaking and selfconciencesness is that people has to reflect on themselves, by meeting others or creating otherness. [In] order to become aware of himself as much he must […] become an object to himself, or enter his own experience as an object, and by only by social means - only by taking that attitude of others towards himself- he is able to become an object to himself” (Mead 1959: 226).

Third I am still working on this concept of communitas and the differentation between spontaneous, ideological and normative communitas by Victor Turner. Communitas or proto-structure is “the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the normative constraints” (Turner 1982: 44).

“Spontaneous communitas is a direct, immediate and total confrontation of human identities. […] Subjectively there is in it a feeling of endless power, […] a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems, […] could be resolved, whether emotional or cognitive, if only the group which felt (in the first person) as ‘essentially us’ could sustain its intersubjective illumination. […] Individuals who interact with one another in the mode of spontaneous communitas become totally absorbed into a single synchronized fluid event.” (Turner 1982: 47-48)

Spontaneous communitas can transform to normative or ideological communitas but when and how there is really something going on like spontaneous communitas? Is this kind of communitas possible without ritualised acts towards it, without some direction (worldviews, concepts etc.)?

For analysing the Dutch practice I studied, I used the concept of flow. Turner already related this concept with liminality, communitas and the liminoid. But for feelings of flow there has to be according to Csikszentmihalyi some sort of focus or attention.

So: Can people have mystical feelings or feelings beyond themselfs?

I hope by doing more research on new ritualised practices to come closer to an answer.

In his analyses on ritual and ritualised practices Victor Turner made a distinction between the liminal and the liminoid of society, by pinpointing the difference between the meaning and separation of work and leisure/ play in societies. The liminal is part of society, an aspect of social or religious ritual, while the liminoid is a break from society, apart from work settings.

“The solitary artist creates the liminoid phenomena, the collectivity experiences collective liminal symbols” (Turner 1982: 52)
“One works at the liminal, one plays with the liminoid” (Turner 1982: 55).

But what if people in modern societies want to bring work and leisure more together by the means of for example practices from the spiritual circuit? When becomes the liminoid, liminal again during those practices?

Turner, V. (1982). From Ritual to Theatre. The human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications.

Voor de Club van Honderd van de educatieve omroep RVU sprak Bram van Splunteren met Willem de Ridder over Spiegelogie en The Secret. Op het eerste gezicht heeft Spiegelogie veel weg van de Secret, beide hebben als uitgangspunt dat je je eigen geluk creeert. Willem de Ridder gaat tijdens het interview in op de verschillen.

De aflevering werd afgelopen maandag 2 juni herhaald.
aflevering

uitgebreide versie van het interview
interview