ESTASI. — The psychological state of man “outside himself” (ἐνατσάς, from ἐξίστημι). The term may be applied both in a good and in a bad sense to the state of mind of any person placed “outside himself”; there is ecstasy, in some sense, as soon as attention, or the faculty of being mentally present to the real data of common experience, is radically suspended by a predominant diversion. This diversion may be spiritual or sensory in nature; escape from the normal psychic environment may be an elevation, a descent, or a wandering, while the subject’s psychic infirmity may contribute to such an eclipse as much as, or more than, the inner vivacity of the representation. Heterogeneous phenomena such as the philosopher’s contemplation, the maniac’s delirium, and the torpor produced by terror may be called “ecstasy,” depending on the standpoint of the person classifying them. St. Augustine himself notes the analogy between ecstasy and stupefaction. To call a phenomenon “ecstasy” means to indicate it by a concomitance of vital exhaustion.
Ecstasy in the traditional sense of the term, that is, mystical ecstasy, is a particular phenomenon of the spiritual life, proper to the period called “spiritual betrothal,” namely, initiation into perfect divine union or “spiritual marriage.”
The phenomenon consists essentially in an intermittent experiential understanding of the divine mystery of Revelation; the reality of a notion of faith opens up in its own divine light; the revealed datum loses something of its normally impenetrable obscurity—that obscurity which is left untouched even by the deepest theological rational understanding of the mysteries.
The soul, St. Teresa explains, finds itself awake before the divine Majesty, and the truth of which it receives a partial apprehension is impressed upon it in an indelible manner; so much so that if the corresponding article of faith were to disappear, the soul would continue to be sufficiently certain of the corresponding truth in itself.
This celestial perception is not directly concerned with the very essence of God, except perhaps in wholly exceptional cases, such as those of Moses and St. Paul. In ecstasy God reveals only certain “rays” of his greatness and divinity; but these rays, St. John of the Cross adds, are “so sublime, communicated with such force that they make the soul escape through rapture and ecstasy.” St. Augustine had already observed how the momentary enjoyment of the “radiant” divine operation, by which God communicates to the soul an understanding of his inalienable properties and excellences, produces the effect of an encounter with what the psalms call the divine “eyes” (Sermo 52, n. 16). In short, St. Teresa says, God allows the soul to see a small part of the kingdom it has conquered, which is none other than God himself. In such moments man’s timid nature becomes familiar with God, in preparation for consummate intimacy.
But celestial intellectual communication ordinarily entails, by way of reaction, a biological dislocation in the individual, because the direct intelligible perception, or “vision,” of the divine light is normally incompatible with the continuation of earthly life: it is therefore impossible in an unglorified body. “A man cannot see my face and live,” says the Lord (Ex. 33, 20).
The ecstatic’s celestial experience is but a shadow, less than a particle, of the beatific vision; nevertheless, it entails a temporary relaxation of the psychic, indeed biological, functions proportionate to the fascinating splendor of the communication, a radical escape of human attention, dazzled by the brilliance of the divine.
The soul in ecstasy, although more awake than ever “to the things of God,” is properly “almost dead” (St. Teresa); and when the ecstasy is vehement, it has the distinct impression of “wanting to flee from the flesh” (St. John of the Cross), of being violently swept away like “straw before amber,” like “a little boat upon raging waves,” like “a charge from an arquebus” (St. Teresa).
The circulation of the blood and respiration become imperceptible; the body grows cold and becomes completely insensitive. At times it acquires a set of glorious properties—lightness, luminosity, and so forth. Moreover, this disintegration of the being, although naturally frightening, is also supernaturally delightful and consonant with the desire of love. The result of ecstasy may be physiologically painful; but its spiritual effect is a detachment incomparably more radical from earthly satisfactions, disposing the soul to receive supreme union.
Although the divine notion proper to spiritual marriage—the direct perception of God’s very Substance—is intrinsically superior to ecstatic perception with regard to its object, it does not in itself entail the suspension of the faculties, because it is not speculative and intellectual in nature, but substantial and affective, as St. John of the Cross explains: an emotional contact rather than a distinct vision. It is therefore capable of being maintained amid external activity.
In short, mystical ecstasy may be defined as a transitory suspension of earthly experience under the actual effect of a positive intellectual perception, deiform and manifested with celestial clarity (cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 2°-2°, q. 175).
Ecstasies are of various degrees, from the simple ascent (excessus mentis), such as the almost natural dazzlement of the celebrated “ecstasy of Gatia” (Confessions, book IX, chap. 10), without notable bodily swoon, to the purely passive and impetuous ecstasies of rapture properly so called, and of the flight of the spirit or actual spiritual transfer, whose classical example is that of St. Paul (II Cor. 12, 2-4; cf. St. Augustine, Epist., 147, n. 51).
A distinction should be made between mystical ecstasy properly so called, the normal phase of contemplative development, and an occasional ecstasy, which is not due to a formally celestial notion but to a deeper recollection, by which God temporarily withdraws the soul from external experience in order to concentrate it upon a communication expressed in imaginative terms: “mentis alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis divino Spiritu assumens, capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet” (St. Augustine, De div. quaest. ad Simpl., book II, q. 1, n. 1). Sacred Scripture and hagiography provide numerous examples of this abstraction or occasional ecstasy (Act. 10, 9-17; 22, 17-21, etc.; cf. St. Augustine, De genesi ad litt., XII, n. 53 agg.).
It is evident that, in addition to authentic raptures, there is also a flourishing of apparent, illusory, feigned, and fraudulent ecstasies. The masters of mysticism are not so naïve as to ignore the states of mental disintegration arising from the subject’s infirmity, from the natural exuberance of the imagination, or from melancholy; and psychiatry would do well to learn from them to discern more subtly what is real from what is fictitious in the mental domain. The difficulties encountered in attempting to make this distinction do not justify the simplistic position of positivism (cf. P. Janet, De l'angoisse à l'extase, Paris 1926-28).
Finally, a word about affective ecstasy, the universal property of love, admirably described by St. Francis de Sales in the Traité de l'amour de Dieu, and explained by St. Thomas in the third book of his commentary on the Sentences (dist. 27) through the concept of “affective transformation.” Everything comes down to the fundamental observation that the soul lives more in what it loves than in what animates it, tending to leave the latter for the former; thus, what we love replaces ourselves within us as the intimate and ultimate principle of all inclinations.
BIBLI: S. Teresa, Vita. Costello interiore; S. Giovanni della Croce, Il cantico spirituale; G. B. Scaramelli, Direttorio mistico, II, Torino 1857, trattato III, cap. 29; A. Farges, Les phénomènes mystiques distingués et leurs contrefaçons humaines et diaboliques, Parigi 1920, pp. 436-522; A. Poulain, Des grâces d'oration, 10e ed., Parigi 1925, pp. 253-283; Giuseppe dello Spirito Santo, Cursus theol. mystico-scholasticae, III, Bruges-Roma 1928,
p. 256 ssp.; F. R. Garrigou-Laurange, Perfezione cristiana e contemplazione, vers. it., Torino 1933, pp. 170-200; J. Maréchal, Etudes sur la psychologie des mystiques, II, Paris 1937, pp. 258-271; J. de Guilbert, Theol. spiritualis aestica et mystica, 3e ed., Roma 1946, pp. 438-41. Michele Ledrus
ESTASY IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. - The phenomenon of e., taken in its most universal primary sense, is also found both among primitive peoples and in the more highly developed pagan religions. Generally, an essential factor in enabling the individual to attain e. is the violence exercised upon himself; “violence” consisting in those physical practices (such as, for example, the use of alcoholic beverages, flagellation, abstinence, enforced wakefulness, and the like) which destroy the individual’s physical resistance and bring him to the limit of, or beyond, consciousness. In addition to this common “physical” element, which is normally also the only one present in primitive religions, in the more advanced religions it is accompanied or, better, supplemented by a “spiritual” element consisting in the repetition of words, sacred formulas, prayers, meditation on a particular religious object, etc.
1. E. in ethnology. - E. is widespread among primitive peoples, although ethnologists generally call it, more commonly (and improperly), by the name of “trance.”
Primitive peoples have a realistic conception of e., since they regard it as a real change of state; this conception is very similar to the one they have of dreams. Indeed, what the individual sees in e. has, for the community, had and will without any doubt have a corresponding reality: if the ecstatic has seen that, during the following day’s hunt, a hunter will meet his death, there is no doubt, for the community, that this must come to pass, and it will act accordingly. Primitive peoples therefore do not use e. as an end in itself, as spiritual enjoyment or disinterested contemplation, as occurs in the higher religions, but always employ it as a means; in most cases, in fact, the individual who has attained e. will, from that state (which is paranormal for us), predict the future: the outcome of a hunt, an imminent clash with hostile tribes, or even the discovery of some fact unknown to the community. E., in conclusion, normally has a divinatory purpose among primitive peoples.
But the possibility of attaining the ecstatic state is not granted to everyone: always, or nearly always, it is the prerogative of sorcerers and shamans, that is, of the representatives of the tribe’s religious powers. As already mentioned, in order to reach e. it is necessary for the individual to exercise violence upon himself in some way, in order to weaken his physical and psychic strength. Thus, in addition to the use of alcoholic beverages (kava among the Polynesians; baff among the Asians), opium (Chinese), tobacco (North American Indians), and areca nuts (southern Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific islands, the eastern coasts of Africa), one must note the practice of dancing which, whether frenzied or slow, leads the individual to complete exhaustion. In this regard, it is enough to recall the so-called “ghost-dance religion,” widespread among various peoples of North America, according to which several encampments gathered together perform extremely long circular dances, during which numerous exhausted dancers fall into e.
2. E. in antiquity. - The same realistic conception of e. found among primitive peoples was also characteristic of ancient Greece: thus Aristotle considered it a change of state (φυστικὸς ἀπρόσωπος, Met. 1 b, 16), and other authors (Plato, Ione, 534 B; Proclus, In Plat. remp., II, p. 108, 23, etc.) spoke of the soul as actually leaving the body during e. (a conception similar to that which they held of dreams; cf., for example, Xenophon, Cyrop., VIII, 7, 21; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., IV, 22), while Plato explicitly affirmed that ecstatics take on the customs and occupations of the god insofar as man can participate in the divine (Phaedr., 253 A).
E. was very frequent in the mysteries (in which dancing was of the greatest importance; cf. Lucian, De salt., 14-22).
Euripides has left an excellent description of the women possessed at the religious festivals of Dionysus, who, with foam at their mouths and distorted eyes, fell into a state of unconsciousness and insensibility, during which they suffered no burns even when exposed to flame, nor did they bleed from their wounds (Bacch., 757; 1121 ff.).
Making predictions in the state of e. was later practiced among many ancient peoples: among the Hittites (where the inspired person revealed the causes of epidemics), among the barbarian Albanians (Caucasus), in Cappadocia (priests of Ma-Bellona), and in Asia Minor, where the Galli (priests who castrated themselves in honor of the Great Mother), abandoning themselves to frenzied and tumultuous dances, possessed by the goddess, would bite themselves until they bled or slash their bodies with swords.
BIBL. R. Inge, Estasi, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, V, pp. 157-156; V. Macchioro, Zaporni, studi sull’orfismo, Firenze 1930, pp. 237 ff., 300 ff.; E. G. Trilles, Les Pyrénées de la forêt équatoriale, Paris 1930, pp. 180-89; R. Petrazoni, La confessione dei peccati, III, Bologna 1936, p. 200 ff.; F. Pfister, Estasi, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Münster 1936, pp. 178-91; E. de Martino, Il mondo magico, Torino 1948, pp. 24, 41 ff.
Cesare D'Onofrio