The phenomenon of ecstasy and 'Being-Towards-Death'

In Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962), death does not simply signal the end of existence.

According to Heidegger, a more authentic mode of relating to death goes beyond understanding the simple linear conception of life and death. Rather, the more authentic relation is experienced through 'temporal ecstasies' - temporal elements that 'stand out' for existential potential - whereby the past, present and future provide a 'moment of vision'; enabling futural projections (possibilities) and giving one's place in history as a part of one's generation.

This ecstatic phenomenon — or ‘moment of vision’ — can occur in dreams, Shamanic trances and near-death-experiences. The phenomenon can lead to the experience of ‘fluidic spaces, dark elongated closures, or empty voids to pass entirely outside the parameters of space and time’ (Greene, 1992). In this article, I will primarily focus on the near-death-experiences defined by Carol Zaleski as the “first sight[ing] of death rather than a direct experience of it’. I will illustrate how near-death-experiences are an intensified form of ‘Being-towards-death’ and compare it to less intensified forms of ecstatic experiences.

In Heidegger’s conceptualization of ecstatic temporality, he concedes that time is not a motionless linear series of past, present and future, but denotes that time constantly stands outside of itself in its future and past without losing itself. In this, he refers to the three ecstasies of time:

‘the future that is revealed in anticipation of death, the past, or “having-been-ness” that is manifested in the concepts of conscience, guilt and resoluteness, and the present or “waiting-towards” that is grasped in the moment of vision or taking action’.

All three are present in moments of ecstasy; such as that of dreaming, near-death-experiences and trances.

This implies that in instances of ecstasy, the three modalities of time are shown to be neither ontically connected together, nor collapsed into a monotonous or uniform identity, but rather these horizons of time overlap and intertwine with each other; enabling Dasein to stand outside of itself.

Because the certainty of death is futural, the anticipation of death in the present and the grasping of the finitude of our being, allows us to be closer to understanding who we are — or in the words of Nietzsche- a step closer to ‘becoming who one is’. For Heidegger, human time is finite and comes to an end with our death. Finitude is thus Dasein’s anticipation of and powerlessness before its nullity. It is only possible for Dasein to be ‘authentic’ if it owns up to the pervasive fact of its death. This authenticity does not simply denote self-awareness, but the facility to be immersed in the world and disclose the world at the same time. If one is to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, it is essential that we constantly project our lives on the horizon of death.

This is what Heidegger refers to as ‘being-towards-death’. In moments of ecstasy, the primacy of the future — that is the anticipation of death, or death itself — reveals the past and present, constructing an authentic existence of Dasein.

In Western and non-Western societies, near-death-experiences are often portrayed as a separation of the soul from the body. Aristotle defined the soul as the principle of life, as a way of being-open to entities other than itself. The correlation I draw upon between the concept of the soul and Dasein is time. Heidegger draws upon St. Augustine’s conceptualization of time as a sort of ‘distention’ of the soul in his formulation of Dasein (Kelly, 2010). The soul, which should be enduring in the everlasting present, becomes stretched out into temporality, into an apparent successiveness of events.

When ecstatic moments occur, Dasein, or the metaphoric soul’s separation from the physical earthly body, allows individuals to catch a glimpse of themselves as temporalized beings that have futural projects, a past that requires interpretation and a present in which they act.

While Heidegger drew on St. Augustine’s connection of time in relation to the soul, what is not to be forgotten is the relationship between time and space. In Henry Abramovich’s (1988) case study of an Israeli man who has an out-of-body experience following a heart attack, depicts the way in which the man reaches a place where ‘there is no space and time — no dimension of and no measuring’, ‘exist[ing] in a reality in which the laws of nature did not exist’. Spatiality, according to Heidegger, is a characteristic of Dasein; it is thus comprehendible that space is dependent upon a time but that this same temporality ‘makes intelligible Dasein’s ‘dependence’ upon space’ (Heidegger 1962). In the case study of the Israeli man, the ‘moment of vision’ exemplifies an intensification of being-towards-death, where perhaps a momentary loss of Dasein — or rather the soul — produced not only a loss of time but also space.

Moreover, Heidegger stresses that we do not simply exist as abstract entities, but rather we are always within a world. In this, he refers to the human tendency to solidify themselves into subjects — that is the individualized self in the world. In this, Heidegger follows Marx in that he acknowledges that the individual is ‘created’ by social forces. Sven Cederroth’s (1988) study of the Sasak people of the Lombok Island in Indonesia describes how in death the soul wanders aimlessly until mortuary rights are performed to transform the soul into a de-individualized ancestor: blurring among the amorphous mass of ancestors. It is only through the consolidation of death in mortuary rights by the wider social group that individuality is constructed — in such instances; the abstraction of an authentic death is very much social, perhaps making it inauthentic.

Shamanic Traditions & Being-Towards-Death

However, since death, according to Heidegger, is non-relational in the sense that standing before death one cuts off social relations to others — and the individual can only experience death, we can thereby begin to ask ourselves, what happens to the self in instances of near-death? In the same manner that mortuary rights after death may engender the loss of subjective individuality, in cases of near-death experiences, the momentary separation of Dasein also produces a de-individualized self and reveals an authentic reality.

Shamanistic trances often use an archaic technique of ecstasy, often inducing near-death-experiences (Mircea Eliade, 1989). Eliade gives precedence to a particular type of trance called ‘magical flight’ or ‘soul journey’, in which the shaman, in a visionary state, has a momentary detachment of reality — embarking on a mystical voyage that involves symbolic manifestations of world-axis, the layered universe and the experience of death and revival. In Zeljko Jokic’s (2008) ethnography of Yanomami, the engagement of shamanic activities involves a total fragmentation of the ego, as well as a temporary loss of identity to provide a new mode of ‘Hekura-being’ (Hekura being the ancestral spirits of which they call upon) (2008:46). In initiations, the shaman ‘dies’ anew through ecstasy and directly re-enters the original primordial condition of the ever-present.

Heidegger argues that traditionally we think of ourselves as detached from the world — that is that ‘subjective’ previously referred to as the soul- when in fact the only way we discover reality is by detached contemplation. In the Yanomami shamanic trance, the feeling of being-towards-death provides a more authentic mode of Being — conceived as the ‘Hekura-being’.

Additionally, during the Yanomami shamanistic trance, time is revealed to be a part of Being. In the ceremonies, the shaman’s

‘expanded ego-consciousness unfolds as a horizon of fluid boundaries, continual multiple transformations and shapeshifting’ (Jokic 2008)

that allow the shaman to undertake the full identity of his embodied spirit. The three ecstasies of time, of which Heidegger depicts, are present in these initiation rights and allow the Dasein of the shamans to stand ‘outside of itself’. In this instance, this form of detached contemplation where a departure from everyday modes of consciousness is transformed into a dimension of primordial consciousness is experienced through ‘being-towards-death’ giving light to an authentic mode of reality.

The ceremonies in shamanistic trances often have a therapeutic change to other individual’s mind/body that potentially offer the individual/patient with an ‘authentic’ mode of being.

According to Charles Stewart (2012), many psychological conditions can be cast as products of human temporality — that is the preoccupation with what might happen or has happened, or rather ‘being-towards-death’. The psychological illnesses that individuals may experience perhaps are an ‘Anxiety’ in which one is caught up in an inauthentic way of being — that is his existence is shot through with nullity. Various anthropologists have documented particular healing sessions reporting that the outcome is positive and patients healed (Siky, 2009). For instance, in healing ceremonies in Nepal, shamans often use imagery, symbolism and metaphors to draw upon cultures mythic knowledge and cosmology to provide patients with the instruments to comprehend their somatic sensations (Siky, 2009:16). The understanding of the symbolic codes and imagery occurs at various levels of consciousness; such symbols have the ability to penetrate the unconscious intentionality. Perhaps during the ecstatic experience of the trance, shamans allow individuals - via symbolism - to acknowledge societal expectations of reality and neutralize them, acting upon their own understanding of these expectations in the light of ‘being-towards-death’ — they are in turn feeling an ‘authentic’ present that temporalizes itself.

Dreams & Being-Towards-Death

Less intensified forms of ecstatic moments also occur in dreams. Dreams are understood to be instances of pure existence (Foucault and Binswanger, 1986), perhaps an embodied form of Dasein. Charles Stewart’s ethnographic study of islanders on the Greek island of Koronos provides a less intensified form of ‘being-towards-death’ through an account of dreams as a moment of ecstasy. When islanders recurrently and collectively dreamed up the location of local treasures, this evoked the extreme value attributed to history as a national resource in Greece. The dreams experienced by the islanders reveal that dreams can be treated as ‘exemplary moments of vision in which imaginative temporal flights fuse and create a present imbued with the meaning’ where the self identifies with existence in an oscillation of feelings and visions. In Greece, where history furnishes an important source of self-definition, the oneiric ecstasy of existence ‘receives expression through historicizing imagery that captures the coursing of human temporality between future and past’ (Stewart 2012).

In this example, it conceivable that an ‘authentic’ mode of existence is possible. The dreams enabled the islanders of Koronos to become aware of the societal expectations of history and reality, neutralizing them and acting on the basis of their own understanding against the background of the accepted Greek interpretation.

Being-there

In conclusion, the ecstasies of time revealed in the ethnographic illustrations reveal that Being is not independent of time, but rather exposed by the horizon of the overlapping past, present and future. For Heidegger, temporality, in the guise of ecstasies is the condition of the composition of Dasein’s being. When Heidegger notes the etymology of ‘ecstases’ (ek-stasis), he not only shows the meaning to be ‘stepping-outside-self’ but also more importantly notes its affiliation with ‘existence’. Therefore, the actuality of Dasein is dependent upon the ecstatic nature of primordial temporality.

Moreover, because of the ecstatic nature of temporality, Dasein is not left stranded as a present subject in a boundless scale of time, rather the derivative thought of time necessitates that Dasein deems its future and past as belonging to another subject.

The moment of vision, whether it be in trances, dreams or near-death-experiences allows the possibility of the ‘now’ derivative of time; to experience for the first time that which is present at hand. These moments of vision as presented in the ethnographies, enable for a consciousness that is temporally aware, making sense of the present in light of the future and past and more precisely temporalizing themselves in terms of a more authentic future.

Dasein exists in the anticipation of nullity, which is the authentic ‘being-towards-death’. Being-towards-death gives life significance, narrative structure and makes intelligence of the present in regards to the future and past. To reiterate the reformulation of Descartes:

‘I die, therefore I am'

references

• Abramovitch, H. (1988). An Israeli account of a near-death-experience: A case study of cultural dissonance. Journal of Near-Death studies 6, 175–184

• Cederroth, S. (1988). Pouring Water and Eating Food. On the Symbolism of Death in a Sasak Community on Lombok. The Meaning of Death Essays on Mortuary Rituals and Eschatological Beliefs, 39–61.

• Stewart, C. (2012), ‘Affective History’, in Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece, Harvard Press.

• Eliade, M. 1989[1951] Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. London: Arcana.

• Greene, F. G. (1992). Motfis of passage into worlds imaginary and fantastic.Journal of Near-Death Studies, 10(4), 205–231.

• Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, trans.)

• Jokic, Z. (2008). Yanomami Shamanic Initiation: The Meaning of Death and Postmortem Consciousness in Transformation, in Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 33–59.

• Kelly, M. R. (2010, August). On the Mind’s Pronouncement of Time. InProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (Vol. 78, pp. 247–262).

• Ryan, J. K., Pilkington, J. G., & Pusey, E. B. (1960). The Confessions of St. Augustine. International Collector’s Library.

• Schürmann, R. (2008). On Heidegger’s Being and time. S. Levine (Ed.). Routledge

• Zaleski, C. (1996). Evaluating near-death testimony. The near-death experience-A reader, 329–356.