"Grape-juice does not turn to wine, unless it ferment awhile in the jar."

Shams-Tabriz.

ECSTASY is a mystical experience of the soul, sometimes called the Sacrament of Light, for in that moment of Divine Alchemy a transmutation takes place, and all the bodies of man's being are temporarily raised to their original condition, thereby partaking of the soul's rapture.

It is this experience which produces the state which is called Vairagya, for once having known, even for a brief space of time, the condition of ecstasy, nothing that earth can offer could satisfy one thus conscious of exile.

The majority of men are content with such experience as pleasure and joy, which belong to the physical and emotional life of man ; but ecstasy belongs to the soul life, and is reached by following the path trodden by the mystics of old, who in their writings frequently refer to this experience as «wine,» for it produces in the human soul that divine intoxication, in which the small self of man is completely forgotten.

"The cup-bearer is God, who intoxicates all creatures with the rapture of love."

Gulshani Rai.

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