Having this description, it is quite apparent that ascending soul in Teresa will in Yoga mean ascending kundalini from the heart towards the crown of the head, including the physiologic effects such as sensation of internal noise at the top of the head. Transformation or deeper spiritual experiences start in the fourth mansion, but the actual transcendence, which we may call mystical death only takes place in the fifth mansion. Teresa writes about this death (1921, 54): “This is a delicious death, for the soul is deprived of the faculties it exercised while in the body: delicious because, (although not really the case), it seems to have left its mortal covering to abide more entirely in God. So completely does this take place, that I know not whether the body retains sufficient life to continue breathing.“ When Teresa (1921, 58) describes this spiritual experience (mystical death, she uses the example of archaic change from a worm into a white butterfly. Teresa interprets this change as follows: “Now let us see what becomes of the ‘silkworm’, for all I have been saying leads to this. As soon as, by means of this prayer, the soul has become entirely dead to the world, it comes forth like a lovely little white butterfly!“ In the old cultures, a butterfly represents soul and a scene of internal transformation. This transformation is, according to Teresa, quite fast. During the process the worm dies and is reborn in the form of butterfly, which we can compare to the Paul’s idea of the death of the old man and birth of the new one (Romans 6: 4–6). The fifth mansion of The Interior Castle, as described by Teresa of Avila, can be supposed a transforming one, where we witness the phenomenon of mystical death. There is, however, a disagreement about “placement” of the mystical death, because as we can see above, Jiyu-Kennett places it into the level of the sixth chakra – the Ajna chakra. According to Teresa, the mystical death starts in the fifth mansion, which she calls simple joining God, continues in the sixth mansion with a kind of engagement to God and finally finishes up in the seventh mansion, with mystical union with God. R. Kumar (2006, 243) also notices that something changes significantly in the fifth chakra, when he says: “Enabling the chakra leads to freeing from the bonds of secular passion (…) Energy that was up to now used to reach the earthly aims is free now, it changes its direction up and opens the gate of freedom.” Now we need to say that although Jiyu-Kennett describes her mystical death in the level of the sixth chakra, the so-called third eye, she does not speak about the two previous chakras. For her, it is a continual process – from arousing the Manipura chakra to liberation. Despite the disagreement in the chakra localisation of mystical death, it is important that it stays in one line of rising kundalini. The mystical engagement happens, according to Teresa of Avila, in the sixth mansion. Teresa says that this sixth mansion is a place with frequent ecstasy states, accompanied by visions, inner voices, visions of unknown countries and so on. Teresa (1921, 89) speaks on this: “To return to this sudden rapture of the spirit. The soul really appears to have quitted the body, which however is not lifeless, and though, on the other hand, the person is certainly not dead, yet she her106 (10) Slavomír Gálik - Sabína Gáliková Tolnaiová
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=