[KALKI]

James next tells us that Saint John of the Cross, whom the author refers to as one of the best of the mystical teachers, describes the condition as the “union of love,” which he says, is reached by “dark contemplation” [from St. John’s book “The Dark Night of the Soul”] “… the soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude … there, in the abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of the comprehension of love … and realizes how insignificant and improper the terms we employ are when we seek to discourse of divine things.”

In the condition called raptus, or ravishment, by theologians, breathing and blood circulation are so depressed that it is a question amongst physicians whether the soul be or not be temporarily separated from the body. James states that one must read Saint Teresa’s descriptions and the very exact distinctions which she makes claiming that one is dealing, not with imaginary experiences, but with the phenomena which, however rare, follow perfectly definite psychological types.

Yet, James continues, to the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggestive hypnotic states, based intellectually on superstition and a corporeal state of degeneration. Undoubtedly, these pathological conditions have existed in many of the cases but, that tells us nothing about the value of the knowledge imparted by these states to the consciousness. So, in order to pass a spiritual judgment here, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but inquire further as to their fruits, which have been varied. Here James reminds us of the helplessness in the kitchen and schoolroom of poor Margaret Mary Alacoque. She, like many other ecstatics, would have perished but for the care given them by admiring followers. These “other worldly” states encouraged by the mystical practice makes one whom the character is naturally passive and the intellect feeble peculiarly liable. But, insists James, in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite results. And here James tells us that Saint Ignatius, for example, was a mystic, but his mysticism made him assuredly one of the most powerfully practical human engines that ever lived.