Ecstasy (emotion)

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Ecstasy, from the Greek εκστασις, to be outside oneself, is a category of trance or trancelike states in which an individual transcends ordinary consciousness and as a result has a heightened capacity for exceptional thought or experience. These may include profound emotional feeling, intense concentration on a specific task, extraordinary physical abilities, and especially awareness of non-ordinary mental spaces, which may be perceived as spiritual (the latter type of ecstasy often takes the form of religious ecstasy). This heightened capacity is typically accompanied by diminished awareness of some other matters. For instance, if one is concentrating on a physical task, then one might cease to be aware of any intellectual thoughts. On the other hand, making a spirit journey in an ecstatic trance involves the cessation of voluntary bodily movement.

Historical ecstasy

Ecstasy was also a technical term used by mystical writers in the 17th through 19th century and had considerably different meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ecstasy was the state when one's soul would physically leave the body to contemplate, leaving the body senseless. This meaning is seen as early the metaphysical poets, most notably John Donne 1527-1631.

Read [Ecstasy"] by John Donne online

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