Ecstasy: The Key to a Higher Life

How to reclaim and harness a powerful state of mind.

By Michael Grosso

You wake up after a stretch of dreamless sleep—and where are you? Always inside your mind. There is no way out of that. Everything we experience is filtered through our waking minds: good, bad, or indifferent.  

But the window of “me” opens to a changing scene—the world. It is an endless stream of points of view, states of consciousness, moods, likes and dislikes, entanglements, and break-ups. It’s a parade of states of mind that make us what we are, and the parade never stops, except for the nightly blackouts and dreamless sleep. 

Is there a preferred state of mind, an optimal form of consciousness, or a way to guide the flow of my life? It can be a wild beast, that mind of ours. But can we tame it at least enough to push toward our better angels?  

I think we can, but it’s not easy. That said, here is my take on the question. There is a state of mind we’re all acquainted with, at least to some degree. The word used for it is pretty common: Ecstasy. 

We can all relate to this word in one way or another. The usage ranges from “Mom, I’m ecstatic about that gorgeous red blouse you bought me” to the musical ecstasy of the 12th-century German mystic Hildegard Von Bingen, expressed by her beautiful music. For me, ecstasy is the most interesting state of mind to explore because it seems to be the most creative—even to the point of defying the familiar habits of nature.  

To be clear about the root meaning of the word ecstasy. Ek-stasis is the Greek and means standing or being outside yourself—an altered state of consciousness. In ecstasy, we are lifted outside our ordinary personality. I once dreamt I was flying through a pure blue sky on my virgin-silver Haynes flute—ecstatic, in spades! And you? We all, if lucky, can boast of the rare taste of the truly ecstatic. Love and sex are obvious wellsprings of possible ecstasy.

It turns out that there are many ways, accidental and deliberate, to induce ecstasy. A lady friend was driving me across town once when the car hit an embankment, lost traction, and began slowly to spin around into the next lane with oncoming traffic. I saw immediately that I might shortly be dead but then strangely lapsed into a state of blissful admiration of everything around me; I was outside myself and feeling calm and serene. By sheer luck, we made it unscathed to the other side of the road. 

One of the more famous accidental routes to ecstasy is the well-investigated near-death experience. When this happens, you are definitely outside your normal human self. Typically, you may encounter deceased loved ones, see your whole life flash before you, encounter a being of light and pure love, hear unearthly music, feel what you never felt before, and emerge from it all a new human being—sometimes with paranormal powers you never had before. 

We would prefer not to have such terrifying accidents to experience ecstasy and its wonders. We can, however, turn to more gradual, deliberate methods of exploring the ecstatic zone. For example, like shamans, mediums, poets, prophets, and mystics, we might fast, meditate, or isolate ourselves, ingest psychoactive substances, sublimate our sexual energies, and so on, all directed to trigger ecstasy. In fact, there is a specific drug, MDMA, called Ecstasy or Molly. 

People have devised ways to get outside their everyday personal selves with the purpose of tuning into greater powers and new dimensions of reality. There are ways to search for higher forms of consciousness. It would be useful to have a practice, an art form, or a lifestyle that helps us. It could be anything—any practice that tends to free us from the mechanical side of ourselves.   

The Indians have the word sadhana—the practice you use to tune into the powers of your latent higher self. “What have you done to surpass yourself” was the question that Nietzsche put into the mouth of Zarathustra. The divine spark inside us is dying to burst into flame.

In my opinion, an excellent outlet for the ecstatic quest for finding a healing sadhana are the arts. The arts are about getting outside the ordinary manacled mind and rearranging reality in such a way that permits more of the beauty, the pathos, and the miracle of being to pour into our minds and hearts. The arts all bow to the same power, Imagination.  

The arts can take us out of ourselves, each art form in its own way. It can be any form you resonate with, as long as it gives you a handle on your creative imagination—a way to enter a new dimension of yourself.  

I’ll end with a short description of my own practice, my nightlife as a painter. I get out of myself as a painter through the way I paint. I let the painting paint itself; everything begins with doodling; I draw without a plan and allow random patterns of form and color. I fall into an easy-going chaos, spontaneous and indistinct.   

Then I stop, stand back and look at the outpourings on my canvas—the first step in materializing the image on canvas. In step two, I look for the composition hidden in the chaos, get into the brushwork, and delete or change a form or the value of a color. In short, I hand it over to the craftsman to find and bring out the soul of the still-hidden image. The spontaneous and the critical finally come together with a sigh of relief.   

“A Trinity of Birds” by the Author

Exploring ecstasy as a new dimension of consciousness leads to stories that challenge our general outlook. A vast range of reports reveal all manner of strange phenomena. One thinks of the thousands of people who have ecstatic near-death experiences and how their lives are transformed. There are documented cases of instantaneous healings resulting from ecstatic prayer. 

Historically, there is the phenomenon of the great Hebrew prophets, who were undoubtedly taken out of their normal personalities. There are cases of mental and physical mediums who produce effects that shatter physical theory and enlarge our understanding of the nature of the psyche. There are also the well-documented miracles of Hindu and Catholic saints. Ecstasy is always central; it is the key to extraordinary events.   

There are more interesting ways of being in the world and more interesting forms of consciousness. Ecstasy is a fascinating doorway into the land of the ultra-possible—a higher life in all senses.

To explore the details of this story, see Dr. Ed Kelly’s book Irreducible Mind, which gets into the data behind the new paradigm of consciousness that is emerging today. Also, see my book Smile of the Universe, which reviews data supporting the most powerful phenomena that challenge the belief in the materialist paradigm.

About Michael Grosso

Michael Grosso, Ph.D, is an independent scholar associated with an ongoing Seminar at Esalen on the role of mind in the cosmos. His latest book focuses on psychic anomalies that challenge reductive materialism. The emphasis is on waking up to the full girth of our potential.