Ecstasy

ECSTASY. - A psychological state of man "outside himself" (ἔκστασις, from ἐξίστημι). The term can apply either in a good sense or in a bad sense, to the state of spirit of any man placed "outside himself"; there is ecstasy, in some manner, as soon as the attention, or faculty of mental presence to the real data of common experience, is found radically suspended by a predominant diversion; this diversion can be of a spiritual order or of a sensible order; the evasion from the normal psychic environment can be an elevation, a descent, or a digression; the psychic infirmity of the subject can contribute to such an eclipse as much as and more than the internal vividness of the representation. Heterogeneous phenomena such as the contemplation of the philosopher, the delirium of the maniac, the torpor provoked by fright can be called "ecstasy," according to the point of view of whoever classifies. St. Augustine himself notes the analogy between ecstasy and stupor. To call a phenomenon "ecstasy" means to indicate it by means of 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," that is, of initiation into perfect divine union or "spiritual marriage."

The phenomenon is essentially constituted by an intermittent experimental understanding of the divine mystery of Revelation; the reality of a notion of faith opens up in it in its own divine light; the revealed datum loses something of its normally hermetic obscurity: that which is left intact even by the most profound rational theological understanding of the mysteries.

The soul, explains St. Teresa, is found there awake to the divine Majesty, and the truth of which it receives a partial evidence is imprinted in it in an indelible manner; to such a point that if the corresponding article of faith were to be lacking, the soul would continue to be sufficiently certain of itself of the corresponding truth.

This celestial perception does not bear directly on the very essence of God, except perhaps in wholly exceptional cases, such as that of Moses and of St. Paul. In ecstasy God discloses only certain "rays" of his greatness and of his divinity; but these rays, adds St. John of the Cross, are "so sublime, are communicated with such force that they make the soul escape with rapture and ecstasy." St. Augustine had already noted how the momentary enjoyment of the "radiant" divine operation, by which God communicates to the soul the 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, says St. Teresa, God lets the soul see a small part of the kingdom it has conquered for itself, and which is none other than he himself. In such moments the timid nature of man becomes familiar with God, in view of the consummated intimacy.

But the celestial intellectual communication ordinarily entails, by 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: impossible, therefore, in a body not glorified. "A man cannot see my face and live," says the Lord (Ex. 33:20).

The celestial experience of the ecstatic is but a shadow, less than a particle, of the beatific vision; nonetheless, it entails a temporary relaxation of the psychic, indeed biological, functions, proportioned to the fascinating splendor of the communication, a radical evasion of human attention, dazzled by the splendor of the divine.

The soul in ecstasy, although awake as never before "to the things of God," is properly "almost dead" (St. Teresa); and when the ecstasy is vehement, it has the clear impression of "wanting to burst from the flesh" (St. John of the Cross), of being swept away impetuously like "straw before amber," like "the little boat on unleashed waves," like "a harquebus shot" (St. Teresa).

The circulation of the blood and respiration become imperceptible, the body grows cold and becomes absolutely insensible; at times it receives a set of glorious properties, lightness, luminosity, etc. Moreover this disintegration of the being, if naturally it is frightful, is also supernaturally delightful and conformable to the desire of love. The result of ecstasy can be physiologically painful; but the spiritual effect is a detachment incomparably more radical in the face of earthly satisfactions, which disposes the soul to receive the supreme union.

Although the divine notion proper to spiritual marriage - direct perception of the very Substance of God - is intrinsically superior to ecstatic perception as regards its object - nevertheless it does not of itself entail the suspension of the faculties, because it is not of the speculative intellectual order, but of the substantial affective order, as St. John of the Cross explains, an affective contact rather than a distinct vision; it is therefore capable of maintaining itself in the midst of exterior activity.

In short, mystical ecstasy can be defined as a transitory suspension of earthly experience under the actual effect of a positive, obscure intellectual perception, manifested with celestial clarity (cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 175).

Ecstasies are of different degrees, from the simple ecstasy (excessus mentis), such as the almost natural dazzlement of the celebrated "ecstasy of Ostia" (Confessions, bk. IX, c. 10) without notable bodily swooning, up to the purely passive, impetuous ecstasies of rapture properly so called, and of the flight of the spirit or effective spiritual transport, of which the classic example is that of St. Paul (II Cor. 12:2-4; cf. St. Augustine, Epist., 147, n. 51).

It is fitting to distinguish from mystical ecstasy properly so called, a normal phase of contemplative development, an occasional ecstasy, which is not due to a formally celestial notion, but to a deeper recollection, by means of which God momentarily withdraws the soul from external experience in order to concentrate it on a communication explained in imaginative terms: "mentis alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis divino Spiritu assumptus, capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet" (St. Augustine, De div. quaest. ad Simpl., bk. II, q. 1, n. 1). Sacred Scripture and hagiography provide numerous examples of this abstraction or occasional ecstasy (Acts 10:9-17; 22:17-21, etc.; cf. St. Augustine, De genesi ad litt., XII, n. 53 ff.).

It is evident that besides authentic raptures, one encounters a flowering of apparent, illusory, pretended, and fraudulent ecstasies. The masters of mysticism are not so naive as to ignore the states of mental disintegration deriving from the infirmity of the subject, from the natural exuberance of the imagination, 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 wishing to discern this do not justify the simplistic position of positivism (cf. P. Janet, De l'angoisse à l'extase, Paris 1926-28).

A word, finally, on affective ecstasy, a 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) with the concept of "affective transformation." Everything reduces to the capital observation that the soul lives in what it loves more than in what it animates, tending to leave the latter for the former; so that what we love substitutes itself in us for ourselves 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

THE ECSTASY IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

The phenomenon of ecstasy, taken in its first and most universal sense, is found both among primitive peoples and in the more evolved pagan religions. Generally the essential factor for an individual to reach ecstasy is the violence exercised upon himself; a "violence" consisting in those physical practices (such as, for example, the use of alcoholic beverages, flagellations, fasts, enforced wakefulness and the like) which demolish the individual's physical resistance and bring him to the limit of, or beyond, consciousness. Besides this common "physical" element, which normally is also the only one in primitive religions, in the higher religions it is accompanied by, or rather integrated with, a "spiritual" element consisting in the repetition of words, sacred formulas, prayers, in meditation on a particular religious object, etc.

1. The ecstasy in ethnology

Ecstasy is quite widespread among primitive peoples, though ethnologists are wont to call it more commonly (and improperly) by the name of "trance."

Primitives have a realistic conception of ecstasy, inasmuch as they regard it as a real change of state; a conception very similar to the one they have of dreams. In fact, what the individual sees in ecstasy has, for the community, had and will without any doubt have its counterpart in reality: if the ecstatic has seen that in the next day's hunt a hunter will meet his death, there is no doubt that for it this must come to pass, and on this basis it will act. Primitives therefore do not use ecstasy as an end in itself, as spiritual enjoyment or disinterested contemplation, as happens in the higher religions, but always use it as a means; in most cases, in fact, the individual who has reached ecstasy predicts the future from such a state (paranormal for us): the outcome of a hunt, of an imminent clash with hostile tribes, or even to discover a fact unknown to the community. Ecstasy, in conclusion, normally has among primitives a divinatory purpose.

But the possibility of reaching the ecstatic state is not everyone's: almost always it is the prerogative of sorcerers and shamans, that is, of the representatives of the tribe's religious powers. As already mentioned, to reach ecstasy it is necessary that the individual exercise in some way violence upon himself, in order to weaken his physical and psychic forces. Thus, besides the use of alcoholic beverages (hava among the Polynesians; bhang among the Asians), of opium (Chinese), of tobacco (North American Indians), of areca nuts (southern Asia, Indonesia, Pacific islands, eastern coasts of Africa), one must record the practice of dancing which, whether frenzied or slow, leads the individual to complete exhaustion. Regarding this, it suffices to recall the so-called "ghost-dance religion" widespread among various Indian populations of North America, according to which various camps gathered together perform very long circular dances during which numerous exhausted dancers fall into ecstasy.

2. The ecstasy in antiquity

The same realistic conception of ecstasy found among primitives was also proper to ancient Greece: thus Aristotle considered it a change of state (φυστικὸς ἀπρόσωπος, Met. 1 b, 16) and other authors (Plato, Ion, 534 B; Proclus, In Plat. remp., II, p. 108, 23, etc.) spoke of the soul as really having left the body during ecstasy (a conception similar to the one they had of dreams; cf., for example, Xenophon, Cyrop., VIII, 7, 21; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., IV, 22), while Plato explicitly affirmed that ecstatics assume the customs and occupations of the god as far as man can participate in the divine (Phaedr., 253 A).

Ecstasy was very frequent in the mysteries (where dancing had 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 the mouth and rolling eyes fell into a state
of unconsciousness and insensibility, during which they did not
suffer burns even when exposed to the flame, nor did they
bleed from their wounds (Bacch., 757; 1121 ff.).

Making predictions in the state of ecstasy was then in use among
many ancient populations: among the Hittites (where the inspired
one revealed the causes of epidemics), among the barbarian Albani (Caucasus), in Cappadocia (priests of
Mà-Bellona), in
Asia Minor, where
the Galli (priests who went
into ecstasy in honor of the
Great Mother), abandoning themselves to unbridled and tumultuous dances, possessed by the
goddess, bit themselves until they bled or slashed
their bodies with
swords.

Bologna 1936, p. 200 ff.; F. Pfister, Estasi, in Piccioli Fr.
J. Odger d'argabato, Münster 1936, pp. 178-91; E. de Mar-tino, Il mondo magico, Turin 1948, pp. 24, 41 ff.

Cesare D'Onofrio