Divine Play, Sacred Laughter, and Spiritual Understanding (PDF)

PATRICK LAUDE is Professor of French at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of several books including The Way of Poetry: Essays on Poetics and Contemplative Transformation, as well as numerous articles dealing with the relationship between mysticism, symbolism and literature, and important spiritual figures such as Jeanne Guyon, Simone Weil, Louis Massignon and Frithjof Schuon.

"Laude's great gift is to uncloak the sacred arena in which our laughter rises to heaven and beyond, for there are we returned to the most human, the free, exalted expression of our divine nature." - David Appelbaum, former editor, Parabola Magazine "How can laughter truly heal? Why are we longing to laugh? Patrick Laude's insightful study demonstrates that laughter can take place where the Absolute and Relative meet - at a perceived incongruity. The divine dimension of human laughter may be a spiritual door predicated on the ability for self-transcendance and is condusive to a detachment. In his upcoming work A Return to the Spirit, the august Martin Lings, as well, answers the question "What is the spiritual dimension of tears and laughter?" He explains: 'In both these spontaneous overflowings of the body the material realm is transcended. But at their highest level, which is indicated by the word "spiritual," the psychic plane is also largely surpassed. The Body is necessarily endowed with various means of escape from itself. Some of these are merely at its own level, not to speak of that which, by the very fact of its separation, necessarily sinks from being a living substance to a dead substance. But at the same time the escape in itself, as such, can in varying degrees afford access to a higher plane of existence.' How important for us to understand the deeper alchemical functions of these common emotions and thereby hopefully make transformative use from such gained awareness." - V. Gray Henry-Blakemore, Director Fons Vitae Press for World Spirituality