Religious ecstasy | Rich X Wiki Search

Spirituality
Part of a series on
Outline
Religion History Timeline
Traditional Elite religion Jewish Merkabah Kabbalah Hasidism Christian Catholic Mysticism Sufism Folk religion
Modern Buddhist modernism New religious movement Secular spirituality "Spiritual but not religious" Syncretism
Spiritual experience Lived religion Mystical experience Oceanic feeling Religious experience Religious ecstasy Spiritual practice
Spiritual development Divine embodiment Ego death Individuation Self-actualization Spiritual activism
Influences
Western General Divine illumination Pantheism Panentheism Antiquity Divinity Gnosticism Hermeticism Neoplatonism Western esotericism Medieval Mysticism Early modern Perennial philosophy Jakob Böhme Emanuel Swedenborg Pietism Modern Romanticism Transcendentalism Universalism New Thought Theosophy Anthroposophy Occultism Spiritualism Esoteric Christianity New Age
Orientalist Comparative religion Neo-Advaita Nonduality Orientalism Theosophical Society
Asian Pre-historic Proto-Indo-Iranian religion Iran Zoroastrianism India Advaita Vedanta Buddha-nature Enlightenment Kevala jnana Madhyamaka Moksha Neo-Vedanta Tantra Yoga Yogachara East-Asia Taoism
Other non-Western Animism Shamanism Totemism
Psychological Humanistic psychology Mindfulness Positive psychology Self-help Self-realization True self and false self
Research
Neurological Mystical psychosis Cognitive science of religion Neuroscience of religion Geschwind syndrome Evolutionary psychology of religion
Category
v t e

Religious ecstasy is a purported form of altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and reportedly expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness, frequently accompanied by visions and emotional (and sometimes physical) euphoria.

Although the experience is usually brief in time,^[1] there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more, and of recurring experiences of ecstasy during a person's lifetime.

In Sufism, the term is referred to as wajd. In Buddhism, piti, usually translated as "joy" or "rapture", is an element of jhana, a state of mental oneness with an object that one focuses on in meditation.^[2]

^ Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy. A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences. The Cresset Press, London, 1961. p. 57
^ Gunaratana, Henepola (1995). "The Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist Meditation". Access to Insight. Retrieved 2 March 2025.