Ecstasy

Ecstasy is a state of consciousness characterized by one or more of the following: an experience of an inner vision of a supreme being; an experience of union with such a being; a state of rapture, often with a decrease of self-control and excessive movement; and illusions concerning the individual's relationship to the space-time framework. Traditionally four stages are involved: purgation of bodily desire, purification of the will, illumination of the mind, unification of being or will with the divine.

It is recognized that whilst ecstatic experience may lead to superior integration of the personality, it may equally result in a complete breakdown of all accepted values, in total indifference to good and evil, in madness and schizophrenia. Normal, creative, schizophrenic and mystical-ecstatic states may be conceived on a continuum of increasingly higher central nervous system arousal, accompanied by an increased rate of information processing to a peak when interpretive activity ceases in a final state of rapture. The three levels of mystic ecstasy are described as: suspension of the external senses, suspension of both external and internal senses, and direct contemplation of the divine.

Ecstasy may be experienced unsought and unaided, or as a result of the deliberate use of: drugs, alcohol, dancing, sexual orgies, sexual abstinence, self-inflicted torture and related means; or by meditation, contemplation and the spiritual concentration practised in yoga. These latter are not associated with the extreme frenzy that may arise as a result of the former group but are possibly accompanied by mystic trances. This latter state is sometimes referred to as enstasy to distinguish it from ecstasy, referring to a state or concentration when contacts with the external world are withdrawn, consciousness is empty of all content and wisdom is firm. Some forms of ecstasy may involve groups and even crowds of people.

One experience often classified as ecstatic is the [out-of-body]

experience. Leaving the physical body behind the individual visits other places or times and may communicate with spirits from another world.