C. Therefore,whilst on its physical side ecstasy is an entrance- —

ment, on its mental side a complete unification of consciousness: on its mystical side it is an exalted act of perception. It represents the greatest possible extension of the spiritual consciousness in the direction of Pure Being: the “blind intent stretching” here receives its reward in a profound experience of Eternal Life. In this experience the departmental activities of thought and feeling, the consciousness of I-hood, of space and time—all that belongs to the World of Becoming and our own place therein—are suspended. The vitality which we are accustomed to split amongst these various things, is gathered up to form a state of “pure apprehension”: a vivid intuition of —or if you like conjunction with—the Transcendent. For the time of his ecstasy the mystic is, for all practical purposes, as truly living in the supersensual world as the normal human animal is living in the sensual world. He is experiencing the highest and most joyous of those temporary and unstable states in which his consciousness escapes the limitations of the senses, rises to freedom, and is united for an instant with the “ great life of the All.”
Ecstasy, then, from the contemplatives’ point of view, is the development and completion of the orison of union: and he is not always at pains to distinguish the two degrees, a fact which adds greatly to the difficulties of students: In both
states—though he may, for want of better language, describe -
his experience in terms of sight—the Transcendent is perceived by contact, not by vision: as, enfolded in darkness with one whom we love, we obtain a knowledge far more complete than that conferred by the sharpest sight, the most perfect mental analysis. In Ecstasy, the apprehension is perhaps more definitely “beatific” than in the orison of union. Such memory of his feeling-states as the ecstatic brings back with him is more often concerned with an exultant certainty—a conviction that
* In the case of Dante, for instance, we do not know whether his absorption in the Eternal Light did or did not entail the condition of trance.
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 439
he has known for once the Reality which hath no image, and solved the paradox of life—than with meek self-loss in that Cloud of Unknowing where the contemplative in union is content to meet his Beloved. The true note of ecstasy, how- ever, its only valid distinction from infused contemplation, lies in extrancement; in “being ravished out of fleshly feeling,” as St. Paul caught up to the Third Heaven,* not in “the lifting of mind unto God.” This, of course, is an outward distinction only, and a rough one at that, since entrancement has many degrees: but it will be found the only practical basis of classification. |
Probably none but those who have experienced these states know the actual difference between them. Even St. Teresa’s psychological insight fails her here, and she is obliged to fall back on the difference between voluntary and involuntary absorption in the divine: a difference, not in spiritual values, but merely in the psycho-physical constitutions of those who have perceived these values. “I wish I could explain with the help of God,” she says, “ wherein union differs from rapture, or from transport, or from flight of the spirit, as they call it, or from trance, which are all one. I mean that all these are only different names for that ove and the same thing, whtch ts also called ecstasy. It is more excellent than union, the fruits of it are much greater, and its other operations more manifold, for union is uniform in the beginning, the middle, and the end, and is so also interiorly; but as raptures have ends of a much higher kind, they produce effects both within and without [2z.e., both physical and psychical]. . . . A rapture is absolutely irre- sistible; whilst union, inasmuch as we are then on our own ground, may be hindered, though that resistance be painful and violent.” 2
From the point of view of mystical psychology, our interest in ecstasy will centre in two points. (1) What has the mystic to tell us of the Object of his ecstatic perception? (2) What is the nature of the peculiar consciousness which he enjoys in his trance? That is to say, what news does he bring us as to the Being of God and the powers of man?
It may be said generally that on both these points he bears out, amplifies, and expresses under formule of greater splendour,
* 2 Cor. xii. 1-6. 2 Vida, cap. xxe §§ I and 3.
440 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
with an accent of greater conviction, the general testimony of the contemplatives. In fact, we must never forget that an ecstatic is really nothing else than a contemplative of a special kind, with a special psycho-physical make-up. Moreover, we have seen that it is not always easy to determine the exact point at which entrancement takes place, and deep contempla- tion assumes the ecstatic form. The classification, like all classifications of mental states, is an arbitrary one. Whilst the extreme cases present no difficulty, there are others less com- plete, which form a graduated series between the deeps of the “ Quiet” and the heights of “ Rapture.” We shall never know, for instance, whether the ecstasies of Plotinus and of Pascal involved true bodily entrancement, or only a deep absorption of the “unitive” kind. So, too, the language of many Christian mystics when speaking of their “raptures” is so vague and metaphorical that it leaves us in great doubt as to whether they mean by Rapture the abrupt suspension of normal conscious- ness, or merely a sudden and agreeable elevation of soul,
“ Ravishing,” says Rolle, “as it is showed, in two ways is to be understood. One manner, forsooth, in which a man is ravished out of fleshly feeling; so that for the time of his ravishing plainly he feels not in flesh, nor what is done of his flesh, and yet he is not dead but quick, for yet the soul to the body gives life. And on this manner saints sometime are ravished to their profit and other men’s learning; as Paul ravished to the third heaven. And on this manner sinners also in vision sometime are ravished, that they may see joys of saints and pains of damned for their correction! And many other as we read of. Another manner of ravishing there is, that is lifting of mind into God by contemplation. And this manner of ravishing is in all that are perfect lovers of God, and in none but in them that love God. And as well this is called a ravish- ing as the other; for with a violence it is done, and as it were against nature.” 2
It is, however, very confusing to the anxious inquirer when
* Compare Dante, Letter to Can Grande, sect. 28, where he adduces this fact of ‘‘ the ravishing of sinners for their correction,” in support of his claim that the ‘Divine Comedy ” is the fruit of experience, and that he had indeed ‘navigated the great Sea of Being’’ of which he writes.
2 Richard Kolle, ‘‘ The Fire of Love,” bk. ii. cap. vii.
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE - 447
—as too often—“lifting of mind by contemplation” is “as well called a ravishing as the other,” and ecstasy is used as a ‘synonym for gladness of heart. Here, so far as is possible, these words will be confined to their strict meaning and not ‘applied generally to the description of all the outgoing and expansive states of the transcendental consciousness.
What does the mystic claim that he attains in this abnormal ‘condition—this irresistible trance? The price that he pays is a heavy one, involving much psycho-physical wear and tear. _ He declares that his rapture or ecstasy includes a moment— often a very short, and always an indescribable moment—in which he enjoys a supreme knowledge of or participation in Divine Reality. He tells us under various metaphors that he then attains Pure Being, his Source, his Origin, his Beloved: “ is engulphed in the very thing for which he longs, which is God.” ! “ Oh, wonder of wonders,” cries Eckhart, “when I think of the union the soul has with God! He makes the enraptured soul to flee out of herself, for she is no more satisfied with anything that can be named. The spring of Divine Love flows out of the ‘soul and draws her out of herself into the unnamed Being, into her first source, which is God alone.” 2
This momentary attainment of the Source, the Origin, is
the theme of all descriptions of mystic ecstasy. In Rulman Merswin’s “ Book of the Nine Rocks,” that brief and overwhelm- ing rapture is the end of the pilgrim’s long trials and ascents. “The vision of the Infinite lasted only for a moment: when he came to himself he felt inundated with life and joy. He asked, “Where have I been?” and he was answered, “In the upper school of the Holy Spirit. There you were surrounded by the dazzling pages of the Book of Divine Wisdom.3 Your soul plunged therein with delight, and the Divine Master of the school has filled her with an exuberant love by which even your physical nature has been transfigured.” 4
Another Friend of God, Ellina von Crevelsheim, who was of
so abnormal a psychic constitution that her absorption in the
* Dante, oc. czt.
? Eckhart, ‘* On the Steps of the Soul ”’ (Pfeiffer, p. 153).
3 Compare Par. xxxiii. 85 (vzde supra, p. 160).
4 Jundt, ‘‘ Rulman Merswin,” p. 27. Note that this was a ‘good ecstasy,” involving healthful effects for life.
442 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
Divine Love caused her to remain dumb for seven years, was “touched by the Hand of God” at the end of that period, and fell into a five-days’ ecstasy, in which “ pure truth” was revealed to her, and she was lifted up to an immediate experience of the Absolute. There she “saw the interior of the Father’s heart,” and was “bound with chains of love, enveloped in light, and filled with peace and joy.”!
In this transcendent act of union the mystic sometimes says that he is “conscious of nothing.” But it is clear that this expression is figurative, for otherwise he would not have known that there had been an act of union: were his individuality abolished, it could not have been aware of its attainment of God. What he appears to mean is that consciousness so changes its form as to be no longer recognizable: or describable in human speech, In the paradoxical language of Richard of St. Victor, “In a wondrous fashion remembering we do not remember, seeing we do not see, understanding we not under- stand, penetrating we do not penetrate.”2 In this wholly in- describable but most actual state, the whole self, exalted and at white heat, is unified and poured out in one vivid act of impas- sioned perception, which leaves no room for reflection or self- observation. That aloof “somewhat” in us which watches all our actions, splits our consciousness, has been submerged. The mystic is attending exclusively to Eternity, not to his own perception of Eternity. That he can only consider when the ecstasy itself is at an end.
‘* All things I then forgot, My cheek on Him Who for my coming came, All ceased, and I was not, Leaving my cares and shame
Among the lilies, and forgetting them.’’3
This is that state of perfect unity of consciousness, of utter concentration on an experience of love, which excludes all con- ceptual and analytic acts. Hence, when the mystic says that his faculties were suspended, that he “knew all and knew
* Jundt, ‘‘ Les Amis de Dieu,” p. 39. Given also by Rufus Jones, ‘‘ Studies in Mystical Religion,”’ p. 271.
2 “Benjamin Major.”
3 St. John of the Cross, ‘‘ En una Noche Escura.”
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 443
nought,” he really means that he was so concentrated on the Absolute that he ceased to consider his separate existence: so merged in it that he could not perceive it as an object of thought, as the bird cannot see the air which supports it, nor the fish the ocean in which it swims. He really “knows all * but “thinks” nought: “ perceives all,’ but “ conceives nought.”
The ecstatic consciousness is not self-conscious: it is intui- tive, not discursive. Under the sway of a great passion, possessed by a great Idea, it has become “a single state of enormous intensity.”! In this state, it transcends all our ordi- “nary machinery of knowledge, and plunges deep into the Heart of Reality. A fusion which is the anticipation of the unitive life takes place: and the ecstatic returns from this brief fore- taste of freedom saying, in the words of a living mystical philo- sopher, “I know, as having known, the meaning of Existence ; the sane centre of the universe—at once the wonder and the assurance of the soul.”2 ‘‘ This utter transformation of the soul in God,” says St. Teresa, describing the same experience in the official language of theology, “continues only for an instant: yet while it continues no faculty of the soul is aware of it, or knows what is passing there. Nor can it be understood while we are living on the earth; at least God will not have us under- stand it, because we must be incapable of understanding it. J know tt by experience.” 3
The utterances of those who know by experience are here of more worth than all the statements of psychology, which are concerned of necessity with the “outward signs” of this “inward and spiritual grace.” To these we must go if we would obtain some hint of that which ecstasy may mean to the ecstatic.
“ When the soul, forgetting itself, dwells in that radiant dark- ness,” says Suso, “it loses all its faculties and all its qualities, as St. Bernard has said. And this, more or less completely, according to whether the soul—whether in the body or out of the body—is more or less united to God. This forgetfulness of self is, in a measure, a transformation in God; who then
* Ribot, ‘* Psychologie de l’Attention,”’ cap. iii. 2B. P. Blood. See William James, “A Pluralistic Mystic,” in the Azbdert Journal, July, 1910. 3 Vida, cap. xx. § 24.
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becomes, in a certain manner, all things for the soul, as Scripture saith. In this rapture the soul disappears, but not yet entirely. It acquires, it is true, certain qualities of divinity, but does not naturally become divine. ... To speak in the. common language, the soul is rapt, by the divine power of resplendent Being, above its natural faculties, into the nakedness _ of the Nothing.” !
Here, of course, Suso is trying to describe his rapturous attainment of God in the negative terms of Dionysian theology. It is likely enough that much of the language of that theology originated, not in the abstract philosophizings, but in the actual ecstatic experience, of the Neoplatonists, who—Christian and Pagan alike—believed in, and sometimes deliberately induced, this condition as the supreme method of attaining the One. The whole Christian doctrine of ecstasy, on its metaphysical side, really descends from that great practical transcendentalist Plo- tinus: 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, and not itself. Nor does that which pertains to itself contribute anything there. But becoming wholly absorbed in Deity, she is Ome, conjoining as it were centre with centre. For here concurring they are One; but when they are separate, they are two. . . . Therefore in this conjunction with Deity there were not two things, but the perceiver was one with the thing perceived, as not being Vzszon but Uxzon; whoever becomes one by mingling with Deity, and afterwards recollects this union, will have within himself an image of it... . For then there was not anything excited with him who had ascended thither; neither anger, nor desire of anything else, nor reason, nor a certain intellectual perception, nor, in short, was he himself moved, if it be needful also ta — assert this; but, being as it were in an ecstasy, or energising enthustastically, he became established in quiet and solitary — union.” 2 Ecstasy, says Plotinus in another part of the same treatise, is “an expansion or accession, a desire of contact, rest, — and a striving after conjunction.” All the phases of the con- templative experience seem to be summed up in this phrase.
* Leben, cap. lv. ? Ennead vi. 9.
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 445
It has been said by some critics that the ecstasy of Plotinus was wholly different in kind from the ecstasy of the Christian saints: that it was a philosophic rhapsody, something like Plato’s “saving madness,” which is also regarded on wholly insufficient evidence as being an affair of the head and entirely unconnected with the heart. At first sight the arid meta- physical language in which Plotinus tries to tell his love, offers some ground for this view. But whatever philosophic towers of Babel he may build on it, the ecstasy itself is a practical matter; and has its root, not in reason, but in a deep-seated passion for the Absolute which is far nearer to the mystic’s love of God than to any intellectual curiosity, however sublime. The few passages in which it is mentioned tell us what his mystical genius drove him to do: and not what his philosophical mind encouraged him to think or say. At once when we come to these passages we notice a rise of tempera- ture, an alteration of values. Plotinus the ecstatic is sure, whatever Plotinus the metaphysician may think, that the union with God is a union of hearts: that “ by love He may be gotten and holden, but by thought never.” He, no less than the mediaeval contemplatives, is convinced—to quote his own words —that the Vision is only for the desirous ; for him who has that “loving passion” which “causes the lover to rest in the object of his love.” The simile of marriage, of conjunction as the soul’s highest bliss, which we are sometimes told that we owe in part to the unfortunate popularity of the Song of Solomon, in part to the sexual aberrations of celibate saints, is found in the work of this hard-headed Pagan philosopher: who was as cele- brated for his practical kindness and robust common sense as for his transcendent intuitions of the One.
The greatest of the Pagan ecstatics, then, when speaking from experience, anticipates the Christian contemplatives. His words, too, when compared with theirs, show how delicate are the shades which distinguish ecstasy such as this from the highest forms of orison; how clumsy are those psychologists who find in “ passivity and annihilation of the will” its governing state. “Energizing enthusiastically »—not in itself, or by means of its poor scattered faculties, but in the Divine Life, to which it is conjoined for an instant of time “centre to centre,” “per-
* Op. cit., loc. cit. ‘
446 AN INTRODUCTION ro MYSTICISM
ceiver and perceived made one”—this is as near as the subtle intellect of Alexandria can come to the reality of that experi- ence in which the impassioned mono-ideism of great spiritual genius conquers the rebellious senses and becomes, if only for | a moment, operative on the highest levels accessible to the: human soul. Self-mergence, then—that state of transcendence in which, the barriers of selfhood abolished, we “receive the | communication of Life and of Beatitude, in which all things are consummated and all things are renewed ”!—is the secret of ecstasy, as it was the secret of contemplation. On their spiritual side the two states cannot, save for convenience of description, be divided. Where contemplation becomes expansive, out-going, self-giving, and receives a definite fruition of the Absolute in return, its content is already ecstatic. Whether its outward form shall be so depends on the body of the mystic, not on his soul,
** Se I’ acto della mente é tutto consopito, en Dio stando rapito, ch’ en sé non se retrova.
En mezo desto mare essendo si abyssato, gia non ce trova lato onde ne possa uscire.
De sé non puo pensare né dir como é formato pero che, trasformato, altro si ha vestire.
Tutto lo suo sentire en ben si va notando, belleza contemplando la qual non ha colore.’’?
Thus sang Jacopone da Todi of the ecstatic soul: and here the
* Ruysbroeck, ‘‘ De Contemplatione ” (Hello, p. 144). .
2 «The activity of the mind is lulled to rest: wrapped in God, it can no longer find itself. . . . Being so deeply engulphed in that ocean now it can find no place to issue therefrom. Of itself it cannot think, nor can it say what it is like: because, transformed, it hath another vesture. All its perceptions have gone forth to gaze upon the Good, and contemplate that Beauty which has no likeness” (Lauda xci.).
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 447
descriptive powers of one who was both a poet and a mystic bring life and light to the dry theories of psychology.
He continues—and here, in perhaps the finest of all poetic descriptions of ecstasy, he seems to echo at one point Plotinus, at another Richard of St. Victor: to at once veil and reveal, by means of his perfect command of the resources of rhythm, the utmost secrets of the mystic life :—
** Aperte son le porte facta ha conjunctione et € in possessione de tutto quel de Dio.
Sente que non sentio, que non cognove vede, possede que non crede, gusta senza sapore.
Perd ch’a sé perduto tutto senza misura, possede quel altura de summa smesuranza.
Perche non ha tenuto en sé altra mistura, quel ben senza figura receve en abondanza.’’*
This ineffable “ awareness,” ez dio stando rapito, this union with the Imageless Good, is not the only—though it is the purest—form taken by ecstatic apprehension. Many of the visions and voices described in a previous chapter were experi- enced in the entranced or ecstatic state, generally when the first violence of the rapture was passed. St. Francis and St. Catherine of Siena both received the stigmata in ecstasy : almost all the entrancements of Suso, and many of those of St. Teresa and Angela of Foligno, entailed symbolic vision, rather than pure perception of the Absolute. More and more, then, we are forced to the opinion that ecstasy, in so far as it is not a
* «©The doors are flung wide : conjoined to God, it possesses all that is in Him. It feels that which it felt not: sees that which it knew not, possesses that which it believed not, tastes, though it savours not. Because it is wholly lost to itself, it possesses that height of Unmeasured Perfection. Because it has not retained in itself the mixture of any other thing, it has received in abundance that Imageless Good” (of. cét.).
448 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
synonym for joyous and expansive contemplation, is really the name of the outward condition rather than of any one kind of inward experience.
RAPTURE
In all the cases which we have been considering—and they are characteristic of a large group—the onset of ecstasy has been seen as a gradual, though always involuntary, process. Generally it has been the culminating point of a period of contemplation. The self, absorbed in the orison of quiet or of union, or some analogous concentration on its transcendental interests, has passed over the limit of these states, and slid into a still ecstatic trance, with its outward characteristics of rigid limbs, cold, and depressed respiration.
The ecstasy however, instead of developing naturally from a state of intense absorption in the Divine Vision, may seize him abruptly and irresistibly when he in his normal state of con- sciousness. This is strictly that which ascetic writers mean by Rapture. We have seen that the essence of the mystic life con- sists in the remaking of. personality: its entrance into a conscious relation with the Absolute. This process is accom- panied in the mystic by the development of an art expressive of his peculiar genius: the art of contemplation. His practice of this art, like the practice of poetry, music, or any other form of creation, may follow normal lines, at first amenable to the control of his will, and always dependent on his own deliberate attention to the supreme Object of his quest; that is to say, on his orison. His mystic states, however they may end, will owe their beginning to a voluntary act upon his part: a turning from the visible to the invisible world. Sometimes, however, his genius for the transcendent becomes too strong for the other elements of character, and manifests itself in psychic disturb- ances—abrupt and ungovernable invasions from the subliminal region—which make its exercise parallel to the “fine frenzy” of the prophet, the composer, or the poet. Such is Rapture: a violent and uncontrollable expression of genius for the Absolute, which temporarily disorganizes and may permanently injure the nervous system of the self. Often, but not necessarily, Rapture— like its poetic equivalent—yields results of great splendour and value for life. But it is an accident, not an implicit of mystical
ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 449
experience: an indication of disharmony between the subject’s psycho-physical make-up and his transcendental powers.
Rapture, then, may accompany the whole development of selves of an appropriate type. We have seen that it is a common incident in mystical conversion. The violent uprush of subliminal intuitions by which such conversion is marked disorganizes the normal consciousness, overpowers the will and the senses, and entails a more or less complete entrance- ment. This was certainly the case with Suso and Rulman Merswin, and probably with Pascal: whose “Certitude, Peace, Joy” sums up the exalted intuition of Perfection and Reality— the conviction of a final and unforgettable knowledge—which is characteristic of all ecstatic perception. |
In her Spiritual Relations, St. Teresa speaks in some detail of the different phases or forms of expression of these violent ecstatic states : trance, which in her system means that which we have called ecstasy, and transport, or “flight of the spirit,” which is the equivalent of rapture. ‘“ The difference between trance and transport,” she says, “is this. In a trance the soul gradually dies to outward things, losing the senses and living unto God. But a transport comes on by one sole act of His Majesty, wrought in the innermost part of the soul with such swiftness that it is as if the higher part thereof were carried away, and the soul were leaving the body.” !
Rapture, says St. Teresa in another place, “comes in - general as a shock, quick and sharp, before you can collect your thoughts, or help yourself in any way ; and you see and feel it as a cloud, or a strong eagle rising upwards and carrying you away on its wings. I repeat it: you feel and see yourself carried away, you know not whither.”2 This carrying-away sensation may even assume the concrete form which is known as levitation: when the upward and outward sensations so dominate the conscious field that the subject is convinced that she is raised bodily from the ground. “It seemed to me, when I tried to make some resistance, as if a great force beneath my feet lifted meup. I know of nothing with which to compare it ; but it was much more violent than the other spiritual visitations, and I was therefore as one ground to pieces. . . . And further, I confess that it threw me into a great fear, very great indeed at
* Relaccion viii. $ and 10. * Vida, cap. xx. § 3.
GG
450 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
first; for when I saw my body thus lifted up from the earth, — how could I help it? Though the spirit draws it upwards after itself, and that with great sweetness if unresisted, the senses are not lost; a¢ least I was so much myself as to be able to see that I was being lifted up.” *
So Rulman Merswin in the rapture which accompanied his conversion, was carried round the garden with his feet off the ground :2 and St. Catherine of Siena, in a passage which I have already quoted, speaks of the strength of the spirit, which raises the body from the earth.3
The subjective nature of this feeling of levitation is practi- cally acknowledged by St. Teresa when she says, “When the rapture was over, my body seemed frequently to be buoyant, as if all weight had departed from it; so much so, that now and then I scarcely knew that my feet touched the ground. But during the rapture the body is very often as it were dead, perfectly powerless. It continues in the position it was in when the rapture came upon it—if sitting, sitting.” | Obviously here the outward conditions of physical immobility coexisted with the subjective sensation of being “lifted up.”4
The self’s consciousness when in the condition of rapture may vary from the complete possession of her faculties claimed by St. Teresa to a complete entrancement. However abrupt the on-coming of the transport, it does not follow that the mystic instantly loses his surface-consciousness. “There re- mains the power of seeing and hearing; but it is as if the things heard and seen were at a great distance far away.” 5 They have retreated, that is to say, to the fringe of the conscious field, but may: still remain just within it. Though the senses may not be entirely entranced, however, it seems that the power of movement is always lost. As in ecstasy,
breathing and circulation are much diminished. “When the Divine Bridegroom desires to enrapture the.
soul, He orders all the doors of its habitations, even those of the castle and its outworks, to be closed. In fact, hardly has one entered the rapture, when one ceases to breathe;
t St. Teresa, of. ctt., loc. ctt., §§ 7 and 9. 2 Supra, p. 224. 3 Dialogo, cap. Ixxix. 4 Vida, cap. xx. § 23. At the same time, in the present state of our knowledge, and in view of the numerous attested cases, it is impossible to dogmatise on this subject. 5 Lbid.
-ECSTASY AND RAPTURE 451
and if sometimes one retains for a few moments the use of one’s other senses, one cannot, nevertheless, speak a single word. At other times, all the senses are instantly suspended ; the hands and the whole body become so intensely cold that the soul seems to be separated therefrom. Sometimes it is difficult to know whether one still breathes. Rapture lasts but a short time, at least at this high degree: the extreme suspension is relaxed, and the body seems to regain life, that it may die anew in the same manner, and make the soul more living than before.”
This spiritual storm, then, in St. Teresa’s opinion, enhances the vitality of those who experience it: makes them “more living than before.” It initiates them into “ heavenly secrets,” and if it does not do this it is no “true rapture,’ but a “physical weakness such as women are prone to owing to their delicacy of constitution.” Its sharpness and violence, however, leaves considerable mental disorder behind it: “ for the rest of the day, and sometimes for several days, the will seems overcome, the understanding is beside itself: the soul seems incapable of applying itself to anything else but the Love of God; and she applies herself to this with the more ardour that she feels nothing but disgust for created things.” 2
But when equilibrium is re-established, the true effects of this violent and beatific intuition of the Absolute begin to invade the normal life. The self which has thus been caught up to the highest levels of Reality, is stung to new activity by the strength of its impressions. It now desires an eternal union with that which it has beheld; with which for a brief moment it has been merged. The peculiar talent of the mystic ; that wild genius, that deep-seated power of perceiving Reality which his contemplations have ordered and developed, and his ecstasies express, here reacts upon his life-process, his slow journey from the Many to the One. His nostalgia has been increased by a glimpse of the homeland. His intuitive appre- hension of the Absolute, which assumes m ecstasy its most positive form, spurs him on towards that total and permanent union with the Divine which is his goal. “Such great graces,”
* St. Teresa, ‘‘ El Castillo Interior,’? Moradas Sextas, cap. iv. 2 OD. cit., loc. cit.
452 AN INTRODUCTION TO MYSTICISM
says St. Teresa, “leave the sou! avid of total possession of that Divine Bridegroom who has conferred them.” 2
Hence the ecstatic states do not merely lift the self to an abnormal degree of knowledge: they enrich her life, contribute to the remaking of her consciousness, develop and uphold the “strong and stormy love which drives her home.” They give her the clearest vision she can have of that transcendent standard to which she must conform: entail her sharpest consciousness of the inflow of that Life on which her little striving life depends. Little wonder, then, that—though the violence of their onset may often try his body to the full—the mystic comes forth from a “ good ecstasy” as Pascal from the experience of the Fire, humbled yet exultant, marvellously strengthened ; and ready, not for any passive enjoyments, but rather for the struggles and hardships of the Way, the deliberate pain and sacrifice of love.
In the third Degree of Ardent Love, says Richard of St. Victor, love paralyses action. Union (copula) is the symbol of this state: ecstasy is its expression. The desirous soul, he says finely, no longer thirsts for God but zztfo God. The pull of its desire draws it into the Infinite Sea. The mind is borne away into the abyss of Divine Light, and, wholly forgetful of exterior things, knows not even itself, but passes utterly into its God. In this state, all earthly desire is absorbed in the heavenly glory. “Whilst the mind is separated from itself, and whilst it is borne away into the secret place of the divine mystery and is surrounded on all sides by the fire of divine love, it is inwardly penetrated and inflamed by this fire, and utterly puts off itself and puts on a divine love: and being conformed to that Beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly into that other glory.” 2
Thus does the state of ecstasy contribute to the business of deification ; of the remaking of the soul’s substance in con- formity with the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty which is God, “ Being conformed to that beauty which it has beheld, it passes utterly into that other glory”; into the flaming heart of Reality, the deep but dazzling darkness of its home.
* St. Teresa, of. cit., cap. vi. = ~ 2 «De Quatuor Gradibus Violentae Charitatis” (paraphrase).