Writing anxiety in Teresa's 'Interior Castle.'

Theological Studies, June, 1995 by Terrance G. Walsh

Do not suppose that the understanding can attain to Him, merely by trying to think of Him as within the soul, or the imagination, by picturing Him as there. ... Let [the soul] try ... to put a stop to all discursive reasoning (el discurrir del entendimiento).(5)

Yet writing as a public act of communication must ultimately make use of images from the imagination and concepts from the understanding, if it is not simply to yield to the mystic's desire to remain hidden and withdrawn in her private, mystical realm. No one knew or appreciated the attractiveness of this hidden, ideal space as well as Teresa. In fact it remained, for all its dangers, the principal selling point to those who might wish to follow her:

And considering how strictly you are cloistered, my sisters, how few opportunities you have of recreation ... I think it will be a great consolation for you ... to take your delight in this Interior Castle, for you can enter it and walk about it at any time.(6)

But problems associated with mystical hiddenness, e.g. an apparently absolute preoccupation with the self, were immediately apparent to Teresa:

The soul is doubtful as to what has really happened until it has had a good deal of experience of it. It wonders if the whole thing was imagination, if it has been asleep, if the favour was a gift of God, or if the devil was transfigured into an angel of light. It retains a thousand suspicions, and it is well that it should, for, as I have said, we can sometimes be deceived in this respect, even by our own nature.(7)

The more the soul progresses in divine union, the more it seeks to leave the external world behind to enjoy its own purely spiritual repose and peace. It is here that the mystical experience itself and its implicit truth claims are most vulnerable to skeptical interpretation. For how can the mystic ascribe truth to her experiences, if she cannot integrate them into her corporeal and temporal being in the world, or if they exist in what appears to be a dream state within the soul?(8) The inability to integrate mystical states of union into concrete existence plunges the mystic into an existential state of doubt and anxiety regarding the very meaning and value of the experience.(9)

The interesting issue, however, is the self-identity of the mystic, her ability to accept and understand herself as the privileged place of divine manifestation, and the importance of Teresa's text is that she responded intellectually, as a woman and a mystic to be sure, but always intellectually, to the ambiguities and perplexities of spiritual identity in the world. For self-identity touches upon the fundamental philosophical question that mysticism poses, namely, how the finite subject can either receive or participate in divine life - in other words, how mediation between the divine and the human is possible. This means, quite simply, that if the two sides of a spiritual relation are to be brought into union, there needs to be some point of contact that allows each side to participate in the being of the other. The purpose of such contact will be to transform existing differences into moments of participatory union.