Among the mystic divines, is a total suspension, or ligature of the intellectual faculties, in virtue whereof the soul remains of itself, and, as to its own power, impotent with regard to the producing of any effects. The passive state, according to Fenelon, is only passive in the same sense as contemplation; 1:e. it does not exclude peaceable disinterested acts, but only unquiet ones, or such as tend to our own interest. In the passive state the soul has not properly any activity, any sensation of its own. It is a mere inflexibility of the soul, to which the feeblest impulse of grace gives motion.
See MYSTIC.