ecstasy, ( Greek: ekstasis, “to stand outside of or transcend [oneself ]”) in mysticism, the experience of an inner vision of God or of one’s relation to or union with the divine. Various methods have been used to achieve ecstasy, which is a primary goal in most forms of religious mysticism. The most typical consists of four stages: (1) purgation (of bodily desire); (2) purification (of the will); (3) illumination (of the mind); and (4) unification (of one’s being or will with the divine). Other methods are: dancing (as used by the Mawlawīyah, or whirling dervishes, a Muslim Ṣūfī sect); the use of sedatives and stimulants (as utilized in some Hellenistic mystery religions); and the use of certain drugs, such as peyote, mescaline, hashish, LSD, and similar products (in certain Islāmic sects and modern experimental religious groups). Most mystics, both in the East and in the West, frown on the use of drugs because no permanent change in the personality (in the mystical sense) has been known to occur.
In certain ancient Israelite prophetic groups, music was used to achieve the ecstatic state, in which the participants, in their accompanying dancing, were believed to have been seized by the hand of Yahweh, the God of Israel, as in the case of Saul, the 11th-century-bc king of Israel. The Pythia (priestess) of the Greek oracle at Delphi often went into an ecstatic state during which she uttered sounds revealed to her by the python (the snake, the symbol of resurrection), after drinking water from a certain spring. Her “words” were then interpreted by a priest to help a suppliant find a way to avoid calamities, especially death. In primitive religions, ecstasy was a technique highly developed by shamans, religious personages with healing and psychic-transformation powers, in their “soul,” or “spirit,” flights.
The goal of ecstasy and its effects, however, are best known from the writings and activities of the mystics of the world’s great religions.