A handbook on mysticism

Both the autobiography and "The Interior Castle" were undertaken at the request, really the command, of her religious directors and were probably partly written as prudent defenses against the ever-vigilant Inquisition. Mystical prayer may not strike the secular modern as a particularly dangerous political enterprise compared, say, to a direct critique of the ruling structures of the prevailing powers of church or state.

Yet as orthodoxies of all kinds at all times understand very well, it is precisely the interior experience of personal coherence -- felt as certainty -- that makes individuals virtually impossible to control en masse. Nor is this religious unruliness a lost figment of history -- think of China's response to the Falun Gong movement: Can a lot of people, many of them elderly, doing breathing exercises in public while waving their arms above their heads really pose a threat to the governing orthodoxy, well-armed and in charge of the power structures though it is? Well, yes.

St. Teresa, like all mystics, attests not only to the wonder of God's love but also to the divinity residing within each individual. This is an extremely volatile assertion, and in a paradox often missed in our secular world (at least until Sept. 11), interior prayer and mystical experience can be serious political threats. Christianity, though ironically enough a religion based on this notion of God-made-Man, has been particularly nervous about promoting the interior experience of religious union. The church's motto has long seemed to be: Do not try this at home alone. For if interior prayer is based on a loose federation of seekers and "guides," then what happens to Christendom, with its structures and hierarchies?

St. Teresa's "Castle" is a handbook on mysticism, written for her sisters but really useful to any serious lay practitioner, a sort of proto-self-help book for contemplatives. All St. Teresa's fluttering of fans before her own face -- "a certain person I know," "one woman who" -- cannot keep her ardent personality off the page, no matter that she has sought to efface herself as she attempts to present, instead of another autobiography, a practical guide for other aspiring contemplatives.

Mystical experience may not lend itself to narrative, but it is more than half in love with poetry. St. Teresa's text positively dances with metaphor -- her primary figure of speech of course is her vision of the "interior castle," the image on which the book's contemplative model is based. Known in Spanish as The Mansions and in Starr as Dwellings, these seven locations are stages in the progress of the contemplative to ultimate union. This is the unreal estate of the spirit.