the electronic music and dance scene has long flirted with the idea of spiritual
connections. Names of events such as ‘Spiritual Signals’, record companies
such as ‘Conscious Records’, and spiritual imagery like buddhas and mandalas
[abound].... And let’s face it, many of us have had deeper religious
experiences at a full moon rave or a good night at [a club] than we ever had in
church.
(Gris 2000)Coded here as a ‘deeper religious experience’ than church, and thus evocative of
mystical intensities, raves revolve around what Simon Reynolds describes as the
‘gnosis of drug-knowledge’, around ‘a truth that cannot be mediated or explained in
words’ (1999:245), a profound secret that another practitioner describes as:
Ecstasy Not a drug, a feeling. Overpowering, almost overwhelming joy Better
than life. It is life, the love of living.... A religious experience; God has come
down from the heavens to give YOU a hug. Heaven is here, now and forever.
The awakening of the Gaian mind. Ethereal energy joining each of the
beautiful party people, forming a greater collective consciousness.
(Parsons 1996)Explicitly referencing ‘God’ and ‘religious experience’, this account is exemplary in
that it also ties together New Age threads (of the ‘Gaian mind’) with themes of
collectivity and interconnectedness to produce novel religious forms. Indeed, as is
made evident by such terms as ‘vibes’, ‘group minds’ and ‘ethereal energies’, ravers
freely appropriate religious concepts in their attempt to fashion personal spiritualities
that adequately address their peak experiences.
Intrigued and wholeheartedly respectful of these emergent religious forms, I am
nevertheless in agreement with Marghanita Laski, who argues ‘that the attachment
of religious “overbeliefs” to experiences of aesthetic or ecstatic intensity is gratuitous
rather than essential’ (Tramacchi 2001:175). While not necessarily agreeing with
her perspective that ecstasy results from an eruption of the sacred into the profane, I
do concur with Laski that ecstasy, as an overwhelming ineffability, does not require
conceptualization for its existence—that it just is.
Significantly, though, I also disagree with Laski’s noble sentiment that ‘ecstasy is
more important than ideology’ (ibid.:175). Viewing ecstatic overbeliefs as nothing
more than culturally situated narratives traded within a social economy I cannot
help but recognize their political positioning and potency. For whether
assimilationist or countercultural, ecstatic overbeliefs have very real social and
cultural repercussions, including, most frequently, demonization and illegalization.
Moreover, with its ‘truth’ predominately constituted by medical and political
agendas, ecstasy is often reduced—both in mainstream and underground
formulations—to the neurological activity of MDMA and its chemical analogues, a
reduction that continues to discount those individuals who have attained ecstasy
without chemical intervention.^4
106 JAMES LANDAU