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.
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