Such a pliability in God’s hands is, in the mystical tradition of Christian spirituality, occasionally accompanied by the experience of ecstasy, or ecstatic union, best described as a period of total absorption in God, during which a person is unaware of her or his surroundings.21 Paul’s description of being caught up to the third heaven, where he didn’t know whether he was in the body or out of the body (2 Cor 12:2-3), has the characteristics of ecstasy.
