美食祈祷与恋爱意大利文化 《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 46 (97):与神邂逅

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 46 (97):与神邂逅  

To understand what that experience was
what happened in there (by which I mean both "in the meditation cave" and "in me") brings up a topic rather esoteric and wild—namely
the subject of kundalini shakti.
Every religion in the world has had a subset of devotees who seek a direct
transcendent experience with God
excusing themselves from fundamentalist scriptural or dogmatic study in order to personally encounter the divine. The interesting thing about these mystics is that
when they describe their experiences
they all end up describing exactly the same occurrence. Generally
their union with God occurs in a meditative state
and is delivered through an energy source that fills the entire body with euphoric
electric light. The Japanese call this energy ki
the Chinese Buddhists call it chi
the Balinese call it taksu
the Christians call it The Holy Spirit
the Kalahari Bushmen call it n/um (their holy men describe it as a snakelike power that ascends the spine and blows a hole in the head through which the gods then enter). The Islamic Sufi poets called that God-energy "The Beloved
" and wrote devotional poems to it. The Australian aborigines describe a serpent in the sky that descends into the medicine man and gives him intense
otherworldly powers. In the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah this union with the divine is said to occur through stages of spiritual ascension
with energy that runs up the spine along a series of invisible meridians.
Saint Teresa of Avila
that most mystical of Catholic figures
described her union with God as a physical ascension of light through seven inner "mansions" of her being
after which she burst into God's presence. She used to go into meditative trances so deep that the other nuns couldn't feel her pulse anymore. She would beg her fellow nuns not to tell anyone what they had witnessed
as it was "a most extraordinary thing and likely to arouse considerable talk." (Not to mention a possible interview with the Inquisitor.) The most difficult challenge
the saint wrote in her memoirs
was to not stir up the intellect during meditation
for any thoughts of the mind—even the most fervent prayers—will extinguish the fire of God. Once the troublesome mind "begins to pose speeches and dream up arguments
especially if these are clever
it will soon imagine it is doing important work." But if you can surpass those thoughts
Teresa explained
and ascend toward God
"it is a glorious bewilderment
a heavenly madness
in which true wisdom is acquired." Unknowingly echoing the poems of the Persian Sufi mystic Hafiz
who demanded why
with a God so wildly loving
are we not all screaming drunks
Teresa cried out in her autobiography that
if these divine experiences were mere madness
then "I beseech you
Father
let us all be mad!"
最具神祕主义色彩的天主教人物圣女大德兰，其描述与神的结合是一种具体的上升光线，其穿越生命中的七个“心房”后，突然让她看见神的存在。她经常深陷于禅坐的恍惚状态，以致其他修女完全无法摸到她的脉搏。她请求修女朋友们切勿将她们看见的事说出去，因为这是一件“很不寻常的事，可能引发议论”（还可能被宗教法官接见）。这位圣徒在回忆录中写到，最困难的挑战，是在冥想之际，切勿挑动思维，因为脑子里的任何想法——即使是最热诚的祷告——都会扑灭神的火焰。麻烦的脑袋一旦“开始构思演说，编造巧思辩论，很快就会以为自己做的工作很重要”。但你只要能超越这些想法，大德兰说道，爬升到神的顶端，“那可是一种光荣的迷惑，美妙的疯狂，足以让你从中取得真正的智慧”。波斯苏菲神祕主义者哈菲兹（Hafiz）问道，神既然慈爱得疯狂，我们何不每个人都成为尖声叫嚷的醉汉。大德兰并未意识到与哈菲兹的呼求相呼应；她在自传中呼唤，这些神性的体验若纯粹是疯狂之举，那么，“我求求你，圣父，让我们都发狂吧！”
Then
in the next sentences of her book
it's like she catches her breath. Reading Saint Teresa today
you can almost feel her ing out of that delirious experience
then looking around at the political climate of medieval Spain (where she lived under one of the most re-pressive religious tyrannies of history) and soberly
dutifully
apologizing for her excitement. She writes
"Five me if I have been very bold
" and reiterates that all her idiot babbling should be ignored because
of course
she is just a woman and a worm and despicable ver-min
etc.
etc. You can almost see her smoothing back her nun's skirts and tucking away those last loose strands of hair—her divine secret a blazing
hidden bonfire.