Visit of Ecumenical Patriarch, His All Holiness Bartholomew, to St Mary's University, 4th November 2015

Dear All,

Please find below details of the historic visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His All Holiness Bartholomew, to St Mary's next Wednesday. Everyone is most welcome to what sounds like a fascinating talk looking at the Church and Reconciliation with Creation. I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Best wishes

Peter

 

Prof Denys Turner Lecture on Herbert McCabe, St Mary's University, 28th October 2015

Dear All

Please see poster above for information on the Denys Turner lecture at St Mary's next week. If you are unfamiliar with his work can I warmly recommend 'The Darkness of God' which should be on every reading list for every course on mysticism (Christian and non-Christian). Whereas I don't agree with everything he argues for there it is a key book and intellectually rigorous. He shares such rigour with the work of the late British Dominican, Herbert McCabe OP. Again,  non uncontroversial, but a bracing analyst of the nature of faith. Anyone who wants to engage seriously with Gospel living should read 'God Matters' and 'God Still Matters'. The lecture will be free followed by a drinks reception in Prof Turner's honour and starts at 5pm next Wednesday. Can you email Steph Modak if you are interested in coming so that we can fix numbers. Her email is inspire@stmarys.ac.uk

Another date for your diaires - on 4th November at 12.30 the Ecumenical Patriarch will give the inaugural St Mary's lecture in our chapel. Again all are welcome to this free event. I shall post some more details on that shortly.

All good wishes

Peter

 

The Lord Walks Amongst the Pots and Pans - Closing of Teresa 500th Year - Aylesford, Kent, Saturday October 17th

Dear All

First of all, apologies for not writing anything over the past couple of months. The beginning of term had a double whammy of new responsibilities to take over. However I have just been preparing my talk for the Carmelite final event of the Teresa 500th anniversary year at Aylesford this Saturday (17th October) and thought I would share some of it here. All are very welcome to this event which I think will be fitting end to a most wonderful year.

All good wishes

Peter

Teresa was a true original who offered a path for her contemporaries between the Scylla of fundamentalist iconoclasm and the Charybdis of inquisitorial reaction. In the Book of Foundations and the Way of Perfection we hear the voice of a sometimes lonely woman trying to walk that precarious path of liberation on behalf of her sisters and brothers in Christ. For Teresa, central to this reform was the belief that each baptised Christian should be able to have access to the contemplative life which she saw as the natural home of all the faithful.[1] In this respect she was of course simply returning to the original foundational charism of Carmel that we explored in Chapter Three. As she says later in the Interior Castle:

All of us who wear this sacred habit of Carmel are called to prayer and contemplation (a la oración y contemplación) – because that was our     origin, that is, we are descended from those Holy Fathers of ours of          Mount Carmel who in such great solitude and with such contempt of     the world sought this treasure, this precious pearl of which we speak.       (M: 5.1.1)

The aim of her reform, then, was to recreate, or perhaps better, create the conditions where, at first, ‘her daughters’, and later, ‘her sons’, could cultivate that special pearl of great price.

Unlike the Way of Perfection, written rapidly after the Life, the Foundations was (by necessity) longer in its gestation and, in fact, was left uncompleted as la Madre lay dying in October 1582. From the foundation of San José to her death, Teresa’s life had been absorbed with the task of creating a network of Discalced Convents dedicated to promoting and protecting the contemplative life that she had discovered in Avila and now sought to share with the world. This task was completed after her death when her foundations spread across the whole globe.

          Beginning with Medina del Campo in 1567, the foundations Teresa made in her lifetime were as follows: Malagón (1568), Valladolid (1568), Toledo (1569), Pastrana (1569), Salamanca (1570), Alba de Tormes (1571), Segovia (1574), Beas de Segura (1575), Seville (1575), Caravaca (1576), Villanueva de la Jara (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Granada (1582, although Teresa did not personally visit this one) and Burgos in 1582, after which she died at Alba de Tormes in October 1582. Considering the state of transport and communication in Spain at the time,[2] the rapidity with which Teresa made these foundations is a quite remarkable testament in itself.

          According to the Prologue to the Foundations (F: Prol. 3) she began the work in Salamanca in August 1573, eleven years after The Life was written. This was after the suggestion of her Jesuit confessor, Jerónimo Ripalda, who had been so edified after reading The Life. However, according to a testimony written by Teresa in Malagón around 1570, the origin of The Book of the Foundations had a divine mandate. Having seen a vision of the wounded Christ after communion, so the Saint relates in her Spiritual Testimonies, and shown concern for his sufferings, Christ turned to her and said:  

 

That I shouldn’t grieve over those wounds, but over the many that were now being inflicted upon Him. I asked Him what I could do as a remedy for this because I was determined to do everything I could. He told me that now was not the time for rest, but that I should hurry to establish these houses and that He would find rest with the souls that would live there; and that I must take all the houses that might be given to me because there were many souls who could not serve Him because they had no place in which they could do so; that the houses I founded in small towns should be just like this one… and that I should write about the foundation of these houses. Spiritual Testimonies: 5

 

Teresa, according to the testimony, felt unable to write, but rather than being a hindrance, the Lord felt this ‘place of unknowing’ was exactly what he wanted as a starting point for her narrative:

I thought of how with regard to the house at Medina I never understood anything of how I could write of this foundation. He told me that that was all the more reason to write of it since He wanted it     to be seen that the Medina foundation had been miraculous… and as a result I determined to undertake this work (of writing about the foundations). (CC: 6)

 

Thus, the Foundations was begun from a specified position of ‘unknowing’. The Lord would reveal the purpose of the text as it appeared.

          Consequently, work on the text would proceed in a stuttering fashion as and when she found time in her busy schedule of founding the new convents. From what we can derive from the internal textual evidence, Chapters 1 – 9 were written whilst at Segovia and Salamanca between 1573 and 1574; Chapters 10 - 19 were begun in Valladolid and written variously up to 1576 (Chapter 13, for instance, was written in 1575). Chapters 20 to 27 were written in Toledo and the final chapters 28 – 33 were left uncompleted at her death in Alba in 1582. Thus, along with The Interior Castle, The Foundations contains some of Teresa’s most mature writing. Yet, as I indicated earlier, her task in this book is, as it were, to extract the narrative part of the Life and present it without the ‘mystical context’ of, say, The Interior Castle. But, Teresa being Teresa, this is not quite possible. She cannot forget the divine mandate of her actions as we shall see shortly. The book itself is her answer to the question, ‘How does God act in the world?’ The answer is simple – Look around you! Look at His workings in bringing these convents into the world! This then is the subtext of the book.

           In contrast to her other later works, The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, the Book of Foundations  had another inbuilt problem. She tells us in the Prologue that ‘the account will be given in all truthfulness… in conformity with what has taken place’ (F: Prol.3) yet many of the people and incidents, some as difficult and controversial as anything so far in her life, had to be dealt with no little tact and diplomacy, not least because many of the characters involved were still alive at the time of writing. Although la Santa never utters any ‘untruthfulness’ we sometimes have to ‘read between the lines’ to see her true view on situations. We discussed a good example of this in Chapter Two earlier regarding her discussion of the converso lineage of Alonso Alvarez in connection with her Toledo foundation (F: 15.15).

          Despite her best efforts the work was not included in Fray Luis’ first edition and the first printed edition appeared in Brussels in 1610 under the supervision of her two co-workers Ana de Jésus and Jerónimo Gracián. However, as both were now regarded with some suspicion by the Order in Spain they were not given access to the original autograph (by this time deposited at the Escorial) and this edition was not perfect, also containing much editing and omissions. The situation with regard to the text was only clarified in the late nineteenth century when P. Silverio used the autograph to present an authentic text. This text formed the basis of Allison Peers’ English translation and most subsequent English translations.

          Reading The Foundations and The Way of Perfection as our guides it is, then, possible to trace the shape of the reform of the Carmelite Order in Spain as Teresa led it through her final two decades.

 

 

---

[1] WhileTeresa was rather uncomplimentary about what she referred to as ‘the Lutherans’, her daughters, when they moved into Northern Europe, saw their reform as allowing all Christians, including those at this point separated from Rome, to have access to the contemplative life.
For more on this see Wilson (2006).

[2] See F: 18.4 and Kavanaugh and Rodriguez CW: 3.48-52 for good descriptions of this.

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Anti-Philosopher: Reflections on 20 years of Teaching Wittgenstein in the Class-Room

My good friend and colleague, Prof Jose Nandhikkara CMI of Bangalore, has kindly asked me to write an article for his excellent Dharmaram Journal on Wittgenstein and pedagogy. I am just nearing the final proofs but thought I would append some 'edited highlights' (as is usual on this site) for your amusement. It also ended up as a reflection on 20 years of teaching Wittgenstein... quite a thought!

Best wishes as always.

Peter

 

1. Introduction: ‘Showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle’

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) famously characterised the aim of his philosophy as showing ‘the fly the way out of the fly-bottle’.[1] Much ink has been spilt as to what exactly he meant by this phrase and, indeed, the major thrust of his philosophy tout court (as we shall see shortly). In this article I shall present one interpretation of the phrase. My argument will be that by working on the gossamer-light interface between what can and cannot be said, Wittgenstein’s philosophy gently coaxes each reader from the ensnaring prison of the discursive intellect to a wider, non-discursive, Blick or view on existence. In so doing the philosopher, rather like the therapist, cannot confine herself simply to words but must work on the subtle choreography between saying and showing.

            Recent commentators such as Alain Badiou have gone so far as to suggest that Wittgenstein is better considered as an ‘anti-philosopher’ who attacks the very roots of Western philosophy itself. Beginning, therefore, with a brief review of some of the problems of Wittgensteinian interpretation that have arisen in the half century since his death in 1951, I shall then turn my attention to two ways in which the Austrian encourages his readers to ‘work on themselves’, that is, through the development of the Übersichtliche Blick and a discourse that moves from thinking to seeing to acting. I shall conclude that although some of Wittgenstein’s unorthodox methods may trouble or disturb his readers, his ultimate aim stays deeply wedded to the ancient quest to root philosophy in wonderment. In this respect, I will argue, we can see his philosophy as much as therapy as pedagogy – a true working on the soul.

 

2. Reading Wittgenstein: Theory and Therapy

Surveying the reactions to Wittgenstein’s work nearly fifty years after his death, Rorty in his essay “Keeping Philosophy Pure” summed up the position thus:

Academic philosophy in our day stands to Wittgenstein as intellectual life in Germany in the first decades of the last century stood to Kant. Kant had changed everything, but no one was sure just what Kant had said – no one was sure what in Kant to take seriously and what to put aside.[2]

 

In this essay, Rorty suggests that Wittgenstein’s writings throw down a gauntlet to all who read them, especially professional philosophers. The challenge to enter the ‘transcendental standpoint’ of the Tractatus and the further challenge of the ‘twice born’ to resist this temptation and the challenge to both of the ‘pure of heart’ expounded in the Philosophical Investigations that transcends the need to ‘explain, justify and expound’. In tracing this distinction, which Hutto calls the ‘theoretical and the therapeutic’,[3] Rorty emphasises the importance of the Tractatus for those who have expounded Wittgenstein from the former point and the importance of the Investigations for those of the latter disposition. This distinction between the emphases of the work of the ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ Wittgenstein, and this possible distinction between a theoretical and an anti-theoretical approach to his writings, has been a constant since the voluminous Wittgensteinian secondary literature began to swell. As Pears puts it, in these later works “he is moving away from theorizing and towards plain description of the phenomenon of language.”[4]

Consequently, amongst the Wittgensteinian secondary literature we see a split between those commentators who see the work of the later Wittgenstein as continuing the work of the earlier Wittgenstein and those who see a new anti-theoretical shift in the post-Tractatus works. To add to the confusion, a recent book, The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works[5] has argued that the parts of the Nachlass that have appeared charting the latter period of Wittgenstein’s life, in particular On Certainty, suggest a third interpretation of Wittgenstein that transcends even the position developed in the Investigations.

We are thus left with four possible ways of viewing his works in the authors of the secondary literature:

1.      Those who remain with the traditional division between the ‘earlier’ and the ‘later’ Wittgenstein and see the later works, especially the Investigations, as a critique of the earlier works, especially the Tractatus. Representative of this trend would be Peter Hacker whose Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies makes this point.[6]

2.      The so-called ‘new Wittgensteinians’ who see a theoretical union between the early and later Wittgenstein and reject any notion of a firm break between the two.[7]

3.      Those who regard the ‘third Wittgenstein’ of the ‘post-Investigations works’ (so-called) as presenting a third and more radical departure from the Wittgensteinian corpus.

4.      To these three interpretations, we could possibly add a fourth, a growing body of Wittgenstein scholars who, following Wittgenstein’s own remarks in the latter works of moving from the theoretical to the practical, or from saying to showing want to emphasise the importance of the biographical elements of Wittgenstein’s life and use them to gain a more complete picture of what his thought was trying to achieve. Again, a key collection of essays, Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy[8] has acted as a vessel for presenting this interpretative strand. Included in this group would be those (such as myself) who want to also emphasis the Wittgenstein’s role as a therapist as much as a theoretician or logician.

3.  Wittgenstein as Therapist

One of the first writers to emphasise the ‘therapeutic’ within Wittgenstein’s writing was Stanley Cavell.[9] By the time Alice Crary’s collection The New Wittgenstein came out in 2000 it seemed as though the notion had influenced a whole generation of Wittgensteinian scholars. The authors collected there, Crary suggested, shared an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work as a) a unified whole and b) broadly ‘therapeutic’ in nature. This emphasises the shift in recent Wittgensteinian scholarship away from the understanding of his work as largely theoretical (or, in Rorty’s words, largely concerned with the reactions and concerns of fellow ‘professional philosophers’) to an understanding which is built around seeing his work as contributing to individual existential development.[10] For Crary this ‘therapeutic aim’ is largely around helping us to see the ‘sources of philosophical confusion’ we hold by replacing a need for a metaphysical view of language to a concern with the observation of the  running of language as a means to solving philosophical confusion. Thus, for Cavell, the aim of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is to bring us back from metaphysical speculation to the everyday discourse of ‘forms of life’ (Lebensformen) where language has its natural home. Whereas Cavell et al are primarily concerned with the purely philosophical consequences of a reading of Wittgenstein’s work other contemporary authors have gone further and ascribed to Wittgenstein a therapeutic agenda that goes beyond the purely philosophical. In this respect there has been a growing movement to connect Wittgenstein’s writings with psychotherapeutic literature, beginning of course with his fellow Viennese theorist, Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939). Wittgenstein saw the value of Freud’s work not as a pseudo-scientist but in the function of Freudian analysis as ‘aspect-changing’:

When a dream is interpreted we might say that it is fitted into a context in which it ceases to be puzzling. In a sense the dreamer re-dreams his dream in surroundings such that its aspect changes…

In considering what a dream is, it is important to consider what happens to it, the way its aspect changes when it is brought into relation with other things remembered, for instance. (LC: 45 -46)Lectures and Conversatons on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Ed C. Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell 1989

 4. Teaching Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy 

Teaching Wittgenstein is, of course, notoriously difficult. Twenty years ago I was assigned a class of undergraduates and told to teach them Wittgenstein. Needless to say it was a disaster as I taught his texts ‘straight’ like any other classical philosopher such as Kant or Locke – trying to get the class to repeat and memorise his arguments by rote (perhaps I was unconsciously emulated Ludwig as a young man who ended up impatiently cuffing the school-children who couldn’t follow his ice-cold but brilliant thought processes...). Two decades later, following the interpretation I have developed in this article, I take an entirely different approach. Having given a preliminary lecture, not unlike the contents of this paper, I then get the students to read the texts themselves and reflect upon them. From the ‘form of life’ that develops in the group from the interaction of saying and showing the true message, and transformational work, of Wittgenstein begins to happen (much, indeed, as he taught philosophy himself in Cambridge towards the end of his life). By using language, similes and metaphors in unusual and provocative ways I have found that Wittgenstein brings us back to what we knew already but were unable to express in words. In conclusion, then, it may be worth recalling the work of Badiou whom I mentioned earlier, who termed Wittgenstein an ‘anti-philosopher’. The role of the ‘anti-philosopher’, says Badiou, has three key elements:[11]

1.      They present ‘a linguistic, logical, genealogical critique of the statements of philosophy... an unraveling of the pretensions of philosophy to constitute itself a theory’.

2.      They see that philosophy is ‘an act, of which fabulations about ‘truth’ are clothing, the propaganda, the lies.’ (cf. T 4.112 ‘Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity’).

3.      They realise that the philosophical act “must install an active non-thought beyond all meaningful propositions, beyond all thought, which also means beyond all science... The antiphilosophical act consists in letting what there is show itself, insofar as ‘what there is’ is precisely that which no true proposition can say.”[12]

Badiou’s ‘anti-method’ is then, I conclude, the spirit with which we should approach Wittgenstein’s works as a guide to pedagogy – an approach that through the use of Übersichtliche Darstellung and astonishment will stimulate the move from thinking to seeing to acting that will lead to the position described finally at the end of the Tractatus: “There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”[13] But rather than ‘anti-philosopher’ I would rather conclude that Wittgenstein is the philosopher of wonderment par excellence.

 

 

---

[1] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, Oxford: Blackwell, 1958, 309.

[2]R. Rorty, “Keeping Philosophy Pure,” in Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays 1972 – 1980), Brighton: Harvester, 1982, 20.

[3]D. Hutto, Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy: Neither Theory nor Therapy, London: Macmillan, 2003.

[4]D. F. Pears, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy, Volume 1, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, 218.

[5]D. Moyal-Sharrock, The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works., London: Ashgate, 2004.

[6]P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies, Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.

[7]A. Crary, and R. Read, The New Wittgenstein, London: Routledge, 2000.

[8]J. Klagge, Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, Cambridge: CUP, 2001.

[9]S. Cavell, S. Must We Mean What We Say? Oxford: OUP, 1976; The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy, Oxford: OUP, 1979.

[10]In this vein see, for example, J. Nandhikkara, Being Human after Wittgenstein: A Philosophical Anthropology, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2011.

[11]Badiou, Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, 75-76.

[12]Badiou, Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, 80.

[13](T 6.522).

Teresa of Avila's 'First Hand' Language of the Soul: International Conference, Avila, August 2015

Dear All

In preparation for next week's international conference at Avila please find below part of the paper I will be giving on Teresa's 'First Hand' language of the soul. During the conference the University of Avila will confer an honorary doctorate on Teresa ( I hope she passes the viva!), I shall post any photographs of this great event if I can get any.

All good wishes.

Peter

Teresa of Avila’s ‘First Hand’ Language of the Soul

 

Shortly before his death in 2002, the Irish Jesuit, Fr Joseph Veale SJ wrote:

 

 

 

The institutional Church in Western Europe is by and large written off, even by the devout. Its language is no longer being heard. The Church institution (and religion in general) invites yawns or condescension, indifference or contempt. As soon as you open your mouth about God you have the handicap of being associated with a discredited Church. (Veale 2003:107)

 

 

 

If this was true a decade ago when he wrote these words how much more so is it today. Yet, one of the attractive things about Fr Veale’s approach to spirituality was that he did not despair, but true son of Loyola as he was, he forensically examined the causes and origins of our present malaise and suggested a solution. For him, the cause was simply put:

 

 

 

The problem is that the language has gone stale. The only language that has any chance of getting through is first-hand language. The trouble with most attempts at religious communication is that they are couched in a language that is tired, in tired images, in a churchy idiom that is remote from life and has grown repulsive. (Do we not ourselves, honestly, find much religious talk repulsive? I do.) Many of our words about God are second-hand, third-hand, reach-me-down and ready-made. (Veale 2003:107)

 

 

 

As we have celebrated this wonderful 500^th anniversary of the birth of Santa Teresa, what has most impressed me (from a background in linguistic philosophy) is the ‘first hand’ nature of Teresa’s language and how if we are looking for twenty-first century models of a fresh language to encapsulate the encounter of the human soul with the Living Lord then Teresa’s own ‘language of the spirit’ offers a remarkable paradigm[1]. For, it will be my argument in this paper that rather than stale, second-hand language, a great and perpetually fascinating writer such as Teresa of Avila can give us the tools to craft the language of the encounter with the divine in its fresh originality once again.

Fr Veale suggested that this first hand language now needed to «come from a level of experience that is sensed to be in touch with God. Never mind how fragile, how filled with doubt or dread, how inadequate. People only hear words that are freshly minted, that come from intimacy and contact» (Veale 2003:108). It will be my contention here that exactly such «fragile» words, filled with «doubt or dread» are exactly what we find in the works of Teresa of Avila, despite five hundred years of attempts to mask them over with pieties and second hand language.

Being a psychologist as well as a theologian (and also versed in the dark arts of analytical philosophy) my aim in this paper is to re-present Teresa’s ‘language of the soul’ in an idiom and fashion applicable to the turbulent times we find ourselves living in today, in a fashion I hope that Fr Veale would approve of.

 

The Book of the Life

The strange babbling of Teresa of Avila’s Book of the Life (hereafter V) will be familiar to anyone who has ever attempted to articulate the action of spirit in their lives. The book, her first major writing, arises from particular social and ecclesiological pressures, not least the need to justify her actions as a reformer and also as someone who was clearly moving into the suspect territories of alumbradismo, recogimiento and dejamiento. As we listen to her voice we must also remind ourselves that this is the voice of a woman of converso origins – with its own particular resonance and timbre.

            She tells us in the preface to the book that it was written in response to requests from her confessors, in particular the Dominican García de Toledo. However, as she gets into her stride we hear the tumbling, half formed sentences of someone trying to articulate what is frankly unsayable. In this respect the closest I can find to her style is the half-opened/half-closed writing of Ludwig Wittgenstein who ‘shows’ in his writing by ‘not saying’ and ‘says’ by ‘not showing’[2].

Similarly, in Teresa’s Book of the Life, we hear a strange choreography of saying and not-saying as she comes close to the boundary of what is and isn’t expressible. At such moments (and there are several in this important work) the whole structure of her grammar and language begins to break down – for here we find ourselves on the very boundaries of language itself[3]. For Kristeva (2008) this will be the unspeakable semiotic breaking into the symbolic web of language (see also Kristeva 2009).

            Therefore, as we approach the Book of the Life, especially in English translation, we must do so knowing that, as much as the later Interior Castle, we are entering a multi-dimensional language-world within which we must be prepared to be challenged and our perceptions re-aligned. Her task in writing the Life , I would suggest, is not so much as an Apología de sua Vida (although this was clearly what motivated its origins) as the desire to change the point of view, or indeed, perspective, of her reader. With the advent of modernism the desire has always been to concretise or ‘pin down’ Teresa’s gossamer-light prose so that it fits into the dominating categories of whichever interpreter she happens to find herself in the hands of – whether they be psychological, sociological or literary. Such brutal concretisation will always, I suggest, end in failure, as her gentle contradictions reflect the spiritual life – forever just beyond categorisation. Teresa’s realm is the realm of ‘spiritual freedom’ – as vital today as it was five hundred years ago.

 

Teresa’s Map of the Soul

Within the book we can isolate twelve extra chapters she added to the original manuscript once García de Toledo had seen it and asked for more explanation of her experiences of prayer[4]. The resulting chapters eleven to twenty-two inclusive form a distinct ‘treatise within a treatise’ presenting Teresa’s view of the nature of prayer in a surprisingly masterful fashion. The over-arching narrative structure is her justly celebrated analogy of the ‘four waters’. However, Teresa never sticks smoothly to the narrative but employs her distinctive language of gustos, regalos, deleites and gozos to present her ‘savoury picture’ of the growth of the soul in God’s hands. She begins her treatise then in customary fashion:

 

 

 

So then, let us speak now about those who are beginning to be servants of love (for this doesn’t appear to me to be anything other than following the path of the one who loved us so much), when I think of this I am strangely caressed by a great dignity (que me regalo estrañamente), for servile fear vanishes at once if at this first stage we proceed as we have to. (V: 11.1)[5]

 

 

 

From the beginning she introduces us to her ‘way of love’ which is full of caresses, joys and delights:

           

 

 

We are so miserly and slow in giving ourselves entirely to God that    since His Majesty does not desire that we enjoy something as precious    as this without paying a high price, we do not fully prepare ourselves.           (V: 11.1)

 

 

 

Yet as the stirrings of love arise in our hearts, the intellect, or as she usually refers to it, the pensamiento, will also stir to suggest ways we should be wary of the spiritual path and resist its pull (V: 11.4): «so many dangers and difficulties are put before (the seeker) that no little courage, but much, is needed if they are not to turn back». In her last work, The Interior Castle, she brilliantly describes such thoughts:

 

 

 

We shall always be glancing around and saying: ‘Are people looking at me or not?’ ‘If I take a certain path shall I come to any harm?’ ‘Dare I begin such and such a task?’ ‘Is it pride that is impelling me to do this?’ ‘Can anyone as wretched as I engage in so lofty an exercise as prayer?’ ‘Will people think better of me if I refrain from following the crowd?’  ‘For extremes are not good’ they say, ‘even in virtue; and I am such a sinner that if I were to fail I should only have farther to fall; perhaps I shall make no progress and in that case I shall only be doing good people harm; anyway, a person like myself has no need to make             herself singular!’ (M: 1.2.10)[6]

           

 

 

This, as we shall see later, is the monkey mind[7] of the Buddhists – that which contemporary practices of mindfulness, for example, seek to bring into stability by means such as awareness exercises. From the very beginning of her writing career Teresa is aware of this internal conflict between stabilised awareness of the heart and the need to work with distracting pensamiento. In this respect I am not persuaded, as some commentators are, that the Life is an inferior work or somehow a preparation for the Interior Castle. The Castle is a brilliant work, but in many ways the Life is even more innovative and radical. At this stage Teresa had not put into place so many self-censoring mechanisms which she later discovered were necessary if her work was to survive in the tough spiritual climate of late sixteenth century Spain.

             Thus, she emphasises at this stage, that the most important thing is not so much to worry about the «work» being done in prayer, but «the most important thing is to enjoy it» / lo más es gozar (V: 11.5) whilst the Lord «grants the increase». The path of the saints, she believes, is impossible for us to follow, with all its trials and difficulties. However if we have what John of the Cross called the «otra inflamación major»  – the greater enkindling flame of God - then we will be able to proceed on the path. This is the love we should feel and enjoy on these first faltering steps.

            In Teresa’s writings we thus see a pull away from an over-active pensamiento to what she variously describes as the «soul» or «heart» (alma, corazón) in a practice for stablilising the heart which she terms «oración mental». This has usually been translated in English as «mental prayer», which to my ears at least suggests something concentrating on the pensamiento rather than what she actually describes which is movement to the heart or soul. Rather, I would like to suggest that this might better be related to contemporary talk of mindfulness to which I have already alluded.

 

Teresa on Contemplation and Mindfulness

Teresa’s first account of oración mental in her writings is an extended account in The Life, Chapters Eight to Ten. Here she contrasts the peace she receives from this activity with the «war so troublesome» where she would frequently «fall and rise» (V: 8.2 con estas caídas y con levantarme) as her passions came and left her. Her prayer, she says, «drew her to the harbour of salvation» (V: 8.4 a puerto de salvación). She refers to it here and later as her «trato con Dios: Que no es otra cosa oración mental, a mi parecer, sino tratar de amistad, estando muchas veces tratando a solas con quien sabemos nos ama’» / «For mental prayer/mindfulness is none other, it appears to me, than an association of friendship, frequently practised on an intimate basis, with the one we know loves us»[8]. The pivotal word «trato» that Teresa uses to convey the intimacy and immediacy of mindfulness causes the most variation in translation. Allison Peers, in his usual robust fashion stays with «intercourse», whilst Kavanaugh and Rodriguez opt for the «intimate sharing between friends». Of her older translators Matthew chose «straight commerce with God», Woodhead «conversing in prayer» and Cohen «communion»[9].

            Where Teresa’s method of prayer differs so clearly from Buddhist mindfulness is the role that visualisation and symbolic representation of Christ plays in her meditations (See, for example, V: 9 1-4). Even though the gustos and regalos will be a necessary part of her description the symbolic function plays an even more important role. However where Teresa’s account of mindfulness converges with Buddhist accounts is the importance of drawing attention away from intellectual and mental activity to the location of what she calls «the heart». This, I would like to suggest, is not an anti-intellectual move but rather a consequence of the strategy of the medieval mystical theology to which she is heir. To overcome the whirring discourse of the intellect we will need to concentrate on the mindful «trato» with the beloved. This is why I feel the term ‘mental prayer’ can be misleading and why I preference ‘mindfulness’, or even perhaps ‘heartfulness’ or ‘soulfulness’, as a translation of oración mental[10]. ‘Mental’ seems to have the contemporary association with the mind and intellectual activity whereas, I would suggest, Teresa is advocating something closer to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness outlined above, and certainly closer to the contemporary practice of mindfulness discussed by commentators such as Kabut-Zinn. As she says later in Chapter Thirteen: «Ansí que va mucho a los principios de comenzar oración a no amilanar los pensamientos, y créanme esto, porque lo tengo por espieriencia» / «Therefore it is of great importance, when we begin to practise prayer, not to be intimidated by thoughts, and believe you me, for I have had experience of this» (V: 13.7)[11]. Or as she later puts it in Chapter Seventeen, rather poetically translated by Matthew, the thoughts are like «unquiet little Gnatts, which buzze, and whizze by night, heer and there, for just so, are these Powers wont to goe, from one to another» (V: 17.6)[12].

            I would like to suggest here that as Teresa’s experience as a writer and pray-er progresses, she does not seem to alter the fundamental perceptions of the nature of the life as prayer as outlined in the early Life. What does change, however, is her ability to convey the exact subtle meaning regarding prayer-discourse in her writings. Indeed, as time goes on she seems to entrench the studied imprecision of The Life, enshrining in her writings the principle that the life of prayer/contemplation by its very nature most resist the hard edged analysing of the discursive intellect. In this respect, as I have argued here and elsewhere, her attempt to patrol the boundaries of the ineffable are as precise and subtle as any contemporary linguistic philosopher, or indeed analytical psychologist. 

 

Epilogue: Whither the Christian Soul?

I would like to conclude by returning to our opening interlocutor, Fr Veale. Towards the end of the article I began with, the Irish Jesuit has this to say about contemporary Christian discourse:

 

 

 

We may feel, rightly or wrongly that the word ‘God’ cannot be used any more, because it has been so cheapened by its pious users. We may feel the same about most of the language of our religious ghetto. That vocabulary may carry with it so black a cloud of attendant woes,

and remind recovering Catholics of so much intolerable guilt or

religious boredom, that we cannot stomach it ourselves. Do we listen,

ever, to contemporary religious talk and recognise how boring it is? (Veale 2003: 107)

 

 

 

It is no coincidence, I would like to conclude by suggesting, that latterly Teresa’s writings have once again made their appeal to feminists and New Age seekers alike: her concerns are our concerns and her studied language of the soul is as defiantly postmodern as anything by Lacan or Derrida. I have argued in this paper that her ‘language of the spirit’ is, in Fr Veale’s terms, ‘first hand’. She enlivens conversation and discourse of the transcendent in a way I aim to have demonstrated here. In particular her path of what we may call heartfulness or soulfulness opens up exciting new paths for pastoral, psychological and ministerial work. In this her quincentennial year, the sage of Avila is perhaps once again ahead of the curve in her critical analysis of the state of the soul and her way of mindfulness and soulfulness.

 

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[1] ‘Lenguaje de espíritu’ (V 12.5). Teresa’s own phrase for her programme to articulate the ineffable. For more on this see Tyler 2013.

[2]  See The Return to the Mystical (Tyler 2011).

[3] Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis; das Unzulängliche, hier wird's Ereignis; das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist es getan; das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan/ «Everything passing is only an image; the unattainable is here achieved; the undescribable is here done; the eternal-feminine draws us above». Goethe Faust Part Two, concluding chorus.

[4] The original draft of the Life is lost.

[5] Pues hablando ahora de los que comienzan a ser siervos de el amor (que no me parece otra cosa determinarnos a seguir por este camino de oración al que tanto nos amó) , es una dignidad tan grande, que me regalo estrañamente en pensar en ella; porgue el temor servil luego va fuera, si en este primer estado vamos como hemos de ir.

[6] I have used Allison Peers’ translation here as he brings out perfectly Teresa’s sense of an ‘inner dialogue’ which proceeds in the mind of one starting out on a path of prayer or contemplation.

[7] Or as Teresa calls it poetically in V: 15. 6 «the grinding mill of the intellect» - moledor/entendimiento. In the same passage she also refers to «restless bees» that «gad about» (Matthew’s translation).

[8] Again, a tricky passage to translate and preserve the sense of intimacy Teresa wants to convey here. Allison Peers retains this sense with his translation: «Mental prayer, in my view, is nothing but friendly intercourse, and frequent solitary converse, with Him Who we know loves us». Kavanaugh and Rodriguez give a more distant: «Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing less than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us». Perhaps the intimacy we would experience with a boyfriend or girlfriend is suggested.

[9] Matthew, for example, translates the passage above with: «For Mentall prayer, is no other thing, in my opinion, than a treatie, about making friendship with Almightie God; and a frequent and private Commerce, hand to hand, with him; by whome, we know, we are beloved».

[10] For more on what I understand by the term ‘soul’ see Tyler, forthcoming, The Pursuit of the Soul: Soul-making, Psychoanalysis and the Christian Tradition (T&T Clarke, 2016).

[11] Matthew: «It is therefore of great importance, for them, who beginn to hold Mentall Prayer, that they doe not subtilize too much, with their thoughts». Kavanaugh: «not to be intimidated by thoughts». Allison Peers: «not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts».

[12] Que no parece sino de estas maripositas de las noches, importunas y desasosegadas: ansí anda de un cabo a otro.