A Spiritual Dimension of a Game - Assignment Example

That is the reason they are called artists. The question is, is the feeling of ultimate bliss and ecstasy possible for a modern man who has to face competition at every turn in his life? Can a man participate in the competitions, which puts a lot of pressure on him and still experience the high? The answer is, yes. Recent history is witness to the fact that feelings of spirituality and ecstasy are not limited to people from the field of arts and science. It is also experienced through a phenomenon called a sport, in which one has to follow rules, compete with others and has time restrictions for the task.

However, when the athlete is able to go beyond the dimensions of time and space when he gets involved in the game so much that he completely forgets himself, he experiences an ecstatic feeling called as ‘zone’ and playing in the ‘zone’ is nothing less than an experience of ultimate bliss. Many psychologists have studied the experience of being in the zone. They have interviewed players who have felt it and have tried to understand what leads to the experience. In their book ‘Flow in Sports’, Jackson and Csíkszentmihályi has said that “to feel completely at one with what you are doing, to know you are strong and able to control your destiny at least for the moment, and gain a sense of pleasure independent of results is to experience flow” (Jackson and Csíkszentmihályi vi).

So what we understand is that the athlete experiences the flow or the ‘zone’ when he becomes.