Oceanic feeling
Antiquity Medieval Early modern Modern Iran India East-Asia In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland, discussing Freud's new book Future of an Illusion (1927), coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of 'eternity'", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics.
[5][6] Rolland responded with a letter to Freud, writing that he should also consider spiritual experiences, or "the oceanic feeling", in his future psychological works:[7][8][9] Mais j'aurais aimé à vous voir faire l'analyse du sentiment religieux spontané ou, plus exactement, de la sensation religieuse qui est [...] le fait simple et direct de la sensation de l'éternel (qui peut très bien n'être pas éternel, mais simplement sans bornes perceptibles, et comme océanique).
[16] In July 1929, Freud asked for permission to publish in his next book an answer to Rolland's previous request about oceanic feelings.
In the beginning his new book Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) Freud attributed the concept to an anonymous friend, but in a later edition a footnote was added revealing Rolland's name.
[4][20] The relevance of Romain's stance on the oceanic feeling has been recognized by scholars, who argue for a more encompassing understanding of religion and spirituality, offering a transformational model of psychology which validates the claims of mystics.
Andrew B. Newberg, Eugene G. d'Aquili, and Vince Rause found that "intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality.
[29] More recently black studies scholar and poet Jackie Wang wrote about the notion of oceanic feeling in the article "Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect," outlining its historic development through the work of Rolland and his relation to Spinoza, Freud, Kristeva, finally relating it to blackness and the trauma of the Middle Passage as discussed by Fred Moten.
