Exploring the Depths of Subject and Ecstasy: Navigating Harmonious Coexistence (part 2)

By Athanssios Karmis, writer-philosopher

2. Philosophical Answers

a. Platonism and Neoplatonism

If we turn to philosophical analyses on the issue of describing the relationship between the concepts of "Ecstasy" and "Subject," we will see that various answers and proposals complicate things even further. They provoke a labyrinth of ideological positions and confrontations. Ultimately, how do these two terms, "Subject" and "Ecstasy," connect? From what has been previously mentioned, it seems as if they are opposites, as if one cancels the other. If we experience ecstasy, our self is lost! If we remain focused on our self and consciousness, we lose contact with a grand transcendental dimension!

Is it so, or is there another positive and not contradictory connection between these two terms? Before proceeding with this issue, let's see why various philosophers cannot find a harmonious connection between these terms.

For example, Platonism emphasizes that the real is not the material or sensory, but the intellectual, as the things in this world are images of another world, which is the true and real world. Therefore, for Platonists, real knowledge is intuition, which is a kind of mysticism related to an opening toward the intellectual and transcendental realm. This realm, according to Plato, is the "World of Ideas." Each Platonic "Idea" is a true entity ("ontos on"), while sensory and material beings ("non-ontos onta") are copies and images of the Ideas. Thus, Platonic theory reaches the point of considering that the subject experiencing ecstasy becomes increasingly connected with another intellectual and divine reality (the well-known "Socratic daimon") that dwells within them (Plato’s Phaedrus and Republic). This "daimon" reminds the person that they come from a spiritual world and that the sensory and material reality is something like a limitation of the soul (the famous Platonic "myth of the cave"). It is like a prison of the soul from which the person will escape through philosophy, which will awaken them and unite them with the aforementioned true spiritual world. However, this union transcends their individuality, and thus their subjective reality (the "Subject"). It is, therefore, a mystical, ecstatic journey that diminishes the individuality of the Subject.

This form of the so-called "Idealistic Realism," where the real is shifted to another realm, also occupied Neoplatonism. Here, it seems that the unifying subjective factor is the human soul. The soul connects them to a transcendental and divine reality. This higher reality is a personified "Divine Soul," which unites all the spiritual and psychic forces of humanity on a universal level. It even has a name reminiscent of the term "subject," but adapted to a higher spiritual and divine dimension: It is a divine "Hypostasis," called "Soul-Hypostasis," and takes the form of a unified and unifying universal reality (*Plotinus, Enneads* 6, 9). The opening of the human soul toward this transcendental space of the "Soul-Hypostasis" is accompanied by the abandonment of the Subject’s individuality and Ego. It is described as a mystical and at the same time ecstatic relationship, aiming to liberate the "spiritual" part of the person and connect it with the divine reality. This upward journey toward the "spirit," that is, toward divinity, is described as a form of "absorption," with the meaning of an ontological return to the spiritual realm. The question here is, what happens to the rest of the person, to the material part? It seems that what we call the "psychosomatic" nature of humans not only splits apart but that the human spirit, once detached from the individuality it had in the sensory world, connects with the transcendental realm as a drop connects with the ocean. It merges with the cosmic "Soul-Hypostasis," which in turn opens up to a higher Hypostasis, the "Nous" (Mind), to eventually reach the absolute and beyond all essence and description divine reality, which for Neoplatonists is the "One" or "Monad," something analogous to the "Good" in Plato's dialogues Sophist and Timaeus.

Thus, when a Platonic or Neoplatonic philosopher refers to "Ecstasy," they describe it as the beginning of the above process of abandoning the "Self" and the "Subject.".