energy that activates chakras, one by one, along the spine and therefore is an important instrument of reaching liberation. The Manipura chakra is usually the first to be awakened and means the beginning of transcendent experience. The fifth and sixth chakra then bring the so-called “mystical death”, intense feeling of the death of myself. In the seventh chakra we see the end of duality and liberation. 4 Theresa’s mansions as a system of chakras? A German theologian and religious scholar Hans Küng notices connections between the mysticism of Teresa of Avila and Hinduism, especially Yoga. So does a Czech mystic Eduard Tomáš. Küng (1997, 68) claims, for example, that there are surprising similarities between “degrees of mystical submerging in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and grades of prayer of Teresa of Avila”. Küng though does not define where exactly these similarities are. Tomáš (2000, 119), on the other hand, identifies precisely mansions of Teresa of Avila and the Yoga system of the chakras when says: “There are seven grades of a mystical ladder, seven large mansions or Teresa’s sacred castle, seven great centres of our subtle psychic.” Similarly to Küng, he does not go any further in this – for us an important – remark. Are then mansions (prayer grades) in the Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle something similar to the Yoga chakras or is this similarity purely incidental? Ordered by the Inquisition, Teresa of Avila wrote her mystical work The Interior Castle in 1577, five years before her death, when she was already a great mystic. When contemplating the concept of the book, Teresa of Avila (1921, 17) got an inspiration about how to methodologically process the grades of prayer: “While I was begging our Lord today to speak for me, since I knew not what to say nor how to commence this work which obedience has laid upon me, an idea occurred to me which I will explain, and which will serve as a foundation for that I am about to write. I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions.“ This Teresa’s vision seems to be an indirect and concentrated digest of her mystical journey, rather than its direct copy. The symbolic crystal, castle with many mansions, is really interesting. In the centre of the diamond, or castle, there is a light that does not reach to the mansions at the side of the diamond. We can cite Teresa’s various speeches (1921, 18, 22, 23–24) on this topic: “Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse. (...) Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King. Like the kernel of the palmito, from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious Spirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 103 (7)
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