Themes :
Death

Sacred poetry often portrays death from an upside-down perspective in which death is sought with an enthusiasm that can, at times, sound almost suicidal. Without understanding of this imagery, it can sound as if every mystic and saint has some strange death wish.

In deep ecstasy, the sense of individuality, the sense of "I" thins and can completely disappear. Though you still walk and breathe and talk, there is no "you" performing these actions. The separate identity, the ego, disappears, to be replaced by a vast, borderless sense of Self. Suddenly, who you have always thought yourself to be vanishes and, in its place, stands You, a radiant being whose boundaries are no longer perceived in terms of flesh or space.

It is this experience, this complete shedding of the limited body of the ego, that is the death so eagerly sought by mystics throughout time. This is the death that leads to new life, to use the language of Christian mysticism.