Ecstatic Epilepsy Quotes

Prince Myshkin in The Idiot:
'He was thinking, incidentally, that there was a moment or two in his epileptic condition almost before the fit itself (if it occurred in waking hours) when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments ... His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light. All his agitation, doubts and worries, seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of understanding ... but these moments, these glimmerings were still but a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) with which the seizure itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You all, healthy people, can't imagine the happiness which we
epileptics feel during the second before our fit ... I don't know if this
felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me, I would not
exchange it for all the joys that life may bring. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that? ~ Martin Amis

Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen - the expression of an ecstatic state - though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is ~ William H. Gass

Among the many ecstatic notices, Robert Christgau, the self-appointed 'dean of American rock critics', put it best, in a review that would still be being quoted when he left the Village Voice twenty-six years later: 'Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home. ~ Matt Thorne

The humiliations and defeats,
given with a primitive honesty,
end not in frustration, despair or futility,
but in hunger, an ecstatic devouring hunger - for more life.
- Anais Nin ~ Anais Nin

Real-life may not always be a symphony of buoyant instants or ecstatic exploits. Downbeat emotional externalities can emerge unpredictably throughout our life journey. If we wish to turn life into an undying dance prom, let's keep one foot in reality for sure. ("Blind date") ~ Erik Pevernagie

If you look at yourself right now, sometimes the outside situations decide what kind of person you are, isn't it? Right now, if someone in front of you acts nasty, you will act nastier than him. Not necessarily, just an example, okay? (Laughter). Somebody gets angry with you, you get angry with him. Sometimes your chemistry takes over, sometimes your hormones take over, something else takes over, so many forces are ruling you in a compulsive way. These moments you are not really a human being. You are many things in human form.

There are certain moments when you are very conscious, when you are fully aware of what you are doing, only in those moments do you truly function as a human being. If you were fully aware and conscious of what you are doing with this moment, the way you function in this world and within yourself would be very different, isn't it? If you were very consciously creating every process of life in you, you would definitely make yourself into a very blissful and ecstatic being. Whenever you are in a state where you are very happy and joyful, you are a wonderful person for everybody around you. ~ Sadhguru

Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty? ~ Arthur Rimbaud

What we often feel in ecstatic moments in this world - 'I don't ever want this to stop' - will be the constant thought of our hearts in that world. We shall think it, knowing that in fact it never WILL stop. ~ J.I. Packer

Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other. ~ Tony Campolo

My first child, I think I was completely shell shocked. I was ecstatic but in shock that I was now responsible completely for another life and it was my co-creation and how did I manage that?! I was in awe that I had actually done what millions of other women had done, given birth and now an added responsibility of 'mommy' in my life ahead! ~ Kylie Bax

But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic. ~ Tony Kushner

Sometimes, the only cost to experience an ecstatic moment is a decision ~ Jacinta Mpalyenkana

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that. ~ Tom Robbins

I'm not disabled, I'm Differently Able! ~ Montel Williams

Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do. ~ Douglas Adams

It's about time you admitted that you are a miraculous work of art. You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises. ~ Rob Brezsny

It feels good when the one you owe walks with you. It feels ecstatic when the one you don't owe walks. ~ Shweta Suvarna

First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future - death or a new life - all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Up rose the ghosts of parties, of themselves when they were younger, too dumb to understand they were ecstatic. ~ Lauren Groff

The body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable. ~ John Muir

A woman's sentimental monkeyshines will always deceive her lover, who invariably waxes ecstatic where her husband necessarily shrugs his shoulders. ~ Honore De Balzac

How is true possession to be distinguished from fraud or the symptoms of disease? The Church prescribes four tests - the language test, the test of preternatural physical strength, the test of levitation and the test of clairvoyance and prevision. If a person can on occasion understand, or better still, speak a language, of which, in his normal state, he is completely ignorant; if he can manifest the physical miracle of levitation or perform unaccountable feats of strength, and if he can correctly predict the future or describe events taking place at a distance - then that person may be presumed to be possessed by devils. (Alternatively, he may be presumed to be the recipient of extraordinary graces; for in many instances divine and infernal miracles are, most unhappily, identical. The levitation of saintly ecstatic is distinguishable from the levitation of ecstatics demoniacs only in virtue of the moral antecedents and consequences of the event. These moral antecedents and consequences are often hard to assess, and it has sometimes happened that even the holiest persons have been suspected of producing their ESP phenomena and their PK effects by diabolic means.) ~ Aldous Huxley

In that weekly ecstatic keeping of faith and bearing of witness, Delia fell in love with singing. Singing was something that might make sense of a person. Singing might make more sense of life than living had to start with. ~ Richard Powers

I always dreamed about scoring at St. James' Park. I fancied my chances and the ball flew into the net. I was ecstatic. ~ Alan Shearer

When, shortly afterward, I stopped at the top of the hill and saw the town beneath me, my feeling of happiness was so ecstatic that I didn't know how I would be able to make it home, sit there and write, eat, or sleep. But the world is constructed in such a way that it meets you halfway in moments precisely like these, your inner joy seeks an outer counterpart and finds it, it always does, even in the bleakest regions of the world, for nothing is as relative as beauty. Had the world been different, in my opinion, without mountains and oceans, plains and seas, deserts and forests, and consisted of something else, inconceivable to us, as we don't know anything other than this, we would also have found it beautiful. A world with gloes and raies, evanbillits and conulames, for example, or ibitera, proluffs, and lopsits, whatever they might be, we would have sung their praises because that is the way we are, we extol the world and love it although it's not necessary, the world is the world, it's all we have. So as I walked down the steps toward the town center on this Wednesday at the end of August I had a place in my heart for everything I beheld. A slab of stone worn smooth in a flight of steps: fantastic. A swaybacked roof side by side with an austere perpendicular brick building: so beautiful. A limp hot-dog wrapper on a drain grille, which the wind lifts a couple of meters and then drops again, this time on the pavement flecked with white stepped-on chewing gum: incredible. A ~ Knausgaard, Karl Ove

Life and work are not things apart. Work is more than gaining privileges and possessions; it is ongoing, ecstatic, LIVING experience. When we tap into living experience, we no longer feel as though we must be king. We can just be ALIVE at work! When we live in the bliss, there is no difficulty which is insurmountable. If we miss the bliss, there is no compensation which is adequate. ~ Laurence Boldt

Mental life consists, according to the textbooks, of thought and feeling, according to the poets, of addressing an inner voice (or voices), and according to the dramatists, of internal monologues. In my experience however it consists mainly of intermittent silences, and humming. Humming accompanies habitual and semi-automatic activities, as well as stoppages. Humming accompanies a sort of incomplete concentration on oneself. Humming is characteristic of psychological states in which we are not exactly miserable, and states in which we are not exactly ecstatic. Which amounts I think to more or less always. ~ Miroslav Holub

When you are in a condition of light everything is ecstatic, everything is joyous, everything is beautiful. Your attention field is subtle. The ego is quiet. The mind is still. Your heart is happy. ~ Frederick Lenz

But why did she come back and take her card away?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "I told Florence that Miss Mapp had heard something dreadful about her. And how did she know that Lady Deal was coming here at all? The house was taken in my name."

"That's just what we all long to find out," said Diva eagerly. "She said that somebody in London told her."

"But who?" asked Miss Mackintosh. "Florence only settled to come at lunch time that day, and she told her butler to ring up Susie and say she would be arriving."

Diva's eyes grew round and bright with inductive reasoning.

"I believe we're on the right tack," she said. "Could she have received Lady Deal's butler's message, do you think? What's your number?"

"Tilling 76," said Miss Mackintosh.

Evie gave three ecstatic little squeaks.

"Oh, that's it, that's it!" she said. "Elizabeth Mapp is Tilling 67. So careless of them, but all quite plain. And she did hear it from somebody in London. Quite true, and so dreadfully false and misleading, and so like her. Isn't it, Diva? Well, it does serve her right to be found out."

Miss Mackintosh was evidently a true Tillingite.

"How marvellous!" she said. ~ E.F. Benson

I think I was just so ecstatic that I was working, and then as it went on, you know, I started to really appreciate that it was good [show "Freaks and Geeks" ] and that we were doing something a little different and that, you know, everyone was really cool to work with and that it was really talented group of people, and it was just when I was realizing that, that it got canceled. ~ Seth Rogen

Energy-fire experiences take us into ourselves only that we might reach outside of ourselves. Metanoia is a de-centering experience of connected-ness and community. It is not an exercise in reciting what Jesus has done for me lately. Energy-fire ecstasy, more a buzz than a binge, takes us out of ourselves, literally. That is the meaning of the word 'ecstatic.' ~ Leonard Sweet

There has been no progress in 60,000 years in reducing the psychedelic experience to a known quantity. It is as terrifying, as awesome, as ecstatic, as irreducible to us as it was to them. ~ Terence McKenna

By practicing Buddhist Yoga, you can become happy, ecstatic and free in your current incarnation, even if you have never been that way before in any of your past lives. ~ Frederick Lenz

I have never described the time I was in Doctor Who as anything except a kind of ecstatic success, but all the rest has been rather a muddle and a disappointment. Compared to Doctor Who, it has been an outrageous failure really - it's so boring. ~ Tom Baker

​"Sure there's a hell..." I could hear him saying it now, now, as I lay here on bed with her breath in my face, and her body squashed against me... "It is the drab desert where the sun sheds neither warmth nor light and Habit force-feeds senile Desire. It is the place here mortal Want dwells with immortal Necessity, and the night becomes hideous with the groans of one and the ecstatic shrieks of the other. Yes, there is a hell, my boy, and you do not have to dig for it. ~ Jim Thompson

The Unavailable Available Pattern." It's where you convince yourself (and others) that you are available for relationship, but you always find a way to stop short. That stopping short can manifest in many ways: choosing unavailable people, looking for excuses to run, focusing on a lover's imperfections rather than their appealing qualities, getting lost in the excitement of ecstatic possibility until the first glimpse of real vulnerability sends you packing. It's the addiction to possibility and the fear of intimacy all rolled into one. ~ Jeff Brown

Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had Marius been more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic. ~ Victor Hugo

Rhythmic motion has become the carrier and creator of almost every ecstatic mood of any significance in human life. ~ Curt Sachs

This point must be heard: the Gospels are first-century narrations based on first-century interpretations. Therefore they are a first-century filtering of the experience of Jesus. They have never been other than that. We must read them today not to discover the literal truth about Jesus, but rather to be led into the Jesus experience they were seeking to convey. That experience always lies behind the distortions, which are inevitable since words are limited. If the Gospels are to be for us revelations of truth, we must enter these texts, go beneath the words, discover the experience that made the words necessary, and in this manner seek the meaning to which the words point. One must never identify the text with the revelation or the messenger with the message. That has been the major error in our two thousand years of Christian history. It is an insight that today is still feared and resisted. But let it be clearly stated, the Gospels are not in any literal sense holy, they are not accurate, and they are not to be confused with reality. They are rather beautiful portraits painted by first-century Jewish artists, designed to point the reader toward that which is in fact holy, accurate, and real. The Gospels represent that stage in the development of the faith story in which ecstatic exclamation begins to be placed into narrative form. ~ John Shelby Spong

The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with mankind, but "the true saint" goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment. ~ Abu-Sa'id Abul-Khayr

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs. ~ Edward Hirsch

So you're suggesting we take the train up to York, meet a ninety-year-old man, leap on him, and yank out his hair? I'm sure the Clave will be
ecstatic."
"They'll just say you're mad," said Jessamine. "They already think it, so what's the difference, really? ~ Cassandra Clare

God helps me for sure every day and at every contest. I broke my hand and had to get surgery on it. The recovery was really frustrating because I had to skip three weeks at the beginning of the season. But I flipped it around and took it as a blessing. I said a lot of prayers and just asked God to do His thing. I did other things to compliment the recovery like getting the right sleep and taking care of my body. But I went back to the doctor after four weeks and he was ecstatic about the recovery of my hand. I take that as a tribute to my faith and my belief in doing the right things. ~ Nick Goepper

There's a part of the human brain, the temporal lobe, that is associated with religious experiences as well as with epilepsy. ~ Ken MacLeod

I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master ... The quality that had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. ~ C.S. Lewis

The process of falling apart (the Coyolxauhqui process), of being wounded, is a sort of shamanic initiatory dismemberment that gives suffering a spiritual and soulful value. The shaman's initiatory ordeal includes some type of death or dismemberment during the ecstatic trance journey. Torn apart into basic elements and then reconstructed, the shaman acquires the power of healing and returns to help the community. To be healed we must be dismembered, pulled apart. The healing occurs in disintegration, in the demotion of the ego as the self's only authority.20 By connecting with our wounding, the imaginal journey makes it worthwhile. Healing images bring back the pieces, heal las rajaduras. As Hillman notes, healing is a deep change of attitude that involves an adjustment and abandonment of "ego-heroics." It requires that we shift our perspective. La ~ Gloria E Anzaldua

The life of hero is the tale of a person overcoming personal hardship and obstacles while striving to achieve an exultant victory that voices repressed citizens' ecstatic thoughts and dreams. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Stage fright, like epilepsy, is a divine ailment, a sacred madness ... It is a grace that is sufficient in the old Jesuit sense - that is, insufficient by itself but a necessary condition for success. ~ Charles Rosen