_) outside of himself, in a
condition of alienation. And the ecstasy that the mystics describe is a
prelude of this vision.

He who sees God shall die, say the Scriptures (Judg. xiii. 22); and may
it not be that the eternal vision of God is an eternal death, a swooning
away of the personality? But St. Teresa, in her description of the last
state of prayer, the rapture, transport, flight, or ecstasy of the soul,
tells us that the soul is borne as upon a cloud or a mighty eagle, "but
you see yourself carried away and know not whither," and it is "with
delight," and "if you do not resist, the senses are not lost, at least I
was so much myself as to be able to perceive that I was being lifted up
"--that is to say, without losing consciousness. And God "appears to be
not content with thus attracting the soul to Himself in so real a way,
but wishes to have the body also, though it be mortal and of earth so
foul." "Ofttimes the soul is absorbed--or, to speak more correctly, the
Lord absorbs it in Himself; and when He has held it thus for a moment,
the will alone remains in union with Him"--not the intelligence alone.
We see, therefore, that it is not so much vision as a union of the will,
and meanwhile, "the understanding and memory are distraught ... like one
who has slept long and dreamed and is hardly yet awake." It is "a soft
flight, a delicious flight, a noiseless flight." And in this delicious
flight the consciousness of self is preserved, the awareness of
distinction from God with whom one is united. And one is raised to this
rapture, according to the Spanish mystic, by the contemplation of the
Humanity of Christ--that is to say, of something concrete and human; it
is the vision of the living God, not of the idea of God. And in the 28th
chapter she tells us that "though there were nothing else to delight the
sight in heaven but the great beauty of the glorified bodies, that would
be an excessive bliss, particularly the vision of the Humanity of Jesus
Christ our Lord...." "This vision," she continues, "though imaginary, I
did never see with my bodily eyes, nor, indeed, any other, but only with
the eyes of the soul." And thus it is that in heaven the soul does not
see God only, but everything in God, or rather it sees that everything
is God, for God embraces all things. And this idea is further emphasized
by Jacob Boehme. The saint tells us in the _Moradas Setimas_ (vii. 2)
that "this secret union takes place in the innerm