extase matérielle

Yves-Alain Favre writes in the French literary review SUD (No. 85/86): “The first impression that comes from the reading of Le Clézio is not one of incitement to rejoice, because man is in a state of permanent conflict with the world and often a victim of its multiple aggressions. Salvation exists, however. We must reach the state of 'material ecstasy', which consists in abolishing the borderlines between the self and the universe. From this experience issue forth a new language and a host of new forms. Writing becomes a mystic operation where the human being merges with the whole.”

J M G Le Clézio, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, maintains the view that every serious writer is only attempting to solve the riddle of man and nature through his or her own literary capabilities. The elements of nature are aggressive and threaten to destroy human happiness but man can mollify nature by attempting to fusion with it, by getting into a state Le Clézio calls ‘extase matérielle’ or material ecstasy. It is true that nature has an inherent characteristic of posing obstacles for mankind, which are nevertheless within the realm of human solution. This cannot be termed as a cruelty or hardheartedness but a necessary requisite for evolution. By working to overcome these obstacles, we ensure our own path to perfection; that is, if we are sure of what perfection is.

Literature has been a very important tool for this evolutionary process, and this is visible in the great works that are available to us over the history of mankind. They are an attempt at trying to understand the workings of nature, and how the human being reacts to these situations and events, sometimes converting the obstacles into benefits and most other times tragically, when nature is at her worst behavior. Take Milton, Blake, Wordsworth and Shakespeare to quote a few names, clearly resonate in their works the ideology of man fighting an evolutionary battle against nature’s tyrannies. Sri Aurobindo in his philosophical works paints a magnificent shape of things, and also provides us with such remarkable solutions that reflect the theory of Le Clézio’s ‘extase matérielle’ or material ecstasy.

So what is it then? Material ecstasy sounds quite exotic as a phrase can get, but it is one of the simplest concepts to be understood. Over the ages our scriptures have grounded in us a very rigid idea of materialism, that the world we see and experience around us is an extension of our mental imagery and this is to be renounced, for only then can the domain of spirituality can be entered. Sri Aurobindo’s purna yoga or path of integrality refutes this as hogwash, because what we see, sense and experience all around is very much another dimension to the Divinity that exists within us, that which we are. Nature is one of the twin aspects of the Ultimate Truth, the other being Absolute Consciousness or Brahman. Putting it in lower scientific terms, Nature is the kinetic aspect of the Divine Energy and Consciousness the potential aspect. Being the two sides of the same coin, each is inherently important to creation and existence as a whole. The oriental scriptures call it the Yin and the Yang, and the vedic puranas call it the Purusha and Prakriti aspects of Brahman. So one cannot be excluded or ignored for the benefit of the other, but respected and worshipped as divine aspects of the integral whole. Every being and form that we see in our world is a combination of these static and dynamic aspects, and as human beings our responsibility it is, to know and understand this integrality and rise above the limitations posed by our lower nature, of ignorance and instability, of resistance to the opening of consciousness and freedom from thought, thereby entering into a higher reality of bliss, absolute bliss.

This discovery of bliss by accepting and entry into the totality of matter is the gist of ‘extase matérielle.’ The great writers of yore experienced this symphony of the highest bliss in their immediate surroundings, their body and their mind, and hence could lucidly bring forth this transcendental beauty into the form of words. Various forms of art, music and other expressions of humanity are more or less the objectifying of this profound truth into something that we, our lower nature can understand and comprehend. Because the truth of our existence, the divinity and the Ultimate Reality cannot be expressed as such in our mental frame. But these tools of literature, of art and music et al give us methodologies of higher meaning and significance as compared to those of the lower human mental structure.

The knowledge that our state of consciousness can be opened up to higher degrees, is the first step of evolution from where we currently stand. Our scriptures are evidential proof of our forefathers opening their beings to higher states, and thereby becoming the first of our historical literary giants. Along the evolutionary path then came so many other martyrs like Socrates and Plato, Coleridge and Keats, Michelangelo and Picasso and their like who could experience the spirit within and could express their divine experience through their respective tools. And I call them martyrs because they died for a just cause; they were fighters for the freedom of thought, nay, freedom from thought. For the awareness of consciousness starts when the stream of thought ceases to be. These great masters of creativity stopped their quantified thought from interfering with the flow of consciousness into matter, the fusion of the creative energy and potentiality into an integral whole which was their great works that we now enjoy. They were able to bring forth the material ecstasy.

Each and every one of us is born with such a tool of expression, be it creative or in the form of effective leadership. And what we generally do is to ignore these tools and keep them dormant, sometimes for an infinitely long period of time, spanning several lives until one day the importance of these tools dawn on us. If at all you are aware of such a tool lying within you, but you are afraid to invoke its capability for some reason or the other, then do not fear. For there is nothing in this world that can stop you from expressing. If that were the case, then we would never have had a ‘Paradise Lost’ from Milton, or a ‘Mona Lisa’ from da Vinci or ‘A Life Divine’ from Sri Aurobindo.

Go ahead, seek the ‘extase matérielle’ within and live the life divine!