VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2015

self cannot, for a few seconds, tell whether her spirit remains within her body or not. She feels that she has been wholly transported into another and a very different region from that in which we live, where a light so unearthly is shown that, if during her whole lifetime she had been trying to picture it and the wonders seen, she could not possibly have succeeded.“ Teresa’s experiences indicate that even in this mansion we may speak about mystical death (freeing the soul from the body), which brings further agreement with other traditions. However, in this mansion, the ecstatic journeys of the soul are important, formally comparable with other traditions, for example Taoist and Zen Buddhist. In the Taoist book The Secret of the Golden Flower it is mentioned the fourth grade of meditation – the “centre in the middle of conditions” (Jung and Wilhelm 2004, 71); similar descriptions offers Jiyu-Kennet as well (1997, 93–138). In the seventh mansion, however, Teresa (1921, 121) says these ecstatic states cease and are exchanged by tranquillity, spiritual stabilisation and total unification of the soul with God, when she writes: “But spiritual marriage is like rain falling from heaven into a river or stream, becoming one and the same liquid, so that the river and rain water cannot be divided; or it resembles a streamlet flowing into the ocean, which cannot afterwards be disunited from it. This marriagemay also be likened to a room intowhich a bright light enters through two windows – though divided when it enters, the light becomes one and the same.“ This union is full and perfect, according to Teresa we may only speak about differences during engagement, when the soul is still separated from the Groom. We speak about experience that is very similar to mystical experience in Hinduism, especially in Advaita Vedanta and Yoga, but also in Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. The old Vedanta text Katha Upanishad (Lead us from darkness to light 1997, 50) says: “A wise man, capable to distinguish spiritually, has to contemplate hard and utilise his tongue and other organs, merge his mind with intellect, intellect will join the Great Soul and the Great Soul will submerge the tranquil Self – the Essence.” The continuator or Advaita Vedanta (philosophy of oneness) Shankara (1999, 58) explains the realisation of the Self in this way: “Similarly the adept fully realises naturalness of Himself when he is separated from his body, intellect and the Spirit in Himself and sees the Witness, Self, Knowledge of the Absolute, the cause of everything.” Similarly, a new continuator of Vedanta tradition, Ramana Maharshi, (Mudaliar 1996, 63) speaks about self-realisation: “You will finally become the pure knowing, in which there are no more thoughts or worries because they are left behind in the beginning. It is a flood and you are just a glade of grass, you are engulfed, but it is very blissful because you combine into a single entity with the flood that covers you. This is fusion of jiva and Brahman, when ego melts in the real Self, this is the fade of hallucination or illusion and achievement of the Truth.” The Bhagavad Gita (1999, 69), which is based on the tradition of Vedanta and Yoga, also mentions the fusion of Atman and Brahma: Spirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 107 (11)

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=