Ecstasy
Rapture
Standing outside the self. From the Greek ekstasis, to be displaced from where one stands. Volume is not what ecstasy measures. Joy at any level leaves the container standing, and here the container goes, which is why ecstasy sits with the still states and not the rising ones.
The word
Greek ekstasis, a standing outside oneself, from ek, out, and histanai, to place. In Greek it covered trance, displacement and madness before the Christian mystics claimed it for the state in which the soul leaves the body's terms. Only recently has English worn it down to a synonym for extreme pleasure; the older sense is the one this table keeps.
The feeling
The boundary of the self stops reporting. Sensation continues but no longer belongs to anyone in particular, and the usual commentary of the mind falls silent. Time does not race or drag; it stops being a category. Afterward it resists description, because the one who would describe it was not entirely present.
Against its neighbours
Joy fills the self to the brim and leaves it standing; ecstasy removes the container entirely. Transcendence travels beyond the body with a direction; ecstasy involves no journey, only the sudden absence of the place you were standing.
In the work
A figure without a boundary. The edge between body and field is absent, past blurred, and the composition does not indicate where one ends.
No work carries Ecstasy yet. The element is named and the table is not finished.