ENFOQUES

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1

The Oceanic Experience

O f all the arts, music is undoubtedly the one that has the greatest capacity to move us, and the emotion it arouses can reach overwhelming proportions.

(Rouget, 1985: 316)

Although it usually takes place within a social context, the dancing that is so central to clubbing is a highly personal experience and one that is rarely evoked in w riting because of its ineffable and ephemeral qualities^ The contrasting moments o f introversion and o f complete engagement w ith the dancing crowd that the dancing clubber may experience, upon which I touched at the end of the last Chapter, are impossible to fully convey through words alone. In my attempts to evoke these experiences, which I am variously

conceptualising as 'oceanic' and 'ecstatic' for reasons I outline below, it is thus im portant that the frames o f reference and terminology that are used are explained as fully as is possible at the outset. W hile Lewis (1989: 10) is correct to critique over-elaborate and fanciful concepts o f altered states and ecstatic (and other so-called 'mystical') experiences as flawed and based upon "elaborate structuralist dichotomies", he firstly fails to outline any alternative, and secondly he partially falls into his own trap by embarking upon a lengthy and confusing chapter of debate over definitions. When discussing these most individual, fleeting and powerfully emotional experiences some clarification o f terms and concepts is necessary and should not be avoided simply due to their complexity.

At the risk o f tautology, at their most basic level of conception 'altered' states o f mind differ from 'norm al' states o f mind in being qualitatively unlike the predom inant states of mind experienced during one's waking hours in the course o f 'norm al' day-to-day living; they involve some form o f transformation in consciousness (Inglis, 1989; Laski, 1961; Lewis, 1989). Thus, 'altered' states do not include common experiences such as euphoria, happiness or joy as experienced on an everyday basis, but rather only euphoria, happiness and joy characterised by a transitory, unexpected, valued and extraordinary quality o f rare occurrence and magnitude in which an altered sense of consciousness is tem porarily experienced (Laski, 1961; 1980).

^ As I alluded to earlier, accessing and representing these stories as 'the researcher' can therefore be problematic. Dancing is a, "form in the making [...] a dynamic image" (Sheets-johnstone, 1979); when the dancer reflects on the experience in order to recount it the dynamism of the experience is gone (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975b).

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Throughout the Night I have referred to the experience o f in-betweeness or liminality - of being somehow taken outside o f or beyond oneself, especially while dancing - that is a characteristic o f many crowds and particularly of the closely-packed, sensorially- bombarded dancing crowds of clubbing. At its most intensive this sensation o f in- betweeness can partially induce or trigger the altered state o f consciousness that I am calling, after Freud (1961 ) and Storr (1992), the oceanic experience. I use this term in evoking,

... a feeling o f an indissoluble bond, o f being one with the external world as a whole.

(Freud, 1961: 65) ^

Drawing from w ork by Marghanita Laski (1961 ; 1980) on 'ecstasies', by Brian Inglis (1989) on altered states such as 'trance', by Anthony Storr (1992) on music and the emotions, and by I. M. Lewis (1989) on 'ecstasies' and altered states more generally, I define as 'oceanic' those experiences characterised by one or more of these sensations: ecstasy, joy,

euphoria, ephemerality, empathy, alterity (a sense of being beyond the everyday), release, the loss and subsequent gaining of control, and notions o f escaped Oceanic experiences are described "as being one in which all sense of self and time and the everyday world seem to vanish (...) a state o f anxiety is replaced by mental tranquillity" (Laski, 1980: 12-13). Pleasurable fluctuations between awareness of self and environment, between sensations o f intensity and withdrawal, and between practices of interaction and reflection, are foregrounded.

For Laski, oceanic experiences are usually described as indescribable, although this does not prevent people trying to describe them in some detail - they just usually never quite 'ge t there'. Laski also suggests oceanic experiences might involve feelings o f loss (of self, o f time, of place, o f limitations); feelings o f gain (of unity, o f 'everythingness', o f oneness, o f an ideal place, o f release); and feelings of "quasi-physicality" (Laski, 1980: 14). People

^ In one o f the first uses o f the term in evoking this sensation, Freud (1961 ) compared the oceanic experience to the heights o f being in love - a state where the boundary between ego and object threatens to m elt away (Storr, 1992). For Freud, this melting boundary between self and other was interpreted as a temporary regression to infancy, where the infant at the mother's breast has not yet differentiated itself from the external world. Thus, for Freud, the oceanic represented a regression to a total merger with the w orld (Storr, 1992). Inglis (1989) attributes the first use o f the term "oceanic" to Jung (1957) in describing the experience of transcendence (see also Jung, 1973).

^ As I have mentioned above and as I suggest in more detail below, I am using the term 'oceanic' in preference to 'ecstatic' because of the current connotation o f 'ecstasy' w ith the drug M D M A . I am especially concerned to avoid inferring that all clubbing experiences in which sensations o f altered perception are experienced involved the use o f drugs such as ecstasy (M D M A ).

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describing oceanic experiences often evoke their feelings in terms of notions o f upness, swelling, warm flushes or glowing in the heart, feelings o f warmth, of liquidity, tinglings in the head and spine, and the attainment o f calm and peace (Laski, 1961; 1980). Happold (1981 ) appears to concur with Laski in proposing that "mystical states" (as he calls oceanic experiences) are marked by ineffability, transience, passivity, and a noetic quality, and often instill a sensation o f the oneness o f everything^

The term 'oceanic' has most often been used in discussing the states o f mind that can be experienced by mystics and those involved in solitary religious contemplation (Laski, 1961; Storr, 1992). Laski (1961) lists three main and prior uses o f the term "ecstasy" in addition to her own use as a form o f oceanic experience: first, in describing a trance-like state; second, in describing a state o f madness, as in Ophelia's description o f Hamlet as being "blasted with ecstasy" with which I opened this chapter; and third, in describing a state of being in love, particularly, Laski suggests, in advertising media. O f course, only tw o years after Laski had w ritten her second text on ecstasy, the term had taken on a fourth and additional connotation o f referring to an "hallucinogenic amphetamine" (ISDD, 1996: 2; Stevens, 1993)^.

In contrast to the more usual considerations of the oceanic experience - where solitude appears to be a pre-condition and feelings of unity are experienced more with a 'G o d ' or 'universe figure' than w ith any 'earthly' manifestation or 'thing' - 1 am using the concept to evoke the sensation o f oneness and the liminality of self / w ider group that can be

experienced within apparently diverse dancing crowds. These experiences can induce highly pleasurable moments o f ex-stasis (or loss of self) w ithin individuals.

The notion of the oceanic experience is appropriate in discussing the altered states o f consciousness which clubbers describe as sometimes experienced while dancing in crowds for at least four reasons. First, as I have suggested, the oceanic neatly evokes the sense of in-betweeness or liminality that characterises clubbing and particularly the practices and

Happold uses the term "n o e tic" to describe insights that are the product o f private subjective awareness as opposed to rational reasoning. As an interesting aside, in his discussion of

transcendence Brian Inglis (1989: 254) notes how Edgar Mitchell, one o f the Apollo 14 astronauts, "blew his m ind" when he saw Earth from space, "converting him instantly from materialism": "I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random principles" M itchell said. This experience led M itchell to set up the Institute for N oetic Sciences in California "based on the assumption that there are very large gaps in our knowledge o f w hat is natural" (Inglis, 1989: 254). This must be the ultimate oceanic experience.

^ Other terms that are often used in place o f 'oceanic experience' include: mystical experience, cosmic consciousness, soul-life, infused contemplation, timeless moments and spirit possession (Inglis, 1989; Laski, 1961).

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emotions of dancing; in between spaces (outside / inside, inner night-life / outside everyday life, spaces o f w ork / spaces of play), and in between times (night / day, w o rk / play, and even outside time, or between 'real' times). Second, the oceanic evokes the fluidity and constantly shifting socio-spatial dynamics o f the dance floor - the sensory onslaught that can act to effectively remove any figure of reference (the walls merge into the darkness, the ceiling is invisible, the floor is rarely glimpsed) and the unceasing m otion o f the dancers. Third, as both Storr (1992) and Lewis (1989) note, music alone rarely triggers the oceanic experience. Yet, through dancing and the em bodiment of that music, through self-mastery and the use o f body techniques in the expression o f a dancer's

understandings, the dancer is able to transcend or escape the self and strive for a realm beyond the confines o f the body - "to move one's body is to aim at things through it" (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 137). Fourth, and related to these first three points, the oceanic experiences o f the clubbers to whom I have talked appear to foreground (as does Laski's concept of the ecstatic) notions o f loss (of differences between self and others, o f tim e and space, o f words, images and the senses), as well as notions o i gain (of unity, of

timelessness and eternity, o f control, joy, contact, and ineffability).

I refer to oceanic experiences that are partially attained through the use o f chemical triggers - in particular the dance drug ecstasy (M DM A) or similar hallucinogenic

amphetamines (ISDD, 1996) - as 'ecstatic', and I discuss these further below. The use of the term 'ecstatic experiences' to evoke the broad range o f experiences o f in-betweeness, ex-stasis and joy that clubbers have talked about both whilst dancing and off the dance floor would perhaps have been less confusing. However, in an attem pt to prevent all such experiences being associated with the use of ecstasy (M DM A) or other drugs - a common misconception - 1 will refer only to those experiences that do involve drugs as being 'ecstatic' experiences. The term 'oceanic experiences' is thus used to encompass both

drug-induced (ecstatic) and non-drug-induced sensations o f in-betweeness. Simultaneous feelings of disassociation and o f warmth and empathy towards others - sensations o f introversion and meditation yet concurrent expression and jouissance - are facets o f all crowd-based 'oceanic experiences'. 'Ecstatic experiences', on the other hand, at least in the sense that I am using the term, are those oceanic experiences in which drugs - and particularly in the clubbing experience the drug ecstasy (M DM A) - are used in an attem pt to trigger, prolong or intensify the experience.

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