Experiencing the Cosmos: Seneca’s Silent Prayer from a Cognitive Perspective

This article is a first attempt to disclose the experiential quality of those silent prayers which Seneca suggests are most appropriate to his readers. Previous studies highlight these silent prayers as being solely ethical and, therefore, entirely unemotional, but a close and rigorous reading of Seneca’s references to them through the lens of a cognitive approach shows these prayers are actually considered as ecstatic practices, indeed ecstatic strategies that – in combination with Seneca’s philosophical framework – facilitate an experience of the divine, even an experience of the contemplation of the divine.