INTERIOR CASTLE

                                  

By Dinorah Pérez-Rementería

When reading Interior Castle by Saint Teresa of Jesus, one is invited to a journey through the human soul. Each person/reader experiences it in his own, special way. Many people (mostly academic professors) persist in referring to Saint Teresa’s practice as being “mystical” rather than considering it a natural event. A person who strongly believes in and values the Christian faith, however, may have a different reading of the text. For Saint Teresa, having a conversation with God was as normal as it is for us to drink a glass of water at least once a day. There was nothing “mystical,” or “exotic,” about it.

In spite of being part of the Catholic Church, Saint Teresa was convinced that she did not need a representative of the powerful religious institution to develop her personal spiritual life. She was subject to continuous surveillance by catholic priests although she was never interested in disrupting or disturbing the structure of Catholicism. Instead, Saint Teresa knew how to see her value as a person, a human being, by building up a solid relationship with God that took expression in a quiet, intimate sense of satisfaction, contemplation, and awareness.

In her book Interior Castle, Saint Teresa speaks of an entity called the soul, to which she as a rational being has no access unless permitted by God. The soul, says Saint Teresa, is created in the image of God, and therefore it is impossible for us to understand her sublime dignity (36). She implies later in the text that only a sort of self knowledge that comes after seeking God allows our understanding and will to become more sublime and detach from any ambitions related to the world (48).

Power seems to be hidden in this condition of self-knowledge. But, it is not the kind of power that can be tested following the logic of instituted powers like the church (religion in general) or the state because it comes from having a personal connection with God Himself. In the realms of the soul, God is the unique source of control to which reason surrenders. As Saint Teresa says, “This has nothing to do with wearing religious robes,” which suggests that not only mystics and the instituted “religious” people like priests and advisors have access to such an experience.

For Saint Teresa, this state can be reached by means of a personal agency expressed in practicing the virtues, surrendering to God in everything, bringing our lives into harmony with what God wants, freeing our souls from ourselves, our attachment to the world, ambitions, and the security that we know everything. God gives as he wishes and to whom he wishes, she says. Yet, the state of grace is not a state of unconsciousness as the act of finding a place for God inside ourselves produces an inner understanding.

In the transformation of the soul, which is unable to recognize its own image, there is an agony. Pain penetrates the soul as our senses and faculties are thrown into chaos. The person becomes aware of the favor received as well as of her inability to approach the experience under rational precepts, and willingly submits to the control of God.

Saint Teresa suggests that we should be consciously humble after having the experience. Ideally, we wouldn’t even tell the advisor (any source of instituted power) about it to prevent the experience from turning into a public spectacle. She also warns us about the risk of falling into delusional states, arguing that we can not confuse the state of grace with “spiritual voices” coming from our own imagination as “a soul in desire is in greater danger of being deceived” (240).