Bhaktin Yvonne, June 10, 2012 — Saint Teresa of Avila (1515 -1577) while describing the different stages of prayer that she experienced, wrote the following in her autobiography.
“For this is the habitual state of my soul, nowadays. Whenever I am not busy with something, it (the soul) is plunged into these death-like yearnings; and I am afraid when I feel them coming on, because I know that I shall not die. But once I am in them, I long to suffer like this for the rest of my life, although the pain is so extreme as to be nearly unbearable. Sometimes my pulse almost ceases to beat at all, as I have been told by the sisters who sometimes see me in this state. My bones are all dis-jointed and my hands are so rigid that sometimes I cannot clasp them together. Even next day I feel a pain in my wrists and over my whole body, as if my bones were still out of joint………. I forget everything in my longing to see God; and this abandonment and loneliness seems better than all the company in the world.”
Teresa of Avila wrote very conscientiously in her Vida about her experiences because she was writing to her confessor.
This kind of autobiography is quite reliable compared to the hagiographies in the Bhaktamala, Bhaktavijay or Caitanya-Caritamrita.
Also in that chapter is a description of how Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu fell down in front of the Simha-dvara gate of Jagannatha temple, His bones separated at the joints, and how various transcendental symptoms awakened.
Sri Caitanya-caritamrita: Antya-lila 20.124
Caitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534)
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