ABSTRACT
In ecstatic conditions, one can experience holiness forcefully; thus they are the hours when religious convictions and lifestyles are born. Enchanting beauty or majesty or other impressive characteristics of a landscape can be experienced also without ecstasy. What an ecstasy adds is the certainty that one encounters a kind of overwhelming life hidden in the phenomenon. The feeling of holiness does not affect the scientist in his or her search for truth. Because truth is attached to the end phase of actual geneses while holiness is related to its beginning the fusion phase. A statue of Christ or Mary may generate in the pious observer a feeling of holiness, but it nevertheless remains a substitute. The change of function in the case of ecstasy is somewhat similar to that of hysteria and psychoses, especially schizophrenia.
