ly changes it to staggering. To receive this attraction
can be an ecstatic condition, but is by no means ecstasy. So long as
we have power to move the body by will we are not in true ecstasy.
In ecstasy the body feels to be disconnected in some unaccountable
manner from the will; it lies inert, though it knows itself and knows
that it stills lives--which fundamentally differentiates it from sleep,
because in sleep we do not know our body, we do not know if we
are alive or dead, we know nothing. In ecstasy is no such blankness:
merely the body is perforce inert, it would be entirely forgotten but
for its periods of distress.

Neither can ecstasy be confused with dreaming, by even the most
simple person. In dreaming, objects and events of a familiar type
still surround us; the total inconsequence with which they present
themselves alone makes dream-living unlike actual living, for it
remains fundamentally of the same type--physical and full of
persons, forms, objects, and word-thoughts. We can procure sleep
by willing it, but we cannot will to procure ecstasy: we find it totally
independent of will.

The Attraction of God can be a penetrating pain, because the soul,
terribly drawn to God, exceedingly near Him, yet remains
unsatisfied even in this close proximity. Why? Because she is being
subjected to one Force only--she longs, she remains near, and
receives nothing. God is not bestowing His Activity upon her, which
is the way that she "knows" Him--she is not living the celestial life.

It is the combination of the two Forces working together
simultaneously on and in the soul which differentiates ecstasy and
rapture from all other degrees of God-Consciousness. When these
two Powers work together, we experience celestial living, full Union,
the bliss of Contact. It cannot possibly be said that in ecstasy we see
God: it is a question of "knowing" Him through the higher part of
the soul, in lesser or in deeper degrees.

X

If the Divine Lover gives such joys to the soul, how does the soul
give joy to the Divine Lover? Is she beautiful? She becomes so.
Also the soul is a poet of the first water, though she uses no words;
and the soul is a weaver of melodies, though she makes no sound;
but above all, and before all, the soul is a great lover. Now we know
in this earthly life that a lover desires above everything else the love
of her whom he loves. Only when she whom he loves returns his
love, can he truly enjoy her.