the lake, the North Sea, night, the attitude of repose--may we
not trace a dissolution of the self-background, similar to that
of the mystic worshiper? And in the Infinite, no less than in
the One, must the soul sink and melt into union with it, because
within it there is no determination, no pause, and no change.

The contemplation of the One, however, is not the only type of
mystic ecstasy. That intoxication of emotion which seizes upon
the negro camp meeting of to-day, as it did upon the Delphic
priestesses two thousand years ago, seems at first glance to
have nothing in common psychologically with the blessed
nothingness of Gautama and Meister Eckhart. But the loss of
the feeling of personality and the sense of possession by a
divine spirit are the same. How, then, is this state reached?
By means, I believe, which recall the general formula for the
Disappearance of self-feeling. To repeat the monosyllable OM
(Brahm) ten thousand times; to circle interminably, chanting
the while, about a sacred ire; to listen to the monotonous
magic drum; to whirl the body about; to rock to and fro on the
knees, vociferating prayers, are methods which enable the
members of the respective sects in which they are practiced
either to enter, as they say, into the Eternal Being, or to
become informed with it through the negation of the self. The
sense of personality, at any rate, is more or less completely
lost, and the ecstasy takes a form more or less passionate,
according as the worshiper depends on the rapidity rather than
on the monotony of his excitations. Here, again, the self-
background drops, inasmuch as every rhythmical movement tends
to become automatic, and then unconscious. Thus what we are
wont to call the inspired madness of the Delphic priestesses