Note 60 — PART II CHAPTER VIII ORIGINS OF THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY THE THRACIAN WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS

When it acquires a more philosophical temper mysticism seeks its unification with the highest (the ἔλλαμψις τῆς φύσεως τῆς πρώτης) more by means of the completest passivity of mind and body. It employs the εἰς αὑτὴν ξυλλέγεσθαι καὶ ἀθροίζεσθαι of the soul (Plato), or its withdrawal from all that is finite and particular (the recojimiento of the Spanish mystics). The profoundest quietude of spirit brings about the unification with the One behind all multiplicity; cf. the Neoplatonic mystics, the Buddhists, etc. Sometimes both are found together; absorption and passivity of the spirit side by side with wild excitement. Both methods were practised by the Persian Sufis. Chardin, Voyage en Perse, iv, 458 (cd. Langlés) says of them, cependant ils se servent plus communément du chant de la danse et de la musique, disant qu’ils produisent plus sûrement leur extase. It may be that the cult of religious exaltation is always the real origin of these ecstatic states. Though the cult sometimes falls into decay itself, its offspring the ἔκστασις survives.