Carmelite Mysticism

by Vimla S. Bhagat

Carmel means garden house. It is a range of hills in Palestine. Tradition tells us that one time it was cultivated to the summit with fruit trees in orchards as its name implies, and its fruitfulness was proverbial. It was on the top of Carmel that Elijah, one of the greatest of the prophets in garment of coarse camel’s hair girt with a leather thong, brought to an end a decisive issue – the issue of worship as between Jehovah, the Hebrew name for the Lord God, and Baal, the titular supernatural being, supposed to be fertility god.

Carmelites constituted an order of mendicant friars. Roman Catholic in origin, they are said to be the descendants of a community of hermits established by Elijah. Historically, the Order was founded in about the middle of the 12^th century, prescribing for the monks an eremitic life devoted chiefly to prayer and godly acts, while living in huts or cells. Under the impact of Saracen pressure, the Carmelites moved westward to Spain, France and England. In course of time, they came to be divided into

1. Discalced Carmelites – the bare-footed or wearing just sandels –, living in houses established by St Teresa, St John of the Cross and others and

2. the Calced – Shod or fitted with shoes – friars. With missions spread all over and retreats for Spiritual Life they have made a marked contribution to mystical theology.

In Spain, the Carmelite movement gathered momentum under the impetus of St Teresa (1512–1582) and St John of the Cross (1542–1592) both of whom were Catholic Saints and Mystics of a very high order. Born at Avilla, Teresa, because of her intimate relationship with the Heavenly Bridegroom, came to be known as Teresa of Jesus. Strange as it may seem, Mira Bai, a Rajput princes of a Rathore chieftain, Ratna Singh, and wife to the heir-apparent of Mewar, a devotee of goddess Durga, the family deity, also appeared in the same period on the Indian scene (1504). She, as a devotee of Krishna, could not reconcile herself to the new cult and for refusal to fall in line with the strict Mewar traditions brought on herself persecution, ill-treatment and imprisonment. Though bereaved at an early age of 20 by the death of her husband she, true in her Love for Krishua, sang:

Mira is ever in ecstasy with the Eternal Lord as her spouse. Nor shall He die, nor shall she suffer the anguish of separation.

This is just to show the common trait between the two Saints, one in the West and the other in the East almost at the same time.

Teresa entered the Carmelite convent at the age of 22. She devoted herself heart and soul to a life of ceaseless prayer, practising the presence of Living God all the time.

Speaking of her early life, she says:

While immersed In the world, I had still the courage to pray, never withdrawing from His presence. When I was ill, I was well with God, making supplications for His Grace and reconciling God to the world, the world of vanity as it was.

Her prayers have an intensity of her whole being in them as she talks to God.

Oh infinite Goodness of God, I seem to see Thee and myself in relation to one another. Thou endurest those who will not endure Thee. How good a friend art Thou? Thou comfortest and endurest and also waiteth to make us like unto Thee, and yet out of Thyself patient with the state in which we are. And just for a moment of penitence, forgeteth our offences against Thee. […] Oh Life of all lives. Thou slayest none who put their trust in Thee, seek Thy friendship: yea Thou sustainest the bodily light in vigour and maketh the soul to live.

It is by ceaseless mental prayers on terms of friendship with God that she corrected all her evil as she tells us:

Prayer is a must and all the more necessary for those who do not serve God. Those who pray, God Himself defrays all their charges. Prayer is the door through which the great Graces of God flow, provided the souls are ready to receive and get lonely and pure by rooting out all personal confidence and placing it wholly in God.

A stupendous Spiritual Change came over her in 1554, while steadily gazing in deep absorption in the oratory at the crucified Christ. From then on supernatural visitations followed not infrequently. But being unable to put things straight with the help of her understanding, she resorted to self-castigation by flagellation and putting on hair tunic – like the Sufis in the East. For long hours she was lost in tears in great affliction, distraction and despair, crying:

Oh my God! what a soul has to suffer because it has lost the liberty it had of living a mistress over itself. What torments it has to endure. I wonder how I could live through all those tortures.

The only thing she prayed and begged of God was for the Grace never to offend Him, but to be disposed and resolved for all goodness and this came to those who kept their consciences in pureness. Love was a constant theme in her life. A little Love comforted the soul, softened the heart with tears rolling down the cheeks.

God’s gifts come without any merit on our part. And the poorer we are by confessing, the richer we grow in humility. Prayer founded on humility is a precious pearl. One must acknowledge that one has nothing in one’s self and confess the munificence of the Lord. Have the strength to serve and strive not to be ungrateful […] my abilities are very slight. If I say to anything right, the Lord be praised for that and if I say anything wrong, that is mine own and I must acknowledge as such.

Now we come to her great compatriot and devoted friend – St John of the Cross (1542–1591), a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church and a mystic saint. Like Kabir (1440–1518), He was reared in the family of a weaver but became a Carmelite monk. Closely associated with Teresa, he engaged himself in the task of reforming the Order to which he belonged and in collaboration with her, he did for the monks what she did for nuns.

He is one of the eminent religious poets of Spain and an acknowledged leader among the Spanish mystics. Shunned alike by the protestant Divines with little faith in mysticism and the devout catholics wedded to a life of rites and rituals, he steered clear of both taking the course of self-illuminism and quietude which brought the frail, tiny man of all humility, the richest harvest beyond all imaginings. But the outraged brethren of the Order heaped upon him unmerited odium and helped him to imprisonment in the monastery of Toledo, the ancient capital of Spain.

St John too believed in the mysterious path of mystical prayer. A master of spanish verse the verses flowed out of him from the depths of his mind in spontaneous cadence born of Divine Ecstasy. He seems to be lifted irresistibly out of himself as he sings of the soul and soul’s journey to the chamber of the Bridegroom. Many of these poems were composed in the solitude of the solitary cell in which he was confined. ‘Stone walls do not make a prison’ for one whose soul knows how to fly beyond time and space into the Timeless and Spaceless.

The generality of humankind could not appreciate the mystical experiences gained by him in fields fresh and pastures new in another worldly state in a world so different from the one the people know of and are familiar with. In fact, a poet has not the vehicle wherewith to convey the extra sensory experiences in the language of the world of senses. St John, like a great sailor, sailed through the uncharted sea of human spirit, voyaged over to the edge of life and then took a mortal leap into the spaceless space to plumb the lost pearl of inestimable value, as he tells us:

The more I rose into the height more dazzled, blind and lost I spun. The greatest conquest ever won I won in blindness, like the night. Because Love urged me on my way I gave that mad, blind, reckless leap that soared me up so high and steep that in the end I seized my prey.

Unless one knows the True Nature of mysticism, one cannot get to the meaning of a mystic poet and the essence of his being as expressed in the halting language used to express the inexpressible. At the most one is prone to take all this as an expression of intense emotions and tenuous feelings produced by an overwrought imagination and a heated brain of the poet.

In the words of M.C. D’arcy:

The way is arduous, exceedingly arduous, as to terrify all except the bravest of lovers. One must surrender all that is dearest in the enjoyment of senses and go through a dark night in which we live without their help and comfort. When this is accomplished we have to sacrifice the prerogative of our own way of thinking and willing and undergo another still darker night in which we have deprived ourselves of all the supports familiar to us and make us self sufficient. This is a kind of death, making nothing of all that we are; but the genuine mystic tells us that when all has been strained away, our emptiness will be filled with a new presence; our uncovered soul will receive the contact of Divine Love and a new circuit of Love will begin, when the soul is passive to an indescribable Love which is given to it. This experience is as remote as can be from the hot life of the senses, or even the exalted sharing of human love.

In this dying process, St John refers to yearning to catch the spark. And taste the scented wine. And what does he get? The Music without sound, the solitude that clamours. His impatience in yearning is beautifully depicted in the following lines:

Thus in your absence and your lack how can I in myself abide nor suffer here a death more black than ever was by mortal died. For pity of myself I’ve cried because in such a plight lie dying because I do not die. Oh God, my God, when shall it be? When I may say (and tell not lie) I live because I’ve ceased to die?

Of the Holy Work, he speaks thus:

In the beginning of all things the Word lived in the Lord at rest. And His felicity in Him was from infinity possessed. That very Word was God Himself by which all being was begun for He lived in the beginning and beginning had He none. He Himself was the beginning, so He had none, being One.

Last but not the least, St John comes to the finale of his song wherein Godman and Man-God become One.

And so the God would be the man and the man be the God; and then He would roam amongst them freely and eat and drink with other men. He will stay with us forever, as a Comrade He will stay, till the present dispensation is consumed and fades away. Then, to a deathless music sounding, Bride to Bridegroom will be pressed, because He is the crown and headpiece of the Bride that He possessed.

Thus comes about the mystic Union between the Bride and the Bridegroom.