“The heart will melt in Brahma, the eyes see the all-present Brahma everywhere, his atman is in all the creations and all the creations are spread in his Atman.” Mircea Eliade (1997, 85) explains this state in Buddhism: “Buddha does not define nirvana, but constantly speaks about some of its attributes. He says that Arhats reached the state of bliss, that nirvana is bliss, that he, Blessed, achieved Immortality, and monks can also reach it (...) Vision, in the canon called ‘the eye of the arhats’ (Arija Cakhu) enables contact with the unconditional, unfabricated, withnirvana.” In Taoism, especially in the elementary Taoist work the Tao Te Ching (Laozi, 63), we can also find many references to fulfilment in the Tao: “If you submit yourself to the Tao, you will become a part of it and the emptiness inside you can be filled with anything.” It is similar in Sufism. Although there is an emphasis on experience of unity with God, it is about transcending I–Thou duality. H. Inayat Khan (Witteveen 1998, 110–111) explains that in this state a Sufi hears God with his ears, sees God with his eyes, and uses God’s hands, God’s legs. His idea becomes God’s idea; his sensation becomes God’s sensation. For him, there is no more difference that a God’s follower sees between him and God. He refers to the Persian poet Khusraua, who says: “When I became You and you became Me, when I became the body and You became the soul, then, Loved, there is no difference between us.” The above-mentioned examples show us that the mystical union (unio mystica), as the final stage of mystical journey, is well demonstrable in all of the great spiritual traditions. Teresa of Avila may speak of the symbolic drop in the sea or light inside light, but this expresses precisely unity without distinction. Other traditions, especially Eastern ones, speak about nothingness, emptiness, unconditioned state, but this all can be expressed also by Teresa’s symbolic way, namely that it is about unity without distinction and without a possibility to positively distinguish the nature of me or consciousness. All of these cases describe the state of consciousness (because we realise it) that goes beyond all the limits. In the present discussions influenced by postmodern period, there are some disputes about whether this consciousness is pure, unconditioned or defined by language. The claim that the “pure consciousness” is constructed is not in accordance with statements of the mystics, philosophers in various spiritual tradition, who claim it is the last and unconditioned reality. Martin Dojčár (2011, 34) notices that we have to distinguish between the per se consciousness and the relational processes of awareness. Pure consciousness is continual and must ontologically precede all concepts of consciousness as well as relational processes of awareness. There are also significant similarities between Teresa’s descriptions of subtle energies (see for example her description of the so-called milk-like beams; 1921, 121) and the kundalini energy and the chakras in the Eastern approaches. We have found certain differences in awakening of the chakras, in the Eastern traditions it is usually the Manipura chakra that opens as the first, while in Teresa’s case it is the fourth mansion that is related to spir108 (12) Slavomír Gálik - Sabína Gáliková Tolnaiová
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