I think that some who write about St. Teresa are not necessarily well-informed about her.
She is best understood by reading her works “The Way of Perfection”. It is hardly a primer for “out of the body experiences”; quite the contrary.
Are you aware that both St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross specifically warned against seeking or desiring mystical experiences? St. Teresa never “modeled out of the body experiences.”
It helps to know more about these people before expounding on them.
Provided here is a look into St. John of the Cross, the spiritual friend and co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites with St. Teresa:
” St. John tried to teach, in his writings how to live the virtues of faith, hope, love, Gospel simplicity in our work, joy, fleeing melancholy, exquisite attention to the sick, instructing people to read the Bible as a vehicle of the love of God, finding in it ‘edification, exhortation, and consolation’ (1Cor 14,3).
“Just as St. Teresa wrote of the practical daily chores of love, humility, prayer for one another, good example, care for one another, so thus said also St. John of the Cross, as he counseled that we keep our feet solid on earth, even as the heart soars heavenward.”
This is not of the school of eastern mysticism.
It’s unfortunate to inaccurately capsulize in a few derogatory sentences the life and writings of St. Teresa of Avila and by association all other great Carmelites who followed in her footsteps: such as St. Bendicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), martyr of Auschwitz, St. Therese of Lisieux , St. Teresa of the Andes, and St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.
It is mockery to call St. Teresa the “Benny Hinn of Carmelites” and someone who “today...would be locked up in a padded cell”.
"As Teresa's experience in prayer deepens in the years following her illness, she begins to receive various "divine favors." First, entering the third and fourth degrees of prayer-the prayer of union and the prayer of divine union-is itself counted as a supernatural gift.
Second, Teresa begins to experience visions and voices which instruct her in, among other things, the processes of her deepening spirituality.
A third favor Teresa calls by several names: rapture, elevation, flight, or transport of the spirit. In these experiences she leaves her body in some type of spirit-form and is taken usually to "heaven," where various theological and spiritual truths are revealed to her. However problematic Teresa's narratives of out-of-body experiences are to the Western intellect, she insists that they happened just as she describes them."
[In Chapter XXII of her Autobiography Teresa goes into great detail in explaining the superior grace and benefits of raptures or transports to higher levels, apparently outside the bodily domain, and how much more humility they produce in the soul than the earlier stages of prayer, including what she terms the prayer of union
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This IS EASTERN MYSTICISM ..it is not from the God of the Bible
Mysticism attempts to gain ultimate knowledge of God by a direct experience that bypasses the mind.The problem of course is the evil one is active in this realm and the deceiver can build one a god they like and will want to spend time with.