ved to have
presented), have no essential mystical significance, for they occur
with no consciousness of illumination whatever, when they occur, as
they often do, in persons of non-mystical mind. Consciousness of
illumination is for us the essential mark of "mystical" states.

The cognitive aspects of them, their value in the way of revelation, is
what we are directly concerned with, and it is easy to show by citation
how strong an impression they leave of being revelations of new depths
of truth. Saint Teresa is the expert of experts in describing such
conditions, so I will turn immediately to what she says of one of the
highest of them, the "orison of union."

"In the orison of union," says Saint Teresa, "the soul is fully awake
as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and
in respect of herself. During the short time the union lasts, she is
as it were deprived of every feeling, and even if she would, she could
not think of any single thing. Thus she needs to employ no artifice in
order to arrest the use of her understanding: it remains so stricken
with inactivity that she neither knows what she loves, nor in what
manner she loves, nor what she wills. In short, she is utterly dead to
the things of the world and lives solely in God.... I do not even know
whether in this state she has enough life left to breathe. It seems to
me she has not; or at least that if she does breathe, she is unaware of
it. Her intellect would fain understand something of what is going on
within her, but it has so little force now that it can act in no way
whatsoever. So a person who falls into a deep faint appears as if
dead....

"Thus does God, when he raises a soul to union with himself, suspend
the natural action of all her faculties. She neither sees, hears, nor
understands, so long as she is united with God. But this time is
always short, and it seems even shorter than it is. God establishes
himself in the interior of this soul in such a way, that when she
returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she
has been in God, and God in her. This truth remains so strongly
impressed on her that, even though many years should pass without the
condition returning, she can neither forget the favor she received, nor
doubt of its reality. If you, nevertheless, ask how it is possible
that the soul can see and understand that she has been in God, since
during the union she has neither