I feel lucky, I feel lucky enough to have tasted it even.
Because, Tim, like, there are moments, I mean, the world stops.
TIM: Is it the most intense experience you’ve ever had in your life?
MC: Oh my gosh. I can’t believe I’m going to say this. Yes. I knew
right away but I had to think about it just to make sure,
because I kind of didn’t believe it.
Survey respondents also described raving as a deeply spiritual and emotional
experience:
[Raving] makes me feel like being in tune with the eternal cosmic pulsation.
For me it is a kind of spiritual experience to be in a rave.
(survey respondent, male, 20–24 years old; quoted in
Takahashi and Olaveson 2003)Communal and collectiveOne of the central characteristics of collective effervescence/communitas is its
communal and collective nature,^8 paralleling the ‘unity’ and ‘love’ experienced at
countless rave and post-rave dance events, even without the aid of ‘empathogenic’
drugs like ecstasy. Former New York rave promoter Dennis the Menace discusses
such an intense communal and spiritual experience at a Storm Rave in 1993:
At the end of the party, we were winding down, the sun was out, everyone
was feeling pure and alive, in that communal unity feeling. Then someone in
the middle of the floor started holding hands and putting their hands up in a
circle. Kids were jumping from the back to put their hands up to touch the
centerpoint where all the hands interlocked. People had tears in their eyes.
We were just looking at each other, so happy, so open to everything.... Group
energy, where one person triggers the next person who triggers the next
person.... You could just feel it vibrating between everyone. You can’t put
that in a pill. There’s kids I know that were totally straight, who never did
drugs, and who were there dancing as hard as anyone ‘cos they could feed off
that energy
(Dennis the Menace, in Reynolds 1999:149)^9Based upon his own experiences at Australian psy-trance ‘doofs’, Tramacchi also
emphasizes the communal nature of the connectedness experience:
This collective consciousness is especially pronounced at parties where
MDMA is a conspicuous element. During the plateau of MDMA effects,
interpersonal differences appear to evaporate producing a condition of almost
total identification of self with other. Within the psychedelic dance rapture,
participants may lose or suspend subjective experience of themselves and90 TIM OLAVESON