Human Quest for Rapture and Ecstasy
HAL October 12, 2024 Philippe Rochat
The drive to seek rapture, trance, and ecstasy—states of standing outside oneself—is a universal human psychological need. This drive may stem from human self-consciousness and the unique awareness of mortality. Drawing on empirical facts about the developmental origins of self-consciousness, the argument suggests that the universal proclivity toward altered states, whether through drugs, practice, or recreation, arises from an ultimate desire to escape the default rational self-consciousness and the scandal of death—an inescapable, known, yet inconceivable reality.