"...mysticism is not a way of knowing, but a way of being...."
(Ira Progoff, "Foreword" to Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism, quoted below)
Physically considered, ecstasy is trance; more or less deep, more or less prolonged. The subject may slide into it gradually from a period of absorption in, or contemplation of, some idea which has filled the field of consciousness: or, it may come on suddenly, the appearance of the idea or even some word or symbol suggesting the idea abruptly throwing the subject into an entranced condition.
...the extreme form of a state which must be classed amongst the ordinary accidents of conscious life...
...(distinguished by) its inward grace, its after-value...
...supreme instances of the close connection between body and soul...
...an exalted form of contemplation...
"A simple difference of degree separates ecstasy from the action of forcibly fixing an idea in the mind. Contemplation implies exercise of will, and the power of interrupting the extreme tension of the mind. In ecstasy, which is contemplation carried to its highest pitch, the will, although in the strictest sense able to provoke the state, is nevertheless unable to suspend it."
(quoted from A. Maury, "Le Sommeil et les Reves")...deeper layers of personality which normal life keeps below the threshold are active in it...
...whilst on its physical side ecstasy is an entrancement, on its mental side a complete unification of consciousness, on its mystical side it is an exalted act of perception...
...(perception) by contact, not by vision...
...an exultant certainty (that one) has known for once the Reality which has no image, and solved the paradox of life...
...rapture or ecstasy includes a moment often a very short, and always an indescribable moment in which (the mystic) enjoys a supreme knowledge of or participation in Divine Reality...
(Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: The Preeminent Study of the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness)Plotinus, a "hard-headed Pagan philosopher" and "greatest of the Pagan ecstatics," according to Underhill, is certain that ecstatic union with the Absolute (God/Goddess) is a union of hearts. Quoting Plotinus: "by love He may be gotten and holden, but by thought never."
The whole Christian doctrine of ecstasy, on its metaphysical side, really descends from that great practical transcendentalist Plotinus: who is known to have been an ecstatic, and has left in his Sixth Ennead a description of the mystical trance obviously based upon his own experiences. "Then," he says, "the soul neither sees, nor distinguishes by seeing, nor imagines that there are two things; but becomes as it were another thing, ceases to be itself and belong to itself. It belongs to God and is one with Him, like two concentric circles: concurring they are One; but when they separate, they are two. ...in this conjunction with Deity...the perceiver was one with the thing perceived...." Ecstasy, says Plotinus in another part of the same treatise, is "another mode of seeing, a simplification and abandonment of oneself, a desire of contact, rest, and a striving after union." All the phases of the contemplative experience seem to be summed up in this phrase.
Ecstasy, virtual oil on canvas © 2005 Sage Starwalker
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