OCEANIC FEELING

Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866 – December 30, 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian, and mystic.  He was strongly influenced by the Vedanta philosophy, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda. 
  
In 1923 Rolland began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud, which continued until Freud’s death in 1939.  This correspondence introduced Freud to the concept of the “oceanic feeling,” that Rolland had developed through his study of, again, Eastern mysticism. 
 
Vivekananda liked to use the ocean as a metaphor to describe a person’s relationship to Brahman, God.  He said “There is, as it were, an infinite ocean behind, and you and I are like so many waves coming out of that infinite outside.  Each one of us has that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss as our birthright, or real nature.”

Freud opened his 1929 book, Civilization and its Discontents, with an overview of Rolland’s “oceanic feeling,” stating, “It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of 'eternity,' a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded--as it were, 'oceanic.' This feeling, he adds, is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems. . .One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion.”

Freud goes on to provide a psychoanalytic interpretation of the phenomenon, confessing however that he himself has never experienced it.