A World of Ecstatics:
Journeys in Other Religious Traditions
Divine reality is infinite,
and infinite are the ways to realize it.
—Ramakrishna161
That shamanic journeys have endured for millennia around the world is remarkable. Just as remarkable is that similar journeys have shaped so many great religions and so much of history.55 Each of the great Western monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—was impacted, as was Chinese Taoism. In contrast, soul flights had less effect on Confucianism, with its greater social and political emphasis, or on the Indian traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, where yogic practices dominated.
THE WESTERN MONOTHEISMS
In the West, three of the most influential religious leaders, Mohammad and the Christian saints Paul and John, were spontaneously born upward through the heavens.
Mohammad’s Night Journey
Mohammad’s Mi’r j (night journey or ascent) was originally described very briefly, but has been elaborated over the centuries and is apparently alluded to in the Koran in the verse “glory be to Him, who carried his servant by night….that we might show him some of our signs.”
Asleep in Mecca, the Prophet was awakened by Gabriel, the archangel who had previously revealed the Koran to him and, centuries earlier, had announced Jesus’s birth to Mary. Gabriel escorted Mohammad first to Jerusalem, where he prayed with the great prophets of history. Then he ascended up through the seven heavens to the throne of Allah. Even the great archangel could not ascend this far and sighed, “If I would go one step further, my wings would get burned.”323
The Koran tells us that Mohammad’s “eyes swayed not, nor swept astray. Indeed, he saw one of the greatest signs of his Lord.” Of course we are told almost nothing about the nature of this ultimate theophany (vision of God), which is assumed to be far beyond anything words could convey.
However, we are told that the Muslims were instructed to pray fifty times a day. Moses, however, had other ideas. When the Prophet descended to the sixth heaven where Moses presided, he was ordered to go back and request a smaller number better suited to the limited capacities of humans. This was repeated several times until, at five prayers a day, Mohammad felt ashamed to beg yet again for another reduction.
During his descent to Mecca he saw camel caravans trekking across the desert. The next morning, his report of the journey was met with mocking hostility by skeptics. Then the caravans arrived.118
The nature of the journey—whether a dream, a purely spiritual vision, or a literal transport of the body—has been debated for centuries. But whatever its nature, its impact has been extraordinary. For fourteen hundred years, devout Muslims have prayed five times a day, while the great mystics of Islam, the Sufis, use the language of ascension to describe their own spiritual experiences. In the West, the medieval poet Danté apparently fashioned part of his famous allegorical journey in the Divine Comedy on Mohammad’s experience, though as a conventional Christian he consigned Mohammad to one of the lowest hells. Note that Mohammad’s journey, like those of the saints Paul and John, was spontaneous, unlike those of shamans or Jewish and Taoist practitioners.
Early Christian Ascents
Saint Paul was also “caught up into Paradise.” Paul was no stranger to visions, having been transformed from a merciless persecutor of Christians to one of their foremost leaders by a vision of Jesus so overwhelming that “he fell to the ground.” Afterwards “he could see nothing,” and “for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” Later Paul underwent a spontaneous journey, which he reluctantly revealed to maintain his authority in the face of competition from other Christian visionaries.
I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows, [and] was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
Paul’s visions braced him with an unwavering faith that endured persecution and torture, fortified the precarious early church, and shaped Christian doctrine for 2,000 years. But the impact of even Saint Paul’s journeys are dwarfed by those of John, author of the Book of Revelation. John reported a voice:
Which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said,
“Come up here, and I will show you what must
Take place after this.” At once I was in the spirit…
John’s detailed, highly symbolic visions portray perennial Christian themes such as future trials and tribulations, the millennium, and Armageddon, the final cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. The nature of John’s visions—symbolic or literal—has been hotly debated and even today is having an enormous religious and political impact. Literalists have long expected their fulfillment at any time and are now agitating politically to bring about the political conditions for their fruition.
In addition, the best-selling novels in the United States today are the Left Behind series, which have sold more than sixty million copies. Based on John’s visions, the books portray the head of the United Nations as the Antichrist, and jubilantly celebrate the massacre of millions of non-Christians by a militant and curiously unforgiving Jesus. If a Muslim wrote an Islamic version delighting in Christian genocide, Christians would have a fit.202 In short, literalist interpretations of visions are potentially dangerous.
The Chariot Mysticism of Judaism
Judaism and Taoism provide examples of religions in which spiritual journeys mushroomed into major traditions. In fact, Judaism’s earliest mystical tradition, the Merkabah or “Chariot Mysticism” centered on journeying. It was sparked by the spontaneous journey of the prophet Ezekiel, who in 592 BCE had an overwhelming vision of a chariot and of the throne of God.
For over a thousand years, Jewish seekers strove to emulate Ezekiel’s vision. To do this, they elaborated a complex and demanding discipline that required “moral purity, rabbinic learnedness, ritual purity, and thorough mastery of the special knowledge necessary to negotiate the supernal realm.”28 Thus prepared, the seeker readied himself for the journey through the heavens and the halls of the divine palace by fasting, solitude, and prayer. An eleventh-century account tells us:
…when a man is worthy and blessed with certain qualities and he wishes to gaze at the heavenly chariot and the halls of the angels on high he must follow certain exercises. He must fast for a specified number of days, he must place his head between his knees whispering softly to himself the while certain praises of God with his face towards the ground. As a result he will gaze in the innermost recesses of his heart and it will seem as if he saw the seven halls with his own eyes, moving from hall to hall to observe that which is therein to be found.11
It was not an easy journey. Standing watch at every level were guardians who were “harsh, fearful, terrifying….Bolts of lightening flow and issue forth from the balls of their eyes…and torches of fiery coals from their mouths.”28 Fires scorch the seekers, complex prayers were demanded at every level, and the unworthy suffered insanity or death. For the successful, the reward was an ecstatic vision of the throne of God.
Powerful as this vision is, contemporary Jewish scholars point out that it is also curiously lacking.28, 324 There is little devotional love, no penetrating insight into the fundamental nature of humankind or the world, no new moral ideal, no practices for ordinary people, and certainly no sense of union with God. Gershom Scholem concluded that “the mystic who in his ecstasy has passed through all the gates, braved all the dangers, now stands before the throne; he sees and hears—but that is all.”324 Perhaps these factors help explain why the chariot tradition eventually died out.
Of course, spontaneous journeys continued. For the Baal Shem Tov, the remarkable eighteenth-century founder of Hasidism, journeys were a vital source of inspiration. He wrote:
For on the day of the New Year of the year 5507 (= September, 1746)
I engaged in an ascent of the soul, as you know I do, and I saw wondrous things….That which I saw in my ascent is impossible to describe or to relate…374
So impactful was the Baal Shem Tov that he inspired a new movement of ecstatic Judaism in which joyous prayer, singing, and dancing assumed a central place.
TAOISM
Chinese shamans traveled the cosmos for centuries before the birth of organized religions. The most famous of all Chinese soul flights is described in the classic poem “The Far-off Journey,” dating to the third century BCE. The author described how he toured the universe:
Up to the Cracks of Heaven,
Down to the Great Abyss….
Going beyond-nonaction, I reach the Clarity,
Become a neighbor of the Great Beginning.198
Like Judaism, ecstatic journeys became a central practice of Taoism. Beginning in the fourth century CE, the Highest Clarity (Shang Qing) Tradition transformed “the ancient shamanistic practice…into a formal meditation procedure.”198 To do so, it developed the art of visualization to a degree never found before or since in Chinese religion. The body now became a micro-cosmos, and the practitioner journeyed within it and in the heavens.
The Highest Clarity school also created an enormous pantheon of gods and goddesses residing in the body and in the stars. These deities the practitioner visited, drew power from, and even took as a lover.310
Journeys aimed for knowledge, power, ecstasy, union with a divine lover, and ultimately immortality. These Taoists obtained knowledge and power “by sinking deep in rapture within the confines of the sacred space of his meditation chamber and traveling through the world searching for virtue and instruction….The practitioner absorbs the essences of the stars and guides them to remain in certain parts of the body.”310
It is not all hard work. While the practitioner draws nourishment from the stars, he also “frolics in the paradise protected by them, where the divinities originate and reside.”310 Ecstatic union with a divine lover is also possible:
Adepts visualize the pure energy of the sun or the moon, then imagine a goddess in its midst. The goddess grows stronger and more vivid with prolonged practice until she is felt present in the flesh. Pressing her mouth to his, she dispenses celestial vapors to increase the adept’s vitality. After a long courtship and regular visualizations, she will even lie with him.198
But ecstasy demands preparation, and the Taoist training could be long and arduous. Years of discipline, purification, and meditation were necessary, and a classic text urged: “In all cases, first undertake purifications and fasts, make an effort to control your thoughts, and focus your mind firmly on the mystery.”198
As in mystical traditions the world over, purification was regarded as essential, and “to attain the Tao through ecstatic excursions, the soul and spirit of the Taoist must be freed completely from the concerns of this world.”198 A classic text, “Three Ways to Go Beyond the Heavenly Paths,” gives the following instructions for a journey to a favored celestial destination, the Big Dipper and its attendant deities.
To practice the Tao excursion to the seven stars [of the Dipper] first summon the Jade Emperor and his nine lords and let their mysterious essence radiate within your body. Block off the root of death, calm your mind, and darken the room….Concentrate your mind and make a strong effort to control your thoughts. Visualize the gods in creative imagination, but do not fall asleep. Practice this for seven years; then a jasper carriage with a flying canopy and cinnabar shafts will come to receive you and take you to ascend through the Heavenly Pass.198
Having arrived at the Big Dipper, the adept either rested on it, imbibed nourishment from its stars and divinities, or traveled the cosmos in it. “Once the tour of the whole universe is completed, the kings of the Thirty-six heavens will enter his or her name into the registers of immortality.”310 At this point the long discipline is complete, and the practitioner has become an immortal.
SUMMARY
One can only marvel at the far-flung distribution and world-changing impact of journey experiences. They occur across religions, cultures, and centuries, both spontaneously and after arduous preparation. In their wake, they have transformed individuals, religions, societies, and history. Their impact continues to this day.
Journeys are strikingly culture-specific. Mohammad traversed seven heavens, Saint Paul only three; the Jewish seeker arrived at the throne of God, while the Taoist retraced a familiar route through the stars.
Where journeys are deliberately sought, their goals are also culture-specific. The most common goal is kratophany (a revelation of power), in whatever form power is conceived. The Taoist also journeyed for pure pleasure, for ecstatic union with a divine lover, or ultimately for immortality and union with the Tao. On the other hand, Tibetan Buddhists—whose journey practices were not described since they form a relatively minor part of the vast array of Tibetan practices—seek enlightenment and liberation from suffering and delusion.
Techniques
Though physical disciplines of fasting and posture remained, the methods used for inducing journeys in Judaism and Taoism differed from the methods of shamanism. Intensely energetic methods such as dancing and drumming gave way to greater reliance on meditation, calm, and mind control. This demonstrates a general principle of the evolution of both the technology of transcendence and the religious states of consciousness it induces. Over the centuries, techniques become increasingly subtle, internal, and focused on mental training and control. The original reliance on entrainment by powerful external stimulation is replaced by a more subtle inner control of mental processes. According to Ramakrishna, one of the greatest of Hindu sages, the defining characteristic of such a yogi is that “the mind is under his control; he is not under the control of his mind.”294 So widely is this kind of self-control praised by sages, psychologists, and philosophers that the great historian William Durant concluded: “The greatest of all wonders is not the conqueror of the world but the subduer of himself.”77
Interpretations and Metaphysics of Journeys
Interpretations of the metaphysical nature of journeys in the great religions span the spectrum of possibilities. Saint Paul humbly acknowledged that he did not know whether his journey was “in the body or out of the body,” and there has long been debate about whether Mohammad’s ascent was bodily or visionary. Taoists embraced both views and saw themselves able to travel within the body and the heavens simultaneously. For Tibetan Buddhists, spiritual travels are explicitly mind creations, as is the entire physical universe.
Clearly, cosmic travelers in diverse religions learned to create inner worlds consistent with the maps of their tradition, worlds that the religious scholars Mircea Eliade and Henri Corbin called, respectively, “creative imagination” and “active imagination.” Adepts learned to tame and train their own minds and thereby to traverse their inner world. Through these journeys, they were able to break the bonds of ordinary physical life and attain the transcendent goals of their traditions.
At the other extreme are literal interpreters of the Book of Revelation, some of whom are trying to direct world politics so as to fulfill its predictions. The implications of how journeys are interpreted are not minor.