Transcript Jose Belda - Madness and Literature Network

Main author: Dr. José Belda
Co-authors: Dr. Gbolahan Otun
Dr. Rajesh Atam
Dr. Shaun Janki
Mr. Russell White
Saint Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, March 28, 1515.
She died in Alba de Tormes, (Salamanca) October 4,
1582. Her father, Alonso de Cepeda, descended from
Toledan merchants. It is said that her grandfather was
a Jewish forced into Christianity. Her grandfather
transferred his business to Avila and having become
financially comfortable bought a knighthood and his
children married into nobility.
Teresa´s father, Alonso, married Catalina del Peso,
and having given birth to two children, she died in
1507 after two years of marriage. Alonso married
Teresa´s mother, Beatriz de Ahumada in 1509, when
she was 15 year old.
Theresa´s mother raised her daughter as a very
pious Christian and as an anecdote, when she was
7 year old, she managed to convince her older
brother Rodrigo to give their lives to God and told
him to go out of town, to Moorish territory in order
to be beheaded and going straight to heaven as
she had read on many occasions in the books that
her mother had given to her.
Her mother herself was very much into chivalry and
romance novels, which she read behind her
husband´s back, and Teresa also grew an interest in
this matter. Her personality was extroverted and she
also had an affectionately buoyant manner.
She
enjoyed social events and meeting people and as a
teenager, the piety that had been inculcated by her
mother almost vanished completely.
When she was fifteen, her mother died after giving birth
to ten children. Teresa was very afflicted and begged
the Virgin Mary to be her mother. Her father noticed that
she was going through a crisis, and sent her with the
Augustinian nuns to complete her education. She further
developed her skill with needle and pen, and gradually
regained her piety. Doña María de Brinceño became her
tutor as she was in charge of the lay students at the
convent school.
Teresa became ill and she went to stay with her sister
in order to regain her health.
When she was
convalescing, she read St Jerome`s letters and at the
time she started to question if she had vocation to
become a nun. Her father refused to give consent.
Her brother Rodrigo, to whom she had always been
very close was fighting in the Rio de la Plata battle and
could not support her.
So she decided to persuade another brother to run
away from home with her in order for both them to
receive the religious habits. In 1535 when she was
20, she entered the Carmelite Monastery of the
Incarnation in Avila where she had a friend, Juana
Suarez, receiving the religious habit one year later.
Shortly after she professed as a nun, she became
seriously ill and failed to respond to medical
treatment. She was taken by her father to seek the
help of a healer who resided in a small village, and
instead of improving, her condition worsened. She
spent some time at her uncle´s house where she
came in contact with the TERCER ABECEDARIO OF
FRANCIS DE OSUNA.
She decided to follow it ¨with all my strength¨ (Sta
Teresa, Libro de su vida) as she did not know any
more how to proceed in praying.
Unfortunately, her physical health, far from improving
further deteriorated, and her father took her back to
Avila again, where she entered a coma and only woke
up after four days.
She describes in her autobiography, that after
waking up she found wax in her eyelids as her
family believed she had died and they tried to
ascertain the veracity of their believe by throwing
hot wax at her to observe any reaction or signs of
life. After she regained consciousness she found
herself paralysed of her legs for three years. She
was the victim of severe pain, but she could find in
her pain God´s magnificence.
She eventually recovered from this illness, but she
remained physically frail through life. Teresa always
attributed her recovery to St. Joseph´s.
For eighteen years, she experienced ¨spiritual
mediocrity¨ and her experiences of union with
God were only transient. In her autobiography,
she described her first supernatural experience
when she was with somebody with whom God
did not want her to be, and she saw God with the
eyes of the soul far more clearly that she would
see anything with her bodily eyes.
One day when in this person´s company again, she
saw a strange creature which seemed to appear
from the middle of nowhere and bore similarities
with a toad, but was far quicker of movement.
Teresa then realised that it was a clear message to
her and what she had seen or experienced with the
eyes of the soul became meaningful.
Shortly after she regained her physical health, her
father became gravely ill and Teresa was able to
look after him in his last days. She described his
death in her autobiography as an example to follow
and how this helped her to realise that the time in
this world is an exile for the soul whose ultimate
goal is to be reunited with God.
She tried to fight what she considered her spiritual
mediocrity and started to make progress in her spiritual
career.
Teresa described four degrees of praying,
starting by the wish of being close to God, followed by
the silence and quietness, followed by the awareness of
God´s presence for which intelligence and imagination
are completely fruitless in order to understand this
matter. She believed that memory and understanding, if
anything, are a hinder to the true spirituality.
The ultimate degree is the divine union and the
purest enjoyment without understanding with a
human mind what is being enjoyed. She described
the soul going out of itself as the flame sometimes
gets very high over the fire, but not becoming a
separate entity from the fire. She described in her
autobiography that when a soul has experienced this,
does no longer want to live any other experience.
She wanted to transmit this experience to
others, and hence her literary works as well as
her prolific foundation of convents. Her heritage
is still a source of inspiration to many all over the
world.
HER LITERARY WORKS
Life (1562-65).
Road of perfection (1562-64).
The Dwellings or Interior Castle (1577).
The Foundations (1573-82).
Poetry: 28 authentic and several doubtful.
Relations or you Count of conscience: they are
conserved 67, since 1560 to their death.
Concepts of the love of God (1566-7).
Exclamations of the soul to God: 17 prayers,
dated diverse.
Constitutions (1567-1581).
Way to visit the convents (1576).
Letters: are conserved 457.
Annotations, thoughts, memorials and Answer
to a challenge.
At the age of forty seven, she founded St.
Joseph´s convent in Avila, and at the time of her
death in 1582, she had achieved the foundation
of seventeen convents all over the country. She
was canonized in 1622 by the Pope Gregory XV,
and in 1970, the Pope Paul VI, gave her the title
of Doctor of the Church
Vivo sin vivir en mí,
y tan alta vida espero,
que muero porque no muero.
Vivo ya fuera de mí,
después que muero de amor;
porque vivo en el Señor,
que me quiso para sí:
cuando el corazón le di
puso en él este letrero,
que muero porque no muero.
Esta divina prisión,
del amor en que yo vivo,
ha hecho a Dios mi cautivo,
y libre mi corazón;
y causa en mí tal pasión
ver a Dios mi prisionero,
que muero porque no muero.
¡Ay, qué larga es esta vida!
¡Qué duros estos destierros,
esta cárcel, estos hierros
en que el alma está metida!
Sólo esperar la salida
me causa dolor tan fiero,
que muero porque no muero.
¡Ay, qué vida tan amarga
do no se goza el Señor!
Porque si es dulce el amor,
no lo es la esperanza larga:
quíteme Dios esta carga,
más pesada que el acero,
que muero porque no muero.
Sólo con la confianza
vivo de que he de morir,
porque muriendo el vivir
me asegura mi esperanza;
muerte do el vivir se alcanza,
no te tardes, que te espero,
que muero porque no muero.
Mira que el amor es fuerte;
vida, no me seas molesta,
mira que sólo me resta,
para ganarte perderte.
Venga ya la dulce muerte,
el morir venga ligero
que muero porque no muero.
Aquella vida de arriba,
que es la vida verdadera,
hasta que esta vida muera,
no se goza estando viva:
muerte, no me seas esquiva;
viva muriendo primero,
que muero porque no muero.
Vida, ¿qué puedo yo darle
a mi Dios que vive en mí,
si no es el perderte a ti,
para merecer ganarle?
Quiero muriendo alcanzarle,
pues tanto a mi Amado quiero,
que muero porque no muero.
I live without living in me
high life and so I hope
I die because not dying.
Live outside myself
after I die of love;
I live in the Lord
Who wanted me to himself
when the heart I gave to him
He got this sign,
I die of not dying.
This divine prison of
The love where I live,
Has made God my Prisoner
and free my heart;
and causes in me a passion
to see God my prisoner
I die of not dying.
Oh, how long is this life!
How difficult these exiles,
this prison, these irons
in which the soul is stuck!
Just wait for the exit
cause me pain so fierce,
I die of not dying.
Oh, how bitter life
do not enjoy Lord!
Because if it's sweet love,
hope it is not long:
God take away this burden,
heavier than steel,
I die of not dying.
Only with confidence that
I live to die,
because dying to live
assures me my hope
as the living death is reached,
do not come late, you hope,
I die of not dying.
Look at that love is strong;
life, do you not bother me,
I can only see that,
to earn I must miss.
Come on sweet death,
Light comes to die
I die of not dying.
That life from above,
life is real,
until this life dies
No one enjoys being alive:
death, not you dodge me;
dying alive first
I die of not dying.
Life, what I can I give
my God that is within me,
if not lose you,
to deserve win?
I dying to reach you,
because I want so much to my
Beloved,
I die of not dying.
He was born
on the 24th of
June 1542 in
Fontiveros, Spain. He died in Ubeda on the 14th of
December 1591. He was beatified by the Pope
Clement X in 1675. He was canonized by Pope
Benedict XIII.
St. of the Cross worked very closely with St. Teresa of
Avila and both were actively involved in the reform of
the Carmel order and both them founded the
Discalced Carmelites. His prose and poems are very
highly regarded and his works on the growth of the
soul are considered one of the best representations
of the Spanish mystic literature. He is one of the
thirty-three Doctors of the Church.
His most frequently quoted poem is the
following:
En una noche oscura,
con ansias en amores inflamada,
(¡oh dichosa ventura!)
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
A oscuras y segura,
por la secreta escala disfrazada,
(¡oh dichosa ventura!)
a oscuras y en celada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
En la noche dichosa,
en secreto, que nadie me veía,
ni yo miraba cosa,
sin otra luz ni guía
sino la que en el corazón ardía.
Upon an obscure night
Fevered with love in love's anxiety
(O hapless-happy plight!),
I went, none seeing me,
Forth from my house where all things be.
El aire de la almena,
cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía,
con su mano serena
en mi cuello hería,
y todos mis sentidos suspendía.
Quedéme y olvidéme,
el rostro recliné sobre el amado,
cesó todo, y dejéme,
dejando mi cuidado
entre las azucenas olvidado.
By night, secure from sight,
And by the secret stair, disguisedly,
(O hapless-happy plight!)
By night, and privily,
Forth from my house where all things quiet be.
Blest night of wandering,
In secret, where by none might I be spied
Nor I see anything;
Without a light or guide,
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.
Aquésta me guïaba
más cierta que la luz del mediodía,
adonde me esperaba
quien yo bien me sabía,
en parte donde nadie parecía.
That light did lead me on,
More surely than the shining of noontide,
Where well I knew that one
Did for my coming bide;
Where He abode, might none but He abide.
¡Oh noche que me guiaste!,
¡oh noche amable más que el
alborada!,
¡oh noche que juntaste
amado con amada,
amada en el amado transformada!
O night that didst lead thus,
O night more lovely than the dawn o light,
O night that broughtest us,
Lover to lover's sight,
Lover with loved in marriage of delight!
En mi pecho florido,
que entero para él solo se
guardaba,
allí quedó dormido,
y yo le regalaba,
y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
Upon my flowery breast
Wholly for Him, and save Himself for none,
There did I give sweet rest
To my beloved one;
The fanning of the cedars breathed thereon.
When the first moving air
Blew from the tower and waved His looks aside,
His hand, with gentle care,
Did wound me in the side,
And in my body all my senses died.
All things I then forgot,
My cheek on Him who for my coming came;
All ceased, and I was not,
Leaving my cares and shame
Among the lilies, and forgetting them.
(Translation by Arthur Simons)
MYSTICISM
Mysticism (from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an
initiate of a mystery religion) is the pursuit of
communion
with,
identity
with,
or
conscious
awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual
truth, or God through direct experience, intuition,
instinct or insight.
Mysticism is not restricted to Christian religion.
Islam, Hinduism and all religions aim at a
communion with God, and they all have a common
root. Meditation is the common path and the states
which are achieved in each religion through the
meditation process are very similar.
Teresa and John coincide in their description of this
worldly life as an exile, and describe the body as
the prison of the soul which belongs to God.
Through the meditation process, they experience
physiological changes in their bodies, with reduced
level of consciousness, lower pulse, temperature
and blood pressure.
The Hindu meditation is a preparation for the process
of dying, and they feel that if true mediation is
achieved, they describe their wellbeing sensation as
the closest it can get to be in the presence of God,
(as they believe) and it is exactly the same as Teresa
and John are describing through their literary works.
Teresa describes in her autobiography that once a
soul has experienced that sensation of being in
communion with God, the soul does not want to
experience anything different.
But are their experiences the product of a disease of
the mind?
For some people they might be. For instance, the fact
that Teresa wishes to die might be interpreted by
some people, including lay people as well as mental
health professionals, as a symptom of depression.
What it is perhaps missed is the fact that she did not
loss the enjoyment through those experiences and
that far from it, she described an extreme sense of
happiness.
The fact that she describes moments of extreme
happiness and moments of feeling trapped in her
body, can also be interpreted by some as a symptom
of Rapid Cycling Mood disorder, but whilst recurrent
depression cannot be completely ruled out in the
case of Teresa, it seems that the theory of the Bipolar
Illness is very unlikely. Yet she had a highly productive
period towards the end of her life, but the productivity
was very well structured and she was a highly
organised person.
She challenged systems and the way the religious
orders were living life very far from what she
considered the enclosed Christian life should be. At
times she was angry, and her reactions could have
been interpreted as irritability, but there were always
in response to the way the Church representatives
were setting example.
If we look at the natural history of Bipolar Illness,
manic and hypomanic episodes tend to be less
frequent as people grow older, and in her case, her
productivity increased towards the last few years of
her life.
There is the theory of the personality disorder as the
mortification of her body could also have been taken
as self-harm, but we have to put this into context and
it was a common practice in those times. She felt
that her body was not pure enough to be the prisoner
of a soul which was in communion with God.
The emptiness she described when she was not
experiencing
the
communion
could
also
be
interpreted as a trait of personality disorder, but this
must not be taken out of context. Once she had
experienced the state of ecstasy, whenever she was
not experiencing it, she was not happy.
The supernatural experiences like visions could be
mistaken for psychotic symptoms, but she admitted
that she could never describe with words her feelings
and experiences, and the way she tried to explain them
could be misinterpreted. Bernini ´s sculpture of St.
Teresa´s ecstasy is a wonderful peace of art, but it is
an attempt to give shape to the words with which she
attempted to describe her experiences, which she also
described as unintelligible for a human mind.
The visions were also described to be seen with the
eyes of the soul. Hence, it is unlikely that they were
the product of a psychotic experience. They were her
main motive for her foundations and for her literary
works. By definition, the difference between religious
delusions
and
truly
religious
experiences
can
sometimes be only made by lifestyle and functioning
and her works are still an inspiration for many. .
The Spanish neurologist García-Albea published a study
in 1996 claiming that her mystic experiences were the
product of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and in his study, he
mentioned that the same condition was suffered by
Dostoievski. He established a parallelism between both,
Teresa and Dostoievski in the sense that both them
described
similar
experiences.
Dr
García-Albea
concluded that the type of epilepsy they both suffered
played an important role in the mood fluctuations they
experienced.
When Teresa was young and gravely ill, she experienced
a seizure as she recorded in her autobiography. There is
no description of any other phenomena like this
happening again. However, also in the book of her life,
she described that in several occasions, as her soul was
going out of itself to be in communion with God, her body
also tended to levitate, and that she did not like this to
happen as she considered that her body was not pure
enough to go towards God, and that in one occasion she
had to ask several nuns to seat on her to avoid this
happening.
This could be interpreted as epileptic attacks, but the
fact that she became aware and asked for the nuns to
seat on her makes this unlikely. Even if she suffered
from Epilepsy, this would not completely explain her
phenomena and the still tangible consequences of it.
St John of the Cross experienced similar mystic
phenomena and in the above mentioned examples of
their poems, they refer to Living without living in myself,
and die because I do not die. St John also refers to “I
die up to thousand times and die because I do not die”.
What are they meaning by dying and not dying? The
explanation may be found in the Hindu spirituality, as
meditation is considered a preparation for the death
process. The meditation reduces the bodily functions and
they believe that with practice, the soul may also
temporarily abandon the body. Their believe is that they
cannot control the return of the soul to the body and that
by the return of the soul to the “prison”, the experience
comes to an end.
They become quite desperate at times because they do
not die, and they live without living in themselves, or
they are beside themselves because their experience
has not yet become permanent. But is this the product
of a disease of the mind?
SUMMARY
Mystic experiences happened to many people who left a
wealth of literature which we can enjoy nowadays. As to
whether their experiences were the product of a disease
of the mind remains to be elucidated, but it is unlikely.
Nowadays, mystic experiences continue to happen,
although they are more likely to be encountered in Asian
cultures where religious meditation continues to be a
frequent practice.
The fact that we can not define mystic experiences as a
disease of the mind, does not preclude the possibility
that some of the so called mystics suffered from mental
disorders, whose symptoms will be interpreted by their
sufferers as mystic experiences. In other cases the
mental illnesses may run in parallel with the mystic
experiences without interfering with them.
In any case, the literature we have inherited, yet the
product of madness, yet the product of true religious
experiences, is a legacy which deserve to be
treasured in its own right.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Teresian Carmel (Official webpage from Carmel
Order)
St. Teresa of Avila Autobiography (Libro de su vida)
Wikipedia
Catholic on line St. Teresa of Avila Doctor of the Church.