Oceanic feeling

[randy_byers]

Okay, so when did "oceanic feeling" become a catchphrase for spirituality?

Comments

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Hmn, I think I missed that memo. Not that an oceanic feeling can't be a spiritual feeling, of course.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

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.

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

March 23, 2008, 2:41 P.M.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Relatively recently!

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

"Oceanic Feeling" sounds like the name of about half the New Age "music" I've heard.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

"Music of the womb."

Feelin' Oceanic

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I think I hope we discover, through your efforts, when it became a "catchphrase" -- I'm pretty sure I've never ever come across it before now.

[damienw]

Well, before 1998: cf Greg Egan, "Oceanic", Asimov's. Online at http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/OCEANIC/Complete/Oceanic.html

[damienw]

interesting!

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. I've felt that. My personal epithet for that is that I've sensed the Beyond but not the Above.

Re: Feelin' Oceanic

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It seemed familiar to me, but I wasn't sure why. Perhaps I was soaking in it.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

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.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

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!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of Eileen Gunn's quip that she remembers when transcendence was five bucks a hit.