Happiness and ataraxia
Ecstasy and philosophy
Happiness does not consist in the possession of herds and gold. It is in the soul which is the seat of bliss. Democritus
Here are some excerpts from philosophical texts relating to absolute happiness, ecstasy, to ataraxia.
Jean-Jacques rousseau
But if it is a state where the soul is a strong enough base to rest and gather whole entire being there, with no need to remember the past and to span the future where time is nothing to it, where this last forever without however mark its length and without any trace of succession, no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or grief, desire or fear that one of our existence, and that sentiment alone can fill a whole, as this state lasts that therein may be called happy, not an imperfect happiness, poor and on as that found in the pleasures of life, but a sufficient happiness, perfect and full, which leaves no gap in the soul that feels the need to fill. Such is the state where i am often found on the island of Saint -Pierre in my solitary reveries, or lying in my boat I let drift with water or sitting on the shores of Lake agitated or elsewhere along a beautiful river or stream murmuring on the gravel. Rousseau V dreams
Philosophy of Plotinus
It is impossible to translate what it feels like to contact the One in ecstasy : we grasp it enough to talk about it, but our words to reach itself. "We say it is not, we do not say what it is " "If you want to talk about him with truth, we can not say that negations " " because there is nothing what is the principle. "
As well as to see the intelligible nature, you must not have any images of sensible things and contemplate what is beyond the senses, and to see what is beyond the intelligible, we must avoid any intelligible. You learn well, thanks to the intelligible, the existence of this supreme end, and to know what the idea should be rejected any intelligible ' "it takes away from the science and the objects it must abandon any contemplation, even of the beautiful " " the soul must be free to shape that it will lodge any obstacle that prevents it from being filled and lit the first " kind.
intelligence, putting a veil on other objects and collecting his privacy, no longer see anything, but then she looks at a light that is not in something else, but it appeared suddenly, only pure, existing in itself. She does not know where the light appeared. Is it external or internal ? When she stopped seeing her, she said she was inside, and yet she was not. "
" Imagine, from the love of this world, that must be met to be liked most: the things we love here are deadly and obsolete... They are not the good we are seeking. The real object of our love is there, and we can unite with him to take us and actually have. " " In this state, the soul can judge and know that this is really what she wanted, and it can be argued that there is nothing above. There, make no mistake : where to find truer than true? The joy she feels is not wrong, and she says that this joy is not due to tickle the body but return to his happiness at once. " "Outside of herself and intoxicated with nectar, it becomes loving intelligence by simplifying to achieve this happy state of fullness. And so intoxicating that it is better for sobriety. "
The evidence that we have reached the well, is that improves, we would feel no regret, that one is full of it, as we stay with him and that is not looking for anything. " "Everything that previously gave pleasure to the soul dignity, power, wealth, beauty, science, she despises him, and said. But it looks like if she had not met the best goods ? " Plotinus
Philosophy of Michel Foucault
through the years of abstinence and self-control which is the askesis necessary, the place given to self-knowledge becomes more important : the task of experience, to examine, to control a series of exercises defined up the question of the truth - the truth of what we are, of what we do and what we can do - the heart of the moral constitution of the subject. Finally, the culmination of this development is still and always defined by the sovereignty of the individual over himself, but this sovereignty extends in an experiment where the report itself takes the form not only of a domination but an enjoyment without desires and without disorder.
Michel Foucault Gallimard care for oneself
Nietzsche. Human, to much human
The Wanderer and His Shadow
A TIMe aFTERNOON. - When in someone's life, was active in the morning and stormy, when
just south of the life, the soul is taking a singular want of rest which can last for months
and years. Is silence around this man, the sound of voices fades more and
Moreover, the sun falls steeply on its head. On a meadow at the edge of the forest, he sees the sleep
Great Pan, and all things in nature have fallen asleep with him, an expression of eternity
on the face - he seems at least that is the case. He wants nothing, he did nothing of concern,
his heart stops, only his eye saw, - it's a death awake look. Man sees this
many things he has never seen and all he can see is wrapped in a
fabric light, drowned in some way. He feels happy with that, but it is a joy
heavy, very heavy. - But the wind finally came back into the trees, noon is past, and the life still attracts to it, life in the blind eyes, followed by his impetuous procession desires and deceptions, forgetfulness and the enjoyment, frustration and fragility. And so that evening comes, more stormy and more active than was even in the morning. - For the truly active men, these were extended knowledge seem almost disturbing and sickly, but not unpleasant. Nietzsche
PSEUDO DENYS the aRÉOPAGITE
Treatise on mystical theology
" As for you, my dear Timothy, practice you tirelessly mystical contemplations, abandons all sensations and even speculation of intelligence, let all the sensitive, while the intelligible whole being and non-being, so much as you are able, you will be raised by way of unknowing is to become one with the One who is beyond all essence and all knowledge.
zhuangzi
" After three days I was able to abandon the outside world. I continued. Seven days later I was able to move away from external things. I continued for nine more days and I could abandon my own existence. One morning I had a vision of unique. This vision allowed me to transcend the past and present. I was then able to enter the area where the life and death no longer exist. " zhuangzi
Jean de la Croix.
The dark night.
"It takes the mind is simple, pure stripped of all natural affections, whether current or usual, in order to communicate freely with the fullness of divine wisdom" St John of the Cross. The dark night.
Malebranche
God made me constantly feel the addiction I 'm your all-powerful will. My being is to you, and the time of my being and my time is up to you. I 'm wrong ! My being is, so to speak, God's being : my time is truly God's time, because i am God more than me, or rather I am not at all for me, I can not exist by me, and yet I live, and I do not use God's time for me. Alas, I'm wrong ! All the time i do not use the point for you, O my God, I do not use the point for me, I lose it : and I will look for me, and I find myself, when I look up, and I finds you. Malebranche
Bossuet
" So this is my year, this is my life, this is my perfection all my bliss and all, to know and to love the one who made me.
By this I understand that while nothing I myself before God, I'm done, however, in his image, because i find my perfection and happiness in the same subject as it is to say, in itself, and similar operations, that is to say by knowing and magnet ".
Treaty of the knowledge of God and self.
Aldous huxley about the saint
The saint is a man who knows that every moment of our life is a moment of crisis, for we are called at any time to make a decision of any importance - to choose the path that leads to death and spiritual darkness and the path that leads to light and life, between the interests exclusively temporal and the eternal order, between our own will or the will of any extension of our personality and the will of God.
(... ) The purpose of the [ spiritual practice ] is overwhelming to bring human beings to a state in which, because there is more between them and the Reality of God overshadow obstacles they are able to be continuously aware of the divine Basis be their own and all other beings, and, secondarily, as a means to this end, even the most insignificant, without malice, without greed, without self-assertion or voluntary ignorance, but in a consistent manner, with love and understanding. (...) The purpose of spiritual practice is to get people to lose myself in all the circumstances of their lives. (...)
The saints, some that are imposing their talents, and whatever the nature of their business activities, and are constantly worried about a single object - the spiritual reality and the means by which they and their peers can attain knowledge unitive this reality. About their actions, they are also monotonously uniform as their thoughts, because, in all circumstances, they behave in their stripping me, patiently, and with tireless charity.
(...) It is by virtue of its absorption in God, precisely because it did not identify her to be innate and acquired elements of his particular personality, the saint is able to exert its influence entirely non-coercive, and thus entirely beneficial to individuals and even whole societies. Or, more accurately, it is because it has served me the Divine Reality is able to use him as a channel of grace and power.
( Excerpt from the perennial philosophy - philosophia perennis of Aldous Huxley, translated from English by Jules Castier, 1948 Plon for the first French edition, Editions du Seuil point wisdom, 1997)
Les véritables aveugles ne sont pas ceux qui ne voient des yeux du corps ; ce sont ceux qui ne voient pas de l'œil de l'âme, mille fois plus précieux que l'œil du corps. La vraie réalité, c'est l'incorporel, l'invisible, l'impalpable
Platon
