Page 74 - Nada temas, dice ella

D. If water is the emblem of the rela- tion between Teresa and the Ideal, we can understand that her Interior Castle (which is in reality the ‘metapsychol- ogy’ of Teresa, the voyage through the different stages of the psyche to its truth) is not a fortress but a puzzle of ‘chambers’ (moradas), with permeable walls. This is to say that transcendence according to Teresa turns out to be im- manent: the Lord is not above but in her! Needless to say, this didn’t exactly put her in good stead with the Inquisi- tion; her confessors and editors has- tened to tone down her claim. But it was not without consequences.
Might the first one be an irony that borders on atheism? In a page not in- cluded in her Way of Perfection, Teresa advises her sisters to play chess in the nunnery even if this is not allowed, in order to ‘to put the Lord in checkmate’.6 This impertinence resonates with the famous saying by Master Eckart: ‘I ask God to leave me free of God’.
The second is formulated by Leib- nitz. He writes in a letter to Morell,
10 December 1696: ‘As for Saint Teresa, you are right to regard her work high- ly; in it I found this wonderful thought that the soul must proceed as if there was only itself and God in the world. This opens up a considerable realm
of philosophical speculation which
I successfully put to use in one of my hypotheses’. Is Teresa the inspiration behind Leibnitzian monads, always already containing infinity? Might
she be the precursor of infinitesimal calculus?
The sublimatory passion of Teresa is sublime in its risks, sublime in its jouissances and sublime in its lucid- ity and, of course, its masochism. The modern thinkers that we are claim to be freed of this: but can we be so sure? And if so, at what price?
Notes
1. The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, chapter 29, from the critical edition by Father Silverio de Santa Teresa, C.D.
2. D. W. Winnicott, ‘The Mind and Its Relation to the Psyche-Soma’ in Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis, Hogarth Press, London, 1975.
3. From the Greek aisthesis, a single term that signifies touch and sensitivity, like the German word Gefuhl.
4. Edmund Husserl, Ideen I, 70, translated by Ricoeur, Gallimard, Paris, 1971, p. 227.
5. See the magnificent interpretation of touch by J. L. Chérien in his L’appel et la réponse, Minuit, Paris, 1992 p.103.
6. Chemin, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, p. 754.
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