The concept of joy in descriptions of mystical experience

Abstract

The paper presents a semantic analysis of mystical descriptions of the concept of radość (joy). First of all, the notion of mystical experience is defined and its main characteristics are presented. The first point touches upon the way in which the concept is used in mystical discourse. Notably, the evaluative potential of radość (joy) is both positive and negative; “worldly” emotions are perceived as a hindrance in a person’s contact with God and as such are treated with suspicion. Yet they are transformed by the process of sanctification into mystical blessings. The paper focuses on the experiencing party’s positive sensations in his/her body when they ”touch” the Absolute and on the mystic’s inner perception of his/her own emotions and conceptualization thereof in language. For obvious reasons, an external observer cannot see the divine reality the way a mystic does. However, by watching the person’s behavior one can see the bodily manifestations of joy, an inseparable part of a mystical experience, expressed by sensory language. Linguistic data provide evidence in favour of a theory that humans do not have any other language to share religious experience but the one that treats the body as a communicating medium. Interestingly, a mystic’s joy is dynamic and it does not exclude negative feelings, such as pain and suffering. The underlying assumption is that joy is a universal phenomenon and that in the Judeo-Christian civilization, most of the linguistic ways of expressing it rely on the same mechanisms and concepts.