دار بيبليون
The Spirit of Prophecy in Yoga and Teresa of Avila’ (T A)
Notes from a lecture by Dr Lwiis Saliba on Zoom Wednesday 06/10/2021
Miraculous powers
Knowing the past and the future
Among the miraculous abilities mentioned by Patanjali is the ability of the yogi to know the immemorial past and the near and distant future, or to see both. In his spiritual path, he reaches the sanctuary of the supernatural abilities of the Siddhis.
Mechanism of the knowledge of the future
In the third chapter (the chapter on paranormal abilities), Patanjali quotes a sutra that gives the yogi the ability to know the past and the future. He says (Sutra 3/16): “The Samyama on the triple change produces knowledge of the past and the future”.
Samyama has been mentioned earlier and Patanjali himself gives a definition at the beginning of the third chapter. He says (Sutra 3/4): “Samyama (complete control) is the unification of the three (concentration, meditation and absorption) on one object”.
The yogis have explained this verse as follows: ‘The three, i.e. concentration, contemplation and samadhi. Concentration on a view leads to contemplation and to revealing a subtler level of that goal. This in turn leads to samadhi where the object is stripped of its delicate form and only its bare face remains.
This is complete control of the goal. And if the goal of contemplation is the contemplator himself, then in the deepest levels of contemplation he is stripped of his delicate form, which means that the contemplator, in the unity of the knower, the known and the knowing, retains only his abstract face, thus the Absolute, where the essence of all souls, manifests.
This, in short, is Samyama, so what is the threefold change? It is the whole of the changes of state, characteristics and symptoms. In the beginning, the yogi tries to fix his thought on one object until he succeeds in uniting his mind and the object, only to discover that both are of the same essence. In this way, the elements and objects of the senses lose their external forms and the yogi knows their characteristics and aspects.
As for Al-Biruni who, as we have indicated, is the oldest and the first to have translated the Yoga Sutras into a foreign language, he translates Sutra 3/16 as follows: “He who is accustomed and patient is rewarded with knowledge of the past, present and future”.
The first thing a regular practitioner obtains by practising yoga (habituation) and persevering is the ability to know the past and predict the future.
The power of prophecy is super true intuition.
The Shiva Samhita states that the yogi acquires the power of prophecy and knowledge of the esoteric sciences and its secrets. It is said in Sutra 5/66 of this basic yoga text: “The yogi knows what was, what is and what will be, and their causes. He even masters the unheard-of sciences with their secrets.
And in Sutra 3/54 of the same text (Shiva Samhita), we find an enumeration of the most important miraculous faculties possessed by the Yogi, and the knowledge of the future comes to the forefront: “The Yogi obtains the following abilities: 1 – To predict the future. 2 – To move as and where he wishes.
The ability to see and predict the future is not isolated from intuition. The correct intuition discussed in the previous chapter is perhaps the first to review the vision of the future and its premises.
The wise yogi discovers on his path, as Patanjali states, different levels of powers, including, in particular, the level of super-right intuition: Ritam Bhara Prajna (Intuition full of truths) and Ritam reveals to the yogi a number of subtle hidden and remote truths, including first of all the incidents that are happening and will happen. This is what St. John of the Cross, Theresa’s disciple and mentor, calls “the Spirit of Prophecy”.
This is, in short, what Yoga teaches about the ability to know and see the future, or the spirit of prophecy in St. John of the Cross’ term. What is this experience like in St Teresa of Avila?
The spirit of prophecy in Teresa
In several of her texts, she states that she has obtained, in contemplation, the grace to know the events to come, whether they are distant or close in time.
In the reports, she states, generalising: “There is nothing that has been given to me in meditation, even though the years have passed, that I have not seen fulfilled. And the things I see are so numerous that I have never begun to think about them without my mind proving incapable of doing so.
The Carmelite reformer seems to have made a habit of seeing future events. Although she summarises and generalises them in this report, she gives specific examples and lists facts in other writings.
Therese’s prophecies
In her autobiography she mentions some of her predictions and how she dealt with what she saw: “The Lord used to inform me of certain accidents three years before they happened, and others in the longer or shorter term. I always revealed it to my confessor and to my friend, a widow with whom I was allowed to talk.
And I knew it was her, she told the others, and they knew I was not lying.
So Teresa of Avila saw what was going to happen. Her confessor and her widowed friend knew about it, as did others who witnessed her true visions. Some of her prophecies concern Teresa’s monastery.
Our Saint goes on to tell us a specific prophecy, with details. It concerns her sister and her death. She says: “When one of my brothers-in-law died suddenly and I was in deep anguish because he had not been able to go to confession, I predicted in meditation that my sister would die the same death, so I had to go to her and see that she was prepared. I informed my confessor of the matter and he allowed me to go. My sister lived in a village and when I arrived, I started to enlighten her as much as possible on all the issues by informing her of the reason for my coming. I persuaded her to go to confession frequently and to take care of herself in any case. She acted on my advice. After four or five years of acquiring this habit and becoming aware of it accurately, she died alone, without anyone around her and without being able to confess.
So T A saw her sister die about four years before her own death and she continues to tell how she was able to save her soul and especially how she was constantly talking about her sister’s death throughout this period.
Therese concludes by recalling that she had told her friend (above) what she had seen and the friend was amazed at how the prophecy had been fulfilled in its entirety: “My friend, when my sister died, came to me upset, because she had seen that everything had been fulfilled.
Therese’s visions of the future abound and it would take a long time to list them all. Let us quote: “I saw the monasteries I would found in the future, as well as my administrative and spiritual activity in the monastery of the Incarnation”.
The vision of the hour of death in Yoga and in Teresa
We are taken by one of these visions. As she saw the death of her sister, she also saw her own death, she says: “I will die a saint and my body before burial will be covered with embroidered silk”.
The vision of death and the knowledge of its time are very important in Yoga. The time of death determines the course of life in the afterlife. A yogi spends most of his life preparing for the time of his death. The art of living in yoga is the art of dying’, as we have shown in one of our previous books. “Two important moments in life: now and the time of our death’.
There is a sutra in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra which teaches the yogi how to know the time of death (3/23): ‘Karma comes back quickly or slowly. By Samyama, or by vows, the knowledge of the time of death is obtained’.
Swami Vivekananda explains: ‘By Samyama, on the impressions now working in his mind and on those waiting to act, the yogi knows precisely when and how the body will cease to live’.
Thus both Patanjali and Teresa of Avila agree that meditation is a door through which the mysteries of life and death are revealed. One is struck by a phrase in T A which corresponds to the terms of yoga and the expressions of Patanjali. Teresa says: “Meditation is a royal door through which we discover God’s secrets, experience his wisdom, taste his happiness and inherit his glory.
Meditation is a royal door, says Teresa. Yoga regards meditation as its cornerstone and the basis of Raja Yoga, i.e. ‘royal yoga’ (raja: king).
The question is not limited to the similarity of effects, results and methods, for even the expressions and terms are almost identical.