Distinguishing Traits
Spiritual ecstasy can be distinguished from spirit possession and hypnosis in that ecstasy is not accompanied by the experiencing subject losing interior consciousness or will. Rather, the person experiencing ecstasy notices a dramatic spiritual awareness heightening, with total will concentration on the elevation. If the ecstatic state comes about slowly, the subject may notice changes in his or her physiological responses. But, once brought into complete ecstasy, the subject ordinarily has no, or very little, external surrounding physical state awareness. Some external awareness remains in a partial religious ecstasy. Intense fear may accompany the initial stage of being drawn into ecstasy. Different religious teachings distinguish and describe several stages or forms of ecstasy.
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“And, beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)