The structure of human being and the possibility of mystical experience A Thomistic view

The Structure of human being and the possibility of mystical experience. A thomistic view The psychological structure of human being can be seen as a potential for the mystical experience. In this psychological sense we expound the mystical testimony of Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) using the thomistic anthropological theory (whose terminology - to say the least - was used also by Teresa herself). Teresa says that it is the faculty of will which is occupied with loving in the mystical contemplation. Since the will is today usually understood rather as a capacity to make (and maintain) decisions, we have to interpret somehow the Teresian peculiar sentence. Thomistic theory permits us to conceive the will as the spiritual capacity to love. Moreover, Thomas Aquinas left us an account of the impact of will on the emotionality. The mystical experience does not remain only in purely spiritual sphere of the soul, it "overflows" in the sensual (emotional), even in the bodily area. Finally, the tomistic distinctions between imagination and intellection, between reasoning and intellection and between active and passive intellect allow us to explain how the intellect can be conceived as a capacity for the mystical knowledge