1. The World Behind the Tapestry of Sense-perceptions. Ecstasy and Mystical Experience

Through this inner deepening of experience the soul changes its former attitude, focuses more upon itself, seeks within itself what it previously sought in the outer world. This is obviously the case when someone says to himself: ‘The man who gave me the blow was led to me precisely because I myself was the cause of it.’ Such people pay more and more attention to their own inner nature, to their own inner life. In other words, just as an individual in a state of ecstasy looks through the outer veil of sense-perceptions into a world of beings and realities hitherto unknown to him, so does the mystic penetrate below his ordinary Ego. It is the ordinary Ego that rebels against the blow which comes from outside; but the mystic penetrates to what is below this Ego, to something that actually caused the blow. In this way the mystic reaches a stage where he gradually loses sight altogether of the outer world. Little by little, any concept of the outer world vanishes and his own Ego expands as it were into a whole world. But just as we will not decide at the moment whether the world revealed in ecstasy is mirage, reality or phantasy, neither will we decide whether what the mystic feels as compared with the ordinary life of soul is reality or whether it is he himself who is the cause of his sorrow and suffering. It may all be so much dreaming, but it is nevertheless an experience that may actually come to a man. The point of importance is that on two sides—outwards and inwards—he penetrates into a world hitherto unknown to him.