Further googling reveals that it was a phrase that Freud picked up from a friend named Romain Rolland, and is an attempt to describe the subjective sensation of connection to the universe and of limitlessness that Rolland felt was at the base of religious beliefs.
Hmm! It also resonated with a somewhat incoherent column that David Brooks wrote for the NYTimes recently about neural Buddhism. Figures that Egan would have gotten there at some point.
I associate it with Freud, as someone else mentions above. The oceanic feeling of unboundedness that the fetus feels in the womn (I think that's what he's talking about.) It was in Civilization and Its Discontents, the only Freud I've actually read.
This is all Sigmund, not Lucien. ;>
I think the "oceanic feeling" was why I was such a pothead in my teens and 20s. Hah!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-20 10:58 pm (UTC)Feelin' Oceanic
Date: 2008-05-21 01:53 am (UTC)Re: Feelin' Oceanic
Date: 2008-05-21 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 05:20 pm (UTC)This is all Sigmund, not Lucien. ;>
I think the "oceanic feeling" was why I was such a pothead in my teens and 20s. Hah!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-21 05:42 pm (UTC)