St Teresa's religious experiences
- Created by: ClarissaFray
- Created on: 05-05-17 10:22
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- ST TERESA'S RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES
- Interior Castle
- The soul is a castle containg 7 mansions
- M represents various degrees of mystical prayer for union with God
- M1-3: Includes prayers whilst allowing individual to come closer to God and doesn't give same level of union that eventually gained
- M4: Prayer of Consolidations/Quiet.
- Captivated by God's love and so intense can faint in a 'sleep of the faculties'
- M5: Prayer of Simple Union-'God implants in the interior of the soul...cannot possibly doubt that God has been in it + it has been in God
- M6: Stage of Spiritual Marriage-Feelings of longing, spiritual ecstasy and visions
- Feeling of wanting to be with 'spouse'
- M7: Highest possible state of Earth prayer-soul in state of 'mystical marriage-feeling of union with the divine'
- M6: Stage of Spiritual Marriage-Feelings of longing, spiritual ecstasy and visions
- Reasons to doubt
- Physiologcal
- Freud: RE result of repression of sexual urges (M6)
- Angel vision similar to effect of drugs + alcohol
- Sociological
- Marxist viewed religion as social construct to control people with rules of obedience and promises of better life/compensation after you die
- Described as 'optium of the masses' harmful distraction from working classes real task to improve material circumstances on Earth
- Emile Durkeim argued that religion holds a social function -mark particular stages of life and acceptance in society + holds society together with sense of identity and purpose
- Marxist viewed religion as social construct to control people with rules of obedience and promises of better life/compensation after you die
- Physiologcal
- The soul is a castle containg 7 mansions
- Garden
- St Teresa used an example of a garden to represent the spiritual state of soul having positive relationship with God
- Believed it required intense concentration + discipline through prayer, that would by series of stages allow a person a true union with God
- 1) Bucket from well; Difficult to water garden and 'costs us a great labour'
- 2) Windlass; W draws water decreasing work and helps us. But still requires effort from us
- 3) Stream or River; 'Waters the ground much better, for it saturates it more thoroughly...so the gardener's labour is much less'. Less effort + more effective
- 4) Rain; 'Heavy rain, when the Lord waters it with no labour of ours, a way from incomparably better than any of those which have been described'. Reaches full union with God and comes naturally
- 3) Stream or River; 'Waters the ground much better, for it saturates it more thoroughly...so the gardener's labour is much less'. Less effort + more effective
- 2) Windlass; W draws water decreasing work and helps us. But still requires effort from us
- Reasons to doubt
- Verification
- To R believer mystical experience may seem ordinary from their reality perception. But lacks empirical evidence to support therefore considered to be meaningless
- Falsification
- Anthony Flew; statements could be significant if had supported evidence. However, RB don't accept criticism against beliefs, including mystic therefore ultimately meaningless
- Used John Wisdom's parable of gardener to support 'just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even no gardener at all?'
- Anthony Flew; statements could be significant if had supported evidence. However, RB don't accept criticism against beliefs, including mystic therefore ultimately meaningless
- Experiece
- Hume; diect experience with G impossible. Cannot experience something that it 'wholly other'. If something is 'wholly other' couldn't have knowledge/experience of it
- Verification
- St Teresa used an example of a garden to represent the spiritual state of soul having positive relationship with God
- Had a vision of an angel piercing her soul in the light of Freudian imagery
- Interior Castle
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