Herman Rosilesrodriguez
Mysticism Step 5: Union
The union of the other is a perpetual bridge formed by the person once they cross over and experience their ecstatic moment in heaven. If they are a serious mystic they will form a powerful alliance between heaven & earth. Thus heaven (blue) comingles with a little bit of earth (green). Also, this color goes hand in hand with Mysticism Step 4, thus the similar color choices.
Poem:
All my occupation now is the practice of love of God,
all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding,
and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit
and sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love,
all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness.
Posted on June 13, 2008
Mysticism Step 4: Dark Night
The Dark Night is, unsurprisingly, represented by a cobalt blue & its tints, which give both a dark and a melancholy tone to the loss of God following an ecstatic experience.
Poem:
I no longer live within myself and I cannot live without God,
for having neither him nor myself what will life be?
It will be a thousand deaths, longhing for my true life
and dying because I die.
Posted on June 13, 2008
Mysticism Step 3: Illumination
Illumination, represented by a fierce dark red to signify an ecstatic moment full of vibrancy & weight.
Poem:
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
Posted on June 13, 2008
Mysticism Step 2: Purgation
Purgation, represented by vomit green. The body rids itself physically & spiritually of everything that they give up their own identiy.
Poem, by St. John of the Cross:
He who truly arrives there cuts free from himself;
all that he knew before now seems worthless,
and his knowledge so soars that he is left
in unknowing transcending all knowledge.
Posted on June 13, 2008
Mysticism Step 1: Awakening
Awakening, represented by bright yellow and its tints, to signify morning. The darker tints are more earthy and/or reminiscent of human skin.
Poem, by St. John of the Cross:A thousand graces
diffusing He passed
through the groves
in haste, And merely
regarding them as
He passed Clothed
them with His beauty
Posted on June 13, 2008
Visualizing Mysticism: First Try
The five steps of mysticism visualized for your viewing pleasure & knowledge. Photographs credits go to Andrew Z. Glickman, [self-portrait], Larry Clark, and Duane Michals. Poetic quotes come from St. John of the Cross. Descriptions of steps are paraphrased from Evelyn Underhill's work.
Posted on June 3, 2008
The Sum of All Research
As a complement to my last post, which was a rubric that I'm going to use for my purposes of evaluating how appropriate my project is, this post is a succint summary of all the conclusions from my research. Like my last post, it is meant to be a quick guide to help me make decisions on how my project can best reflect what I found out through my research.
Basically the basics are about the marriage between ecstasy & fear and the similarities between various concepts including but not limited to mysticism, eroticism, and flow, all of which have in relation to one another the ecstatic moment of which I'm trying to represent in my final project.
There is ecstasy to be found in what we fear the most. Meaning that in order to arrive at a point of total ecstasy, one must first give up all presuppositions about God and the divine. Doing that will put one in a state of fear, for one will have given up their most elemental beliefs about where we came from. It is at this point, when all hope seems to be lost, that one is elevated into an ecstatic moment.
Proposed by Georges Bataille
Mysticism & Its 5 Steps The notion that there is a methodogical way to be at one with God, divinity, truth, etc. First one awakens to the presence of a divine being, then a purgation of the soul happens where one loses their identity, followed by the illumination of the union of heaven & earth; after this the mystic comes down from their ecstatic bliss and feels hopeless & void in the mundane world, and finally the person finds themselves in perpetual union with the Other.
Proposed by Evelyn Underhill
Eroticism A very similar concet to mysticism, the concept of eroticism to Georges Bataille was the desire for us to go beyond the limits of subjectivity & humanity and enter into a transgression of the ephemeral. This, done through sexual foreplay & intercourse. The feeling of undressing oneself and the idea of playing sexual roles is elemental in Bataille's eroticism.
Proposed, again, by Georges Bataille
Flow A state of mind in which a person is totally concentrated in an activity and is and is at an optimum level of performance. At its core, flow is autotelic, meaning a person that is in flow is internally driven, and he/she does whatever activity they are doing in flow, for the sake of the activity itself. A person who is in flow experiences selflessness, meaning they lose preoccupation with their ego; concentration, meaning they are totally immersed in the activity; and challenge, where they find a balance between performing too easily or too difficult.
Proposed by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
That, in a nutshell, are my research findings on which I'll base my final project (deliverables). From now on, I shall concentrate on finding a concrete & implicit idea for my project, and executing it. PROMISE THIS IS MY LAST RESEARCH POST! From here on out I'll only be posting deliverables, or deliverable-related content.
Posted on June 3, 2008
Revisiting Flow
I really don't want to let go of flow in my project. Discovering that there is such a concept as flow that describes the source of energy that I have while running or diligently studying or playing a musical instrument has been one of the most enlightening & epiphanous moments in my academic career. Seriously, finding out about flow was one of those moments where you're actually interested in a class, and is something that can be applicable to everyday, practical life. Indeed, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has become one of my favorite psychologists, right up there with Solomon Asch.
I hate for flow to be shelved in the context of my project for several reasons. I hold this concept to such a high esteem, it is too important to me to be just tossed aside. I mean, this IS after all still my project, I hold the right to consider anything that I think may be relevant & applicable to my project. And besides, like I said, flow is such a practical term. It is good to bring practicality to what is increasingly becoming a very conceptual project. Bring it back down to earth from its mystic ecstasy...
I know that I can't just say "I WANT FLOW TO BE CONSIDERED" and that's it. I know I need to prove WHY it should be considered, and that's why I'm writing this post, to consider the pros and cons of integrating flow into the theme of my project, which again is that there is ecstasy to be found in what we fear the most.
Since first learning about flow, I've gained a better understanding of how to explain that concept. Esentially, flow is autotelic, meaning the activity is internally driven, it is done for the sake of the activity itself. A person is selfless when in flow; they do not expect a reward from their efforts other than the efforts themselves being the reward. Example: swimming at a pool versus swimming to save your life. The action of swimming is to traverse in water to get to a point where there's land. When you're drowning and are trying to save yourself, you swim to find safety. But in a swimming pool, you are already safe (assuming you know what you're doing), and so swimming loses its primary objective of "finding land" and instead becomes an activity to enjoyed for the sake of itself...if that makes sense.
Previously I made a post about the five elements of flow, in which I explained each element. I want to now reduce it to three (3) elements, which are selflessness, concentration, and challenge. Selflessness, as we have described, means that the person's usual preoccupation with their ego as this is absorbed into the activity. As a rock climber commented on experiencing flow, they felt as if their identity was "melt[ing] into the rock". Concentration means that the person becomes so immersed in the activity that they forget about the outside world. Challenge means finding an activity level & intensity that is neither too hard nor too easy, because if it's one or another, the person will feel either anxious or bored, respectively.
Posted on June 3, 2008
Rubric
My project was totally massacred this past Thursday by my instructors. Part of the reason why things didn't go so well is because I didn't have a clear way of telling them how I arrived at my conclusions. They asked me questions and I just sat there blankly without good argumentative responses. Indeed, it could have been the best, most appropriate project for my research, but without being able to communicate to them my thinking, they still would have tanked it.
It is important, therefore, to have a set of guidelines to guide me through picking & creating the most appropriate project in light of my research. I mean, my research has been mapped out already; I can read it all I want, but it is necessary to have a simple, straight forward set of rules that I can look at pretty quickly so that I can make decisions on the fly about what works and what doesn't. I have come up with four key points for my rubric of evaluating my project's worthiness. They are listed below:
- How does this brand the human species? This entire class has been about finding an interesting way of portraying something that is uniquely human, so does my project reflect an aspect of humanity, such as vulnerability, joy, or irony?
- What does it communicate about ecstasy & fear? My big conclusion from my research has been that there is ecstasy to be found in what we fear the most. Does my project depict something that I, or somebody else, fears the most? And is there ecstasy to be found in that?
- Appropriateness of content. I'm most likely to pick a poem, part of a poem, or parts of different poems, and pair them up with images. So how do I make sure that the poem or poems reflect the above two points? In the same way, how do my visuals do justice not only to the above two points, but to the poem itself as well?
- Juxtaposition of content. Somewhat related to the previous point, is how do I make for an interesting combination of, say, my poem(s) and images? Do I want them to directly relate, or for a relationship to be implied, hinted at, or totally be different but still make sense together and make people think?
Using this rubric, I can be more confident about my work and when my instructors ask something about my work, I'll be able to confidently reply using my set of guidelines as principles to justify everything I did, and what I chose not to do.
Posted on June 2, 2008
Photo Lightbox Series
It was recommended to me that I go out and photograph the mundane, and one of the suggestions is to take a bus trip and photograph the passengers. Instead of going out and randomly photographing peopleand not only potentially getting in trouble but also producing substandard photography, instead I decided to look at already established photographers who has already examined this. LACMTA commissioned different artists/photographers to depict the life of daily Metro commuters. Two of these photographers caught my eye:
Sam Erenberg
"People read on trains to pass the time or, possibly, to avoid looking at others. Encountering images of people reading may trigger a reminder that reading might be a good idea. Seven Los Angeles artists represent a cross section of our city while highlighting a work by renowned author/theorist Roland Barthes."
Andrew Z Glickman
"Every weekday I spend about twenty minutes with the people who appear in this series of photographs. The photographs are exactly what they appear to be...unguarded, unposed moments in the lives of commuters on the Washington, D.C. Metro system."
Of the two, I actually thought Glickman was more relevant to the direction that my project is going now. I went to his website and he has more shots of people in mundane situations, including this pretty fierce shot of a youth in Oaxaca:
It really captures what I want to emphasize, that kind of mundane and vulnerable existence of shmucks like him, you, and I, that can be perfectly exploited using an ecstatic quote superimposed on top of the image.
Posted on May 28, 2008
Master Kruger
Getting ready to finalize my project, which I know in some way will involve juxtapositioning text with images, and so I'm looking for ideas as to how to do it. I could go simple & classic like I demonstrated with "I FELT GUILTY AFTER" on top of the baby hugging the teddy bear, but I think I'd rather do something a little more creative. The reason for this is that I'm already appropriating both the text and images from somewhere else; they are not my own. Thus, I feel that I need to incorporate a style into how I show my text & images, so I can bring my own personal interpretation into the text & images, instead of just a mashup that showcases other people's work and doesn't bring anything new or original into the composition.
I only need to look as far as to the work of Barbara Kruger to look for inspiration for a creative way to present text & image simultaneously. For those not familiar with Barbara Kruger's work, she has a very specific style with a Futura bold oblique font, solid blocks, and black & white photography that has that "pixelated" dot kind of style (I temporarily forgot the name of that, but you should know what I mean). Her works are about feminist themes, and the juxtaposition between text & images is always spot-on. Here are some examples:
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Her arresting designs have made her a renowned artist. Indeed, her name has become synonymous with her style, something that few artists or designers can achieve. Her work has been appropriated in a variety of ways over the years. Indeed, yours truly can be counted among those who have paid an homage to her. Last year while working for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, a non-profit organization that collects posters that are overtly political, my colleague T.H. and I were given the opportunity to design the invitation for the Center's annual event, where they were going to honor Barbara Kruger with the Art As A Hammer Award. Being inspired by the "Your body is a battleground" image, we came up with this image as a promotional image for the event:
Don't think that I want to appropriate the Barbara Kruger style for my project. That is not my intention in writing this post. What I simply want to say is that Barbara Kruger has her thing, and it makes her work unique. She takes existing phrases and existing pictures, which may have meant something else before, and made it her own. Totally reinvented the meaning and made it original.
That's what I'm after. Wish me luck. And give me feedback.
Posted on May 28, 2008
We Are Not Alone... In Beaming Messages into Space
We now interrupt your regularly scheduled posts to bring you examples of other projects that either beam or otherwise send to space, messages from the human race.
Japanese Email to Space Hisashi Hirabayashi and Masaki Morimoto, two Japanese scientists from the Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory sent an email to space back in 1983 to the Altair Solar System. The first part of the email is below:
The translation is: "Dear People of Altair, We are organisms who reproduce sexually to form families. Life on Earth started in the water." The whole sum of the entire human race is reduced to these two sentences. This is how these two Japanesque scientists brand the human species: "reproduc[ing] sexually to form families". Wow.
Link: Earth Set to Receive Alien Reply, Invasion in 2015?
Cosmic Call Messages sent to space in 1999 and 2003 from the Evpatoria Planetary Radar, guided by Team Encounter, Richard Braastad, and Alexander Zaitsev. These messages were just meant to be simple messages from everyday people, as well as more complicated stuff like a copy of the Arecibo radio transmission, the Bilingual Image Glossary, the Braastad message, and something called the "Rosetta Stone", which is meant to illustrate both simple and complex mathematical concepts. I actually like this one, because it includes stuff from everyday people and stuff that's actually like concrete and scientific, unlike our project which seems more like an art piece than anything else.
Link: Cosmic Call Messages
Your Name In Space NASA is launching an online campaign for people to submit their names so they can be embedded in a microchip of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is set to orbit the Moon and help pick landing sites for the upcoming manned missions to the Moon. This one is all right, but it's a little deceitful because the LRO will not actually be touching down on the Moon, and your name will only be in a microchip. It's not gonna be engraved or anything.
Link: Send Your Name to the Moon
The Phoenix DVD A collection of different multimedia assembled by the Planetary Society. It includes many fictional works and other art pieces about Mars, including The War of the Worlds, as well as messages for future Martian visitors/settlers from prominent scientists. Like the abovementioned NASA initiative, it also includes the names of people (a quarter of a million which is like such a tiny fraction of the entire earth population) that submitted their name on the Internet. It also claims to have the first library on Mars. This DVD is a good idea, but it's kind of dumb too because they didn't include a DVD player or TV screen to watch it in. I mean, those things are so cheap right now, why couldn't they just attach it along with the DVD? How are people supposed to watch this thing in the future? How are they supposed to know that they have to bring a DVD player to watch it in? Link: The Phoenix DVD
Posted on May 28, 2008
Proposed Finalization of Project
"As a very tangible real but also shocking example of this relation between fear, supplication and ecstasy Bataille used to carry photographs of a tortured Chinese in his wallet, which daily reminded him of the connection between fear, suffering and ecstasy. The Chinaman was captured in the Boxer-war. In torture the extremities of his body were cut off and his flesh was literally cut to pieces. But the surprising thing about these photo´s were the face and the eyes of the poor man. His face shone brightly with laughter and his eyes were aflame with ecstasy and happiness. Bataille did not treasure these photographs - in his poetical style he called the man ´beautiful as a wasp´- out of perversion or sadism, but because he felt them to be very consoling and comforting. These pictures showed the paradox of life:
The above quotation comes from an essay on Georges Bataille. While reading the essay to gain a better understanding of Bataille, this anectdote, and especially the quotation at the end, struck me so much. Indeed, one could say I even had a mini-ecstatic moment.
It is my pleasure (no pun intended) to present the tentative final idea for my class project. Nothing, to me, is as uniquely human as the marriage between ecstasy & fear. Sure, animals & other organisms may sometimes appear to be ecstatic, and there's no denying that fear is a basic animal instinct. But only with humans, and this has been true since the dawn of time, is such a paradox possible.
This conclusion should not be surprising given the rest of my research. Each of the manifestations of mysticism had its component of fear, which brought about its component of ecstasy. With the runner's high, it is necessary to run an incredible amount of long distance (fear) before the body starts producing endorphins (ecstasy). With eroticism, it is necessary to strip butt-naked (fear) before achieving orgasm (ecstasy). Indeed, the orgasm itself can be considred both the fear AND ecstasy components.
I must say that I am glad I am now going in this direction. See, in terms of deliverables, my strategy will not change much. The idea was to juxtapose text from quotations of people I've been interviewing with portraits of people in ecstatic mo- ments I've been researching. What had been unclear to me, however, was what exactly that juxtaposition was going to be. Now I know what. That's why I say it hasn't changed much; I'm still juxtaposing text with images. This time, however, the ima- ges will portray people who are suf- fering or otherwise in "fear", and coupling this with the same ideas for text as before.
Posted on May 28, 2008
The Chemistry Behind the Runner's High
As previously discussed, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow was initially very narrow in its application. Soon, however, other scholars started to apply this wonderful idea to other areas. One of the most important areas where it was applied was in sports. The idea that there is a mental state where a person can perform at optimum while retaining their focus & concentration must have been just what athletes, coaches, & sports psychologists were looking for.
Like I mentioned before, the way I arrived at knowing about flow is through a concept I was already familiar with, which is called being "in the zone". A closely related concept to being in the zone, especially in long-distance running, is something called the runner's high. Runners who have already ran a considerable distance assert that at some point they will start to become euphoric and their run will be more pleasant. I know that anybody who has kept up with my postings can list at least three equivalent concepts to the preceding description. The most obvious and important one for me comes from Bataille's description of how one attains ecstasy. As you may recall, he said that the mind must first enter into a state of fear by letting go of your deepest held beliefs. Once you are barren and have sacrificed your reason for existence, "something" lifts you up out of this abyss and brings you to an ecstasy.
In regards to Bataille, one can assume that when he talks about that "something", it is of supernatural in nature, whether it is God, Absolute Truth, or another deity/supernatural force. Bataille in no way, shape, or form talks about the physiological aspect of how the ecstasy is obtained. Indeed, even when he was talking about Eroticism, he never mentions the biological process happening that induces the libido & orgasm.
On the other hand and for obvious reasons, doctors of sports medicine are absolutely interested in knowing the biological/chemical workings behind the runner's high phenomenon, and indeed a lot of research has been done both to prove AND disprove this concept.
The science of explaining runner's high for those who claim it exists is actually quite simple. When running long distances, obviously the body is being put into a lot of stress, and pain also occurs. This is the cue for the brain's neurotransmitters to start producing endorphins, which are opiate proteins that help relieve that pain. These in turn not only make the body feel more at ease but also result in mood changes.
So far that is all we know. The body has done its work and the scientific evidence is there to back it up. Unfortunately, we cannot precisely & accurately document a person's emotions during this process, which is what this whole phenomenon is about. It is this which makes the concept of runner's high a controversial and muddy term. What for one runner might be this so-called "runner's high", to someone else it might not work as effectively, or they might not experience it at all given equal circumstances. Detractors claim that the runner's high is actually only the psychological notion of completing a challenge. They have been unable to produce these "endorphins" in the lab.
What is almost for certain is that something must be going on biologically/chemically, another has to with the person's psychological characteristics, and the third is the environment where the person is running, which also plays a role in this complicated process. We don't have a definitive answer on the science behind the runner's high just yet, but we do know that it is definitely related to our family of concepts including Mysticism, ecstasy, flow, and Eroticism.
Posted on May 28, 2008
Bataille's Eroticism Explained
Eroticism, as explained by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille, is a very specific concept. Overall we can define eroticism as one of two (related) things: 1) a state where one is either sexually aroused or in anticipation of sexual arousal, and 2) the aestheticartistic spirit & depiction of sexual desire. Bataille, however, thought to interpret eroticism more in the terms of human nature. To him eroticism was the desire for us to go beyond the limits of subjectivity & humanity and enter into a transgression of the ephemeral.
...Does this sound familiar? Wham!/Spring08/150BIt directly correlates with Mysticism, which is also about leaving the subjective world and being in communion with something other. Mysticism and eroticism are different concepts that talk about the same thing, basically. They arrive at their conclusions in a different manner, but in the end the conclusion is the same, which is the human desire to escape earthly things and enter into a transcendent state.
In order to understand Bataille's perspective on eroticism, we must start by talking about his concept of fear. To Bataille, when a person's deeply held beliefs about Truth (such as the existence of a God) are challenged, when they start to see that it is all a human construction, fear comes in and consumes the person, leaves them totally bare (notice a semblance here to one of the steps of Mysticism as discussed before). When this has happened all that a person can do is supplicate, reach out their hand and wait for help. But since they have already accepted the fact that there is no God, it is not to He whom they are supplicating; in fact they don't know. Being so vulnerable and empty, a sacrifice takes place that elicits the ecstasy. The fear sets one free as it "cleans up" our innermost thoughts & feelings, and if a person is able to endure this, they will come out of the other side with ecstasy. This part is very analogous to something I'll discuss in a future post regarding the chemistry behind what is called the Runner's High, which is essentially the body producing endorphins when a runner has already run a long distance in order to keep the body functioning. The key to surviving the fear and coming out in ecstasy in the other side is, according to Bataille, having an awareness of yourself. Again we have a connection between another part of my research, this time the different Elements of Flow, in which awareness, concentration, and focusing were very important in trying to achieve flow.
Another important term to understand is the concept of the ipse-being, and the desire to be in communion. Ipse-being is the part of us characterized as being autonomous & separate to the world around us. At the same time, this part of us paradoxically is aware that it is unnatural to be such a hermit and so struggles with both being so independent and desiring not to be. This desire to not be independent is related to the desire of people, in their hearts, to be in communion with the sacred.
It is with this that we arrive at eroticism, finally. Whew! In my opinion, I think Bataille thought that eroticism was the ultimate way of being in communion and achieving spiritual ecstasy. I say this because of the way he talks about it. Eroticism has all the properties of ecstasy. The orgasm is the equivalent of fear, as when we are in orgasm we enter Emptiness and the whole world is suspended, we are transcended to another place. Intense focusing and concentration take place in eroticism. In all four dimensions there is a central point where all is concentrated and all consciousness of the outside world is erased. In the spatial dimensions, this is the genital area and/or the lover's kiss. In the temporal dimension, it is the moment of orgasm. This is the so-called famous Ecstatic Moment, where the ipse-being completely disintegrates.
Another important aspect for Bataille is that eroticism is basically an act of violence. It is not an act of violence in our normal sense of the word. He is not talking about rape or S&M (necessarily...) or anything like that. Instead, it is the violence inflicted on us by the Other, that jerks us out of our normal consciousness and violates our innermost core. As Bataille says himself, it is "a violation bordering on death, bordering on murder."
For Bataille, in eroticism the crucial act is stripping naked. This act, though seemingly basic & simple, is on the subconscious level more than just taking off clothes. Clothing is not the only thing that is removed when stripping naked, a person's usual self is also disposed. The way this works is that when we are naked we feel obscene; this triggers an uneasiness within us that disrupts the self's usual self-identity and standing. See how, again, for the umpteenth time, one concept of my research correlates with another. Here the act of stripping naked and the loss of self that comes along with it is related to the fear of the person who has let go of their spiritual dispositions (as talked about earlier in this post). The act of losing everything is here symbolically represented by the stripping of the clothes.
The final piece of Bataille's interpretation of eroticism is one of the most fundamental; indeed, it connects several other aspects of my research together. Bataille says that when the erotic activity is consummated, both participants will have been stripped of their selves, and what is revealed is what he calls their "fundamental continuity, like the waves of a stormy sea". This "fundamental continuity" refers to a place where all existence can go, this kind of sacred place. I'll list the equivalents of my other research directions to this concept:
- This is Step 5 in Underhill's mysticism process, a union with the Other in Eternity that results after one has gone through the other mystical steps
- Related to Csikszentmihalyi calling "flow" because people who he interviewed felt like they were being "carried by a current"
- Related to my personal experience when in flow of feeling as if I am being carried by something Other, such as when running my 5K races, riding rollercoasters, and when swimming at the beach
Understanding eroticism, especially Bataille's interpretation, can be confusing & sometimes paradoxical. The fundamental thing to remember is that it is only a different manifestation of mysticism, just as flow is. Mysticism, eroticism, and flow. It has been my daily bread this entire quarter; I hope you can also eat, drink, & live these amazing concepts and realize how important they are in branding the human species.
Posted on May 28, 2008
People's Responses to Most Ecstatic Moment
I've been asking people what has been their most ecstatic moment in their life, why, and how they felt both physically & otherwise. This post is meant to be a repository of their responses, and nothing else, i.e. you will not find typographic experimentation in this post. That will come later on in other posts. There are also "responses" of quotes from people who I thought had an ecstatic experience, even though I didn't ask them personally.
- Anshul: when I had psychedelic mushrooms, I felt like everything I touched felt new, I felt renewed
- Alex Sy: when I was playing basketball and I shot some hoops, felt triumphant
- Vincent: when I received my acceptance letter from UCLA, my heart beat faster and my face was colored red, I ran as fast as I could to my dad as fast as I could to give him the good news
- Yiannis Kouros (Ultrarunner): Some may ask why I am running such long distances. There are reasons. During the ultras I come to a point where my body is almost dead. My mind has to take leadership. When it is very hard there is a war going on between the body and the mind. If my body wins, I will have to give up; if my mind wins, I will continue. At that time I feel that I stay outside of my body. It is as if I see my body in front of me; my mind commands and my body follows. This is a very special feeling, which I like very much. . . It is a very beautiful feeling and the only time I experience my personality separate from my body, as two different things
- English teacher on Ice Trail: I found myself running far faster than I had all day; I wasn't even conscious of my feet touching the ground as I crested the knoll ahead of the finish line. I wasn't running; it was as if something much larger than I was running me.
- Duncan: 67/20 in assignment. shocked. Proud.
- Jeff: Got into UCLA. Proved everyone wrong. Tower of terror, freaked me out.
- Katie: when moved to USA. from Korea when she was very little. Not nervous, really looking forward. 1st day of Kindergarten.
- Alfonso: when I find out got into UCLA/ Grad School. surprised, shocked.
- Sal: When his wife walked down the aisle at their wedding. Felt a wave of relief, felt that the wedding is now real.
- Sarah J: cymbal line got high cymbals, got into UCLA, so proud, screamed, jumped
- St. Teresa of Avila: I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.
- Grace: pole vaulting in high school, jumped over 10'6", amazing, she felt she wasn't that much of a failure no more, felt important to her, felt proud, "oh shit I did it", cry tears of joy
- Chris S: getting his 1st job, felt that someone wanted him that didn’t need him, felt that he could be a little bit more independent
- Celica: when she went to China, "when i finally stepped foot outside the airport is when i had that rush... very different from any other excitement I have had before"
- Wilson: old work place, lost and found, getting ready to ship it out, paper, ipod, “oh my god jackpot†raised his arms like that
- Iman: having intimate relations with a beautiful nice girl, felt good but then felt ashamed
- Sarah B: old lead singer, Steve Perry, met in person. Shaking pretty bad, almost fainted, called her parents, talking about it for weeks after
- Randi: Asked professor letter of recommendation, was happy to give it to her, relieved, was smiling and sitting there
- Eric: getting his drivers license, he thought he failed it, the guys said he passed, and he was excited, felt kind of numb
FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT DESCRIBING YOUR MOST ECSTATIC MOMENT. I NEED AS MANY AS I CAN GET...
Posted on May 28, 2008
The Five Steps To Mysticism
Evelyn Underhill, a renowned & recognized author on Christian mysticism, as well as a mystic herself, identified five steps in the mystical process. They are listed below:
1. Awakening - Subject starts to become aware of the presence of something supernatural. Their heart is filled with joy and they have never felt this kind of joy before, yet they cannot see this supernatural being, and they hunger for more.
2. Purgation - Where subject strips away their ego, their self, their whole existence. They give up everything in this life and in the next. They start to become aware of their faults & imperfections, and try to compensate for those with self-discipline.
3. Illumination - This is often the final stage for some mystics. The subject sees the visual representation of eternity as heaven & earth, reality & mysticism meet. For our purposes this is most likely the ecstatic moment, so therefore one that should be given more emphasis by me in my research & final deliverable.
4. The Dark Night of the Soul - Extraordinary mystics go beyond the third step onto this one. These mystics have experienced mysticism so fervently, that when they "come back down to earth" they start to have what we can refer to as "withdrawal symptoms" of God's presence. They feel deprived, vulnerable, helpless & confused. It is the ultimate un-selfing, and the ultimate submission to God's Will.
5. Union with The Other - Having gone through the other steps, the subject now finds themself in the Eternal, they are at union with God forever, and act as a liason between the things on Earth and the things in Eternity.
Posted on May 28, 2008
Ecstatic Moments of Mine
The following is a list of moments when I have felt ecstatic, along with the reasons why I felt that way:
- When I ran very good 5Ks that I felt I was in the zone. I felt no pain and felt like I could just keep going and going. I felt like I was going with the crowd, being carried by it, and that I just needed to keep doing what I was doing to finish the race.
- Riding a rollercoaster, felt dizzy but good. Everything was going so fast around me, again felt like being carried by something other.
- When I receive news about products from my favorite company Microsoft, especially Windows and Zune. I get giddy, my face automatically lights up and I holler out loud out of joy.
- After an all-nighter, in the early hours of sunrise, I get an enormous feeling of power, I start thinking about the plans I want to do for the day and for the future. I get very optimistic and feel like I can accomplish all my goals and plans.
- When swimming in the ocean, when a wave hits me I also have an ecstatic moment. Here I literally am being carried by the water. Very similar to when riding a rollercoaster. The manifestation of my other ecstatic moments here is literally done by the water waves colliding with my body and carrying me, lifting me up.
- Also get the same feeling from going down a toboggan.
As you can see, a common theme in my ecstatic moments is a feeling of "being carried by something outside my body". This is directly analogous to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow". Indeed, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi came up with the term "flow" because the people he interviewed said it was as if a current was carrying them along.
Posted on May 28, 2008
Notes While Presenting
A classmate of mine was kind enough to take notes for me while I presented my research findings to the class on 17 April. Below are the notes:
Deities and personal relationship with humans >>
went to mysticism, and eroticism
mysticism - relationship with super natural
led to - 'in the zone'
so concentrated on the task, rest is blocked out
hungarian psychologist has researched this before
flow
state of mind in subconscious where you enter during activities
flow, mysticism, eroticism = same, or similar
mysticism, in the relationship one has to god, there is a surrender of one's self or identity or individuality, for guidance, for a greater being
mystics had a very powerful understanding of this
batow - loss of self - til point of death (in relation to eroticism)
loss of self for god - a sort of transcendence
if that moment is what you are talking about
describe it in detail
one could call it the alpha state
highest creativity
most attentive
on to something of interest. are all religions transcendent?
looking for something happening outside
eastern thinking may be more immanent (inward)
for some nature is their god
the other
what else fascinates you about this, what is magnetic?
the fact that there is a part of us that allows us to transcend
it is not limited to spirituality, but also in eroticism, sports, many ways
mendez gives example of her gymnastic days
did not remember anything but the balance beam
attention directs to one point
if an eye lash even fell off her face, the concentration is broken
run as far as you can until you throw up
record the state of the body
the heart beat, the breathing
the runners high, the body is releasing a large amount of endorphins
what are the cultural explanations of transcendence?
how does it connect back to humanity
psychoanalysis
the biological gives physical grounding
the body produces, not a transcending experience
sets up a political framework about how you talk about the human species
put the far ends on a map
what happens to someone that does not believe in god, or transcendence
how do you account for the other end?
there is a powerful feeling of what is at stake
parallel both, equal results, questions both
some get it one way, some get it the other, but same result
how one defines themselves in their world
one believes something is out there
transcend through god
one who does not, more grounding in body
how do they transcend though?
the experience may be identical between a religious or non religious
they just experience and talk about it in different ways
explore the parallel
biology vs symbolism
very cultural
tying spirituality back into humanity
richard dawkins, biologist
the god illusion
analyzes the human needs
social aspect of religion
may be offensive
debunks religion as a human construct
whether its debunked or not the experiences are still powerful
constructs, how did they become so powerful?
runner vs mystics
the passion of joan of arc, older film
sublime transcendence, the story of joan
the only way to experience it is through physicality in the film
all close ups of face
types of religious communities use religion to explain, deal with stress/situations
a physical act can be meditative acts
physical bodies and actions can lead to own transcending
everyone has their own ways to get in touch with themselves
very few people in religion are so devoted
intention, intention
how bad one wants it
that leads to the transformation
the telos of the transformation
ask zach, he talked to fast haha
teliology
the way we move towards certain goals in life
aritstotle said:
move towards life for a set reason, a goal
existentialism says life as no inherent meaning
focus the specific experience of being a runner, that it changes your composition, vs the very religious experience
maybe it is the focus on the change of specific state of being
the subjectivity
mysticism, flow, eroticism, let them go now
they brought you to a point
narrowed, now open up again
do not let it weigh you down
discover the new way
is it the change in your sense of self that leads to your understanding of the world for that second?
focus as a runner, and focus as a mystic
describe the moment
how else has that transformation been achieved
your research may be the documentation of those powerful modes
that could be your project
the shift of the human is fascinating
Posted on May 17, 2008
Elements of Flow
Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done research into something he calls flow. Flow is a state of mind in which a person is totally concentrated in an activity and is and is at an optimum level of performance. This phenomenon was initially proposed by Dr. Csikszentmihalyi to be applicable in extrinsic applications such as designing playgrounds so the participants can experience flow. Since then, though, other researchers have adopted the concept of flow in performance activities such as artistic performance (music & theater), education, business productivity, but especially and most of all to sports.
Some scholars have proposed that the concept of flow is not much different from mystical experiences. Indeed, when I first started researching mysticism I thought it sounded very familiar to what in running and in sports is called being "in the zone", which eventually led me to the concept of flow.
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi explains that there are different characteristics, or elements, of a person who is in flow. The following is the list of elements of people who are in flow. Following each characteristic is an example taken from personal experience, of me running the Los Angeles Marathon this past March, where I felt I was completely in flow. It is meant to illustrate what each characteristic of flow is.
Person understands their goals and the goals are appropriate for the person's skill set.
I am running a distance of 26.2 miles, and have been training for it for 5 weeks. I am not as prepared as the experts recommend for a person to run a marathon, so I am basically pacing myself so that I don't go too fast or too slow.
High concentration & focusing on a very narrow activity.
I was running and running only. My mind was focused on just keeping those feet moving, occasionally getting something to drink and greeting the crowd, but that's it.
Loss of self-consciousness.
Didn't care about my appearance, fatigue, or about me at all. Everything was running.
Loss of sense of time.
I was so unaware of the time that when I got to the halfway point and saw that I had broken my all-time record for the half-marathon, had ran the longest distance continuously without stopping, and was well on my way to breaking my full marathon record, I was very much surprised and taken aback because I had not even seen how good I was running and the time that I was doing until this point.
Body & mind respond quickly & appropriately to feedback, whether it be failures or successes.
Person finds a balance between activity being too easy or too difficult.
FOR BOTH STEPS 5 & 6: In running we call it pacing when we are able to find a balance between going too fast or too slow. A good runner is acutely aware of what pacing he/she needs to have in order to have a good race. It is important not to go too fast or else there will not be anything left for the final sprint.
Sense of personal control over activity.
This is basically self-explanatory. In running even when not in flow, a runner is really the master of how he/she runs, so my sense of personal control was not much different when running this marathon than when I regularly run.
Activity is intrinsically rewarding, becomes effortless.
Running the first few miles is of course going to be pretty easy for a runner, but even after the tenth mile I still felt like I had the energy that I had at the beginning of the race, and that was because of my pacing. Like I didn't feel like wanting to stop & walk at all. In fact, when I finally did stop & walk it wasn't because I was tired, but rather because I was afraid that if I kept on running I would not have enough energy for the end.
Awareness is focused squarely on activity and nothing else.
Again, just like Steps 1 & 3 above, my awareness was unfalteringly on running and running only. I kept myself entertained in my head with random thoughts and of course all around me I had the crowds cheering the runners on, but subconsciously I was immersed in my running activity.
Posted on May 17, 2008
Project Overview
Knowing my research up to this point I want to now concrete how I am going to be visualizing and delivering my research findings.
First just a quick overview of what exactly those research findings are, and how I got to where I currently am.
When I first heard that we were going to brand the human species and that we needed to come up with an idea of how we wanted to interpret humanity, and tell it to the aliens, my first instinct was to think from a religious perspective. I am a very religious person, I consider it a very important part of my life, so that's why I immediately thought of interpreting humanity through the eyes of my faith & spirituality. So my initial idea was telling the aliens that we are all God's children.
I know that was not going to be held up in court, though, meaning it would not be appropriate in an academic environment, and even more so in an art/design department which is just swarming with secularism/atheism. So I removed the religious bias from my interpretation, and instead proposed to the professor, TA, and my classmates, that I wanted to showcase the personal relationship that people have with their deities, be it whatever religion. Because I thought there was something uniquely human in that. The class gave me feedback and told me that supposedly my project was currently too broad, but that there was something in determining a moment of ecstasy where we can connect to "the other" (meaning God, divinity, and/or truth). They said to research Bataille and his Eroticism, plus mystics, especially the famous St. Teresa of Avila and the story of how an angel pierced her with a sword in a very erotic manner.
So I started to research the concepts of Eroticism & mysticism. What I basically came up with are that they are conditions that humans sometimes feel where they are at a very heightened sense and they feel a divine presence. Bataille himself actually referred to eroticism as a "little death" and said that when experiencing eroticism a person is at their most barren & elemental. In both eroticism & mysticism, the person feels like they are outside their body and as if something other, whether it is instinctual or external, is controlling their body.
As I was doing my research, I couldn't help but notice that the feelings that these people get from eroticism & mysticism were very similar to what in sports is called being "in the zone", meaning you are performing at your most optimum and are totally concentrated in the activity you're doing. In running specifically, it is also referred to as a runner's high, and is something that can actually be explained scientifically/medically/physiologically as when the body is under a lot of stress for a long time (as in long distance endurance running) it produces endorphins to deal with the stress.
Researching more into this "in the zone" thing, I actually found a psychologist by the name of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who researched this phenomenon. He calls it flow, and it's basically the state of a person that is fully concentrated, immersed, & focused on a specific activity that they are doing.
At this point, then, my research was summed up in three words: mysticism, eroticism, and flow. Those were the concepts that I lived by. I ate, drank, and lived those three words. As so, I believed my research part to be done, and now had to figure out a deliverable to present for this class project. And honestly I had no freaking idea what to do.
So then I talked to the professor and she said, "Okay, look. So basically we can see a connection here between these three concepts you have researched. They all involve this moment where you just snap. Let's call this the ecstatic moment. Now I want you to go around and start asking people. Ask them what their most ecstatic moment has been. Okay? Find a way to record their responses, whether it be just writing stuff down, or capturing the moment on camera or as an audio recording."
Next week I had some quotes from people, so the question was what to do with those quotes. The idea was to use key words from when I interviewed people and pair them up with an image that corresponds to the key word. The question was, from what source do I get the images from? Do I take a picture of the people when they give me their responses, ask them to form the face of when they had their ecstatic moment? Hmmm, perhaps that will be too doctored & unnatural. So then I went to the professor and she guided me to the next step of where I should take this. She said, "All right, so you have some quotes now. So what I want you to do is comprehensive image research. I want you to find images of people whose facial expressions also signify an ecstatic moment. Right now don't think about the quotes. Keep doing the interviews, but apart from that, I want you to look at photography books at the Arts Library, at old films, etc."
Therefore, the goal now is the following: using the key words from quotations of the interviews, pair them up with an image so as to create a juxtaposition. For example, an illustrious gentleman at my work told me that his most ecstatic moment ever was when he had relations with a beautiful woman, and that he felt guilty afterwards. "Guilty" is the key word. Now the image is that of a little girl holding a teddy bear, it is an ecstatic moment. Now what happens when you put the word "GUILTY" on top of that image? It creates for a very interesting contrast.
So the project as it currently stands is perfect. Pretty ferosh, actually. See, we have avoided the problem of seeming too doctored & unnatural. Because the point here is not to represent the quotation directly, it's actually the opposite, to twist it into a way that makes you think twice about the photograph, or about the quote, or about both.
Posted on May 17, 2008
Mysticsm, Eroticism, and Flow
Mysticism is a concept developed over the ages across a wide range of cultures that tries to explain a connection of the human to "the other", meaning a spiritual entity or absolute truth. This connection is direct and is done on a level that cannot be explained by current scientific or logical reasoning. The act of mysticism is practiced because individuals feel that the self and the other are one and the same and must unite.
Source: Mysticism. English Wikipedia.
Some people have argued that one manifestation of mysticism is eroticism. Georges Bataille was one of the proponents of this, writing that "the whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost core of the living being, so that the heart stands still. The transition from the normal state to that of erotic desire presupposes a partial dissolution of the person as he exists in the realm of discontinuity." This is closely associated with mysticism's concept of disengaging oneself from the present and being part of something else.
Source: Eroticism. English Wikipedia.
Source: Georges Bataille. English Wikipedia.
Source: Extract from Bataille's 'Eroticism'.
Psychologist Mihály CsÃkszentmihályi developed the concept of flow, which means a state of mind in which the person is fully immersed in what he/she is doing and is performing at optimum level. Among other things, it is characterized by a loss of self-conciousness, loss of the concept of time, and balance between performance and difficulty level. It happens in any kind of participatory activity, especially sports, but also in the performing arts and spirituality. The word is derived from people feeling like they are "flowing" with some kind of invisible wave that just carries them along.
Source: Flow (psychology). English Wikipedia
Source: Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Mihály CsÃkszentmihályi. 1997.
Source: Mysticism Starting Points for Interpretation.
Posted on April 10, 2008
Deity Images
Posted on April 8, 2008
