Was it a kind of "rapture" that the Teresa of Avila called "flight of the spirit"? When Nathaniel read the experiential descriptions of Teresa, he felt he had found a rare soul who could help him understand what had happened. It was difficult for him to read her testimony over long periods. Very quickly, he would find a new insight, a fresh reflection of the gift he was given that night, and then he would be strongly drawn within, his eyes loosing focus, his eyelids heavy, and when he went into recollection, he felt a desire that could not be satisifed except in prayer. Nevertheless, over the years bit by bit, he to press on and and found the courage to read Teresa's account in it's depth and breadth.
Very few people know what it is like to experience of felt sense of an spiritual force not only elevating her soul, but seemingly taking her physical body up with it too. Teresa knew. She asks: "Do you suppose a person in perfect possession of her senses feels but little dismay at her soul's being drawn above her, while sometimes, as we read, even the body rises with it?" It is not a "little dismay," it is a huge dismay, thought Nathaniel. She had felt that initial terror of sudden, rapid, irresistible elevation. Like Nathaniel, she had tried to resist, and realized his complete powerless, and so he surrendered. As Teresa expressed it cleverly, he had "seen it best to make a virtue of necessity." Nathaniel did not share Teresa's apparent belief that it is possible to defy gravity, and to levitate, but he certainly did know what it is like from the inside, while fully awake mentally, and eintensely aware of your bodily weakness, to feel suddenly as if a spiritual force is lifting one's own physical body in defiance of gravity. It is an utterly convincing sensation. It is not dreamlike. But there is no outward confirmation from the exterior senses. In Teresa's words, drawing on the apostle Paul, "...he cannot say for some moments whether he was in the body or not."
Teresa compared the powerful elevation to a huge wave lifting a small ship, and leaving the the pilot of the ship powerless. Such immense power, such complete weakness. "What will be the amazement of the one who experiences it?" she asks. Nathaniel new the amazement, the thrill, that follows surrender.
Teresa wrote also about the real sense that the soul is going forth from the body, that is leaving the physical body behind and rising above it. Yes, Nathaniel had felt that. And like Teresa, he had seen a light: "...a light so different from the earth's light, that if he were to spend a whole life trying to imagine the light, along with other things, he would not be able to do so." Yes, Nathaniel as a "soul" rising had become one with such a light unimaginable.
And Teresa knew the "interrior flight" where in her words, "the soul remains in its place and the superior part rises above it." That was the next phase of Nathaniel's ascent. In that phase, one not only does not see with the eyes of the body, but also without seeing anything with "the eyes of the soul." The lights of imaginative vision go out. Teresa says that it is "without noise." That part puzzled Nathaniel. In his early phase of ascent, he had heard a rushing sound, and it was hushed but still perceptible in the phase of seeing the soul rise up out of the body luminous, and it was quieter still when the eyes of his soul were no longer seeing light. But there was still a whisper of sound like breeze, or like the sound of hollow space. Maybe that is close to Teresa's "without noise." She also said that the elevation was so fast that it was like the speed of a bullet from a gun. That is very fast. Nathaniel could not relate that to the first phase, when his body seemed to be physically levitating. That was sudden, and relatively rapid like the rising of a hot air balloon, but not as fast as a bullet. However, that last phase, when there was no felt sense, not of light, not of sound, except for that sound of quiet space, in that phase the speed was relative to nothing. One could say it was absolute speed. It was speed without reference to any object in space. In any case, Nathaniel share Teresa's sense of a "superior part rising above" the soul, sheer intellectual awareness "moving" in a perceptual void. It was an amazing and a very beneficial awareness. Teresa wrote: "... while the spirit is far outside itself, from all it can understand, great mysteries are revealed to it."
And Teresa knew also the benefits felt upon return to the body: "...virtue, peace, calm and improvement of the soul." She speaks of a change in the view of the self -- more humility, seeing one's relative inability to accomplish good -- changes the view of God -- awe at the supreme power -- and a different view of the world -- lowering the estimate of how material comforts can offer toward real blessing. Nathaniel new the feeling of wanting to live on less, and seeing it as a joy, but having others think he was crazy. Teresa wanted to go back to the old ways of her Carmelite order including walking barefooted. Oh how Nathaniel longed for that return to basics.
But Teresa did more for Nathaniel's undersanding of that amazing night. She discussed what led up to the ascent. There was the locution, the audible voice from heaven. Like Nathaniel, she was skeptical of the value of such things. Her criterion was to judge by effects. And in Nathaniel's case, the voice in his dream had done what it said both in power and in goodness. Teresa also mentioned that inability to breathe: "He takes away the breath... a person cannot speak at all.." Yes, Nathaniel had experienced that in the moment before ascent.
No comments:
Post a Comment