Abhishiktananda’s Theology of Awakening Fausto Gianfreda, S.J. Abstract: The author examines the thought of the French Benedictine theologian Henri Le Saux, He went to India and, after a life-changing experience of advaita—the nonduality of ultimate reality—Le Saux took the Sanskrit name Abhishiktananda and proceeded to explore in his many writings the relationship between Hindu and Catholic accounts of spiritual practice and the nature of the divine. He wrote of the necessity of Christian advaita and identified as the ideal Jesus’ constant awareness of being one with God. He urged priests to become spiritual teachers who could “lead souls to an awakening of the Father in Christ.”
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1. Introduction
bhishiktananda (the French Benedictine Henri Le Saux, 1910–73) was a true theologian. The words he spoke were born of the silence of contemplation. He criticized Christian theology and its effort to speculate on and systematize deep mysteries. Nevertheless, in his books about the relationship between Christian faith and Hinduism, he tried to explain the meaning of his own spiritual journey. His diary is full of theological reflections on the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Church and the sacraments. In trying to explain—first of all to himself and then to others—the results of his spiritual research, he developed his own Christian theology in dialogue with his experience of Hinduism. Abhishiktananda wrote twelve books, many articles and thousands of letters. His Spiritual Diary is a testimony to his struggles, contradictions and tensions. Marie-Madeleine Davy writes of the mystical contradiction of a man who belonged to silence and at the same time wrote about his experience: Henri Le Saux celebrated silence by means of words, in the manner of Simeon the Theologian, whose writings seem prolific in the extreme, or in the manner of Meister Eckhart, who scolded theologians for talking ISSUE
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too much, but who did not fail to speak passionately and at great length himself.1 Abhishiktananda was a theologian because of his training, but also because of his personality: He wrote because it was impossible for him to keep to himself what he had learned during his eremitic life. All who knew him, whether they were traveling or living in India, were unanimous in describing the force of the light in his countenance, which had the quality of transfiguration. All alike mentioned the ease with which he spoke to them.2 In his writings, Abhishiktananda proposed a theology based on spiritual experience as an expression of one’s own profound inner experience. He maintained that this new theology should start from the experience of the Self, in a symbiosis between the advaitic (nondual) experience and the contemplation of the Trinity: What we really need in the Church as a whole, and especially in the Indian Church, is a theology which meditates on the mysteries of the Christian faith, no longer as mere concepts—after the fashion inherited from the Greeks—but by starting directly from the experience of the Self which is at the centre of every Indian theological and spiritual tradition. . . . It must however never be lost sight of that such theology will never grow out of a mere confrontation between the data of Christian theology and those of Hindu Philosophy. A valuable result can only emerge from an inner symbiosis within the human heart between the advaitic experience of self-awareness and the contemplation of the blessed Trinity at the very source of the soul.3 In this paper I want to point out how Jesus’ awareness of being with God was central to Abhishiktananda’s theology. Jesus’ consciousness seems to be the central point of a Christian theology of awakening in which all the mysteries of Christian faith are described in the light of advaitic experience. Advaitic awakening helps Abhishiktananda to reconceive his Christian faith experience from a transcendental point and brings new light to the future of the Church’s mission. 2. The Advaita Experience Abhishiktananda wrote that “the confrontation between Christianity and Vedanta has been at the centre of my life since the caves of Arunāchala.”4 Arunāchala is one of the most sacred mountains in India and is identified with Śiva, the Supreme Lord. Abhishiktananda visited Arunāchala in
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January 1948 and had the darśan (vision) of Ramana Maharshi, who was a celebrated sannyāsi (renunciate) with a unique God-realization in the path of advaita. Emmanuel Vattakuzhy states: Arunachala is Swamiji’s [Abhishiktananda’s] spiritual birthplace. There he awakened to the mystery of non-duality (advaita) and received the initiations of interiority, deep Christ experience, Christian saccidananda [oneness with the] divine presence, and contemplation. There he laid the foundation for his Hindu-Christian spirituality and for his future theological enterprises. There he was truly born “as an Indian Christian sannyāsi.5 In 1955, Abhishiktananda met guru Gñānānanda in his Ashram at Tapōvanam, where he received spiritual initiation to Vedantic life and Upaniṣadic teaching. After spending three weeks with Gñānānanda, Abhishiktananda wrote: Here for a fortnight with my Guru. I have been totally “caught.” . . . People prostrate before him with a veneration which fills their whole heart, and at his feet they feel close to him, enveloped in his fatherly affection and animated towards him with childlike love and trust. . . . If that man were to ask me tomorrow to set out on the roads naked and silent like Sadāshiva Brahman, I would be unable to refuse. The mysterious ways of Providence! . . . What will come of it all? In him I have felt the truth of advaita.6 In the Indian tradition, meeting a guru is the essential moment on the path of realization. It is in the intimacy of the guru-disciple relationship that one is initiated into Upaniṣadic teaching. The word upanishad is derived from upa (near), ni (down) and ṣad (to sit). Groups of pupils sit near the teacher to learn from him the truth by which ignorance is destroyed. Abhishiktananda states: Advaita remains forever incomprehensible to him who has not first lived it existentially in his meeting with the guru. What the guru says springs from the very heart of the disciple. It is not that another person is speaking to him. It is not a question of receiving from outside oneself new thoughts which are transmitted through the senses. When the vibrations of the master’s voice reach the disciple’s ear and the master’s eyes look deep into his, then from the very depths of his being, from the newly discovered cave of his heart, thoughts well up which reveal him to himself. What does it matter what words the guru uses? Their whole power lies in the hearer’s inner response to them. Seeing or listening to ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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the guru the disciple comes face to face with this true self in the depth of his being, an experience every man longs for, even if unconsciously. When all is said and done, the true guru is he who, without the help of words, can enable the attentive soul to hear the “Thou art that,” Tattvam-asi of the Vedic rishis; and this true guru will appear in some outward form or other at the very moment when help is needed to leap over the final barrier.7 The Upaniṣads hold that the ātman cannot be attained by mere thought or argumentation, but only when it is revealed by a competent guru. In Katha Upaniṣad 2.8.9 it is written: Though one may think a lot, it is difficult to grasp when it is taught by an inferior man. Yet one cannot gain access to it, unless someone else teaches it. For it is smaller than the size of an atom, a thing beyond the realm of reason. One can’t grasp this notion by argumentation; yet it’s easy to grasp when taught by another.8 Abhishiktananda wrote that the guru and the disciple live a nondual reciprocity: The guru and the disciple form a couple, a pair, of which the two elements attract one another and adhere to one another. As with the two poles, they exist only in relationship to one another . . . a pair on the road to unity . . . a non-dual reciprocity in the final realization.9 3. A Christian Advaita During his journey, Abhishiktananda tried to understand and to interpret his awareness according to the idioms and categories of Christian theology, to deepen his Christian faith experience in the light of advaita. He tries to express advaita in reference to the relationship between God and the creature: “Advaita means precisely this: neither God alone, nor the creature alone, nor God plus the creature, but an indefinable non-duality which transcends at once all separation and all confusion.”10 In a letter of 1954 to Fr. Joseph Lemarié, he writes: Sometimes perhaps I can glimpse a way in which, while being entirely true to advaita, I might try to penetrate to the divine mystery (the Trinity) in itself; I do not yet see how to penetrate to the mystery of the Embodied, to use the Gita’s term. That will certainly come, for us or for the others, and must come, as only so will Indian thought have integrated the mystery of the Incarnation and the associated mystery of creation.
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. . . We have to work out a Christian advaita, and you know now what that means; we shall not come to that by exploding advaita at the outset on the ground of its incompatibility. We have to strive to be faithful to advaita to the end. Only a heroic fidelity will make it possible, in God’s own time, to transcend it. . . . Not mutilation, but sublimation.11 Abhishiktananda thought that the future of the Church and its true catholicity—its claim to the universality of the salvation—depended on its ability to integrate advaitic experience: The integration of the advaitic experience into his own faith is for the Christian a necessary task. Christianity presents itself to the world as the supreme message from God to mankind, as possessing the definitive word in which God has revealed all that can be told of the divine life and love. If the Church’s claim is true, then it follows that whatever men have found that is true, beautiful and good both can and should be integrated into Christian experience. There is in fact nothing in man or the universe that could be beyond the reach of the moving or “breathing” of the Spirit. . . . If Christianity should prove to be incapable of assimilating Hindu spiritual experience from within, Christians would thereby at once lose the right to claim that it is the universal way of salvation. Christianity could not be “another” peak of spiritual experience alongside that of Vedanta, nor could its way of salvation be “another” parallel way. In their claim to be ultimate, Christianity and advaita are mutually exclusive. And yet, in its own sphere, the truth of advaita is unassailable. If Christianity is unable to integrate it in the light of a higher truth, the inference must follow that advaita includes and surpasses the truth of Christianity and that it operates on a higher level than that of Christianity. There is no escape from this dilemma.12 It was his conviction that advaita can purify Christians from their self-centeredness and, at the same time, allow them to rediscover in theology the way of negation. Such a theology could be useful in saving one’s reflections on the Trinity from the opposite extremes of tritheism, the belief in three distinct Gods, and modalism, the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three different aspects of one God: Advaita is not so much a challenge to Christian faith as a relentless reminder that God—and therefore also the acts of God—can never be wholly contained in our concepts. It is a healthy and permanently necessary reminder of the importance of the “way of negation.” It condemns, and at the same time frees us from, the idolatry of the intellect, in which our laziness and pride perpetually threaten to engulf us. It rejects the ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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self-satisfied, characteristically bourgeois reliance on institutions and rites which, however indispensable and sacramentally effective they may be, nevertheless are only signs. It delivers us from our very human tendency to transform the ineffable mystery of the Trinity into a kind of refined tritheism, or at the other extreme into simple modalism, despite the theoretical orthodoxy of our credal statements. It also frees us from the temptation somehow to “add up” God and ourselves, his creatures, on the grounds that we are not God—thus falling into a dualism no less contrary to the faith than monism.13 According to Abhishiktannanda’s experience, Christian advaita means that there is a nonduality which transcends at once all separation and all confusion between God and the creature. Christians have to experience that God is in the center of their souls. Through the awareness of this inner presence of God it is possible to discover God in everything: In the blinding light of this experience there is no conceivable place for any kind of differentiation; there is nothing but a-dvaita, “not-two” The Christian also is no doubt aware that God is in him and not merely that he comes to him (John 14:23; Revelation 3:20), and that the very center of his soul is God’s dwelling-place. He likewise knows that God is in all things; and in order to meet God, he seeks to plunge deep within himself and within all things, in pursuit of his own and their final secret.14 The Christian has to seek for the “apex” of the soul, where he is an “I” saying “Thou” to his God. But going deeper in himself, he realizes that his “I” is submerged in the one “I AM”: All is up with him; soon there will no longer be any I to be conscious of any experience whatever, still less to be aware that all possible experiences are now finished. No one remains to say, “I have reached the plane of the Absolute”—still less to say: “I have passed beyond, lost myself.” Nothing is left, apart from that consciousness itself, pure and unalloyed.15 4. Salvation as Self-Awakening Abhishiktananda was convinced that the fundamental duty of every human being is to enter into his own ātman. Only in self-awakening (ātmasāksātkāra) can the human being meet God. Here is his salvation. Awakening is a nondual presence to the Presence. The mystery of the Presence is to be understood as the very presence of God to himself:
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And if finally the soul turns back on herself and tries to find within herself this Presence which fills the universe, then the farther she penetrates, the more deeply she finds the abyss opening before her. She looks for some foothold where she can hold on and catch her breath. But irresistibly, remorselessly the abyss draws her; she slips, loses her footing, is swept away and is lost to herself. She struggles to find some little recess from which she might at least contemplate this Presence, just space enough to kneel, prostrate and adore, if only for a moment, . . . but there is nothing left in her which is not already completely filled with this Presence—“Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). Within her no place remains where she might independently pronounce her “I.” Before she can even breathe her own “I,” the abyss has already resounded with the “I” which God addresses to himself from all eternity.16 The awakening happens in the “cave of the heart.” According Abhishiktananda, it is necessary to go to the deepest recesses of the human spirit, where alone a man is really himself: As the Spirit reveals himself in that “cave of the heart” which so deeply fascinates India, he progressively enables the soul to perceive the mysteries still unrevealed in herself and in him. In unveiling for man the secret of God, he reveals the last secret of man’s own being, the secret that his own origin lies deep within God’s infinite love.17 The expression “cave of the heart” is taken from the Upaniṣads. In Chāndogya Upaniṣad 8,1,1–2 it is written: Now, here in this fort of brahman there is a small lotus, a dwelling-place, and within it, a small space. In that space there is something—and that’s what you should try to discover, that’s what you should seek to perceive.” If they ask him: “Yes, here in this fort of brahman there is a small lotus, a dwelling-place, and within it, a small space. But what is there in that space that we should try to discover, that we should seek to perceive?”—he should reply: “As vast as the space here around us is this space within the heart, and within it are contained both the earth and the sky, both fire and wind, both the sun and the moon, both lightning and stars. What belongs here to this space around us, as well as what does not—all that is contained within it.18 According to Abhishiktananda, awakening to Self is the same as being present in the Presence. In the deepest place of the heart there is “I AM,” and it is in this “I AM” that the human being awakens to himself.19
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5. Jesus’ Awareness The mystery of Jesus’ awareness is the center of Abhishiktananda’s theology. He was convinced that exploring the specificity and the originality of Jesus’ consciousness would give access to the mystery of the Trinity and to the mystery of human beings at the same time. His advaita experience pushed him to interpret the mission of Jesus in terms of the mystery of the Self. Jesus responded to the call of the Self, which is the Father, and in doing so, he embodied the awakening of every human being: One senses that the continual recollection of the Father underlies Jesus’ consciousness at every moment. He cannot think of himself without being aware of his Father at the very source of this thought of himself; and equally the awareness which he had of himself simply as a man seems to lead him irresistibly to the thought and awareness of the Father deep within, deeper than his own I, the Father from whom he comes and to whom he goes. St Paul taught that in the heart of believers the Spirit ceaselessly murmurs the words “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6). There is no doubt that this invocation had already been for Jesus, in whom the Spirit dwelt in all fullness, the very word in which he delighted to pour out his own soul. It could well express the primal yearning at the innermost centre of his being. In some sense it could well be the inner source from which arose the whole of his prayer to the Father, all his love for the Father and for mankind, the inspiration of all that he ever said or did.20 Here the advaita experience points out the greatness and uniqueness of Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man. It is in Jesus, the incarnate Word, God from God, Man-God, that the inner mystery of the Father is revealed to men. No human experience without Christ can attain such revelation. Only the Man-God bridges the abyss between the human intellect and the Mystery of the Father. In the Incarnation, the Supreme Self became a creature. The Christian advaitin is invited to enter the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the trans-advaitic mystery, through Jesus, the unique revealer. The uniqueness of Jesus is above any human experience; Abhishiktananda says that “the mystery of Jesus overflows all the experience called prophetic as well as the experience called Vedantic.”21 Jesus is the unique mediator who embodies the mystery of advaita. The center of Jesus’ revelation is in the Gospel according to John: “Father and I are one” (John 10:30). This revelation exceeds both Hebrew and Hindu experiences:
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If the prophetic face-to-face with God obtained in the consciousness of Jesus is a reality that no prophet could have divined, in the depth of his heart there also opened a guha [a cave] that no Upaniṣad would have ever been able to penetrate—for in the depth of the heart of Christ there is the bosom of the Father.22 Through Jesus’ revelation, human beings can deeply know the Father’s name and his love: Again, at the deepest level of his human consciousness, underlying all his activity, all he said and did, there appears that secret and inexpressible relationship that he has with God. He calls God his father, and that in a sense that no Jew had ever done before. To reveal the Father is the heart of his message, the purpose of his mission in the world. He has come on the earth to make known to men the Father’s name and to proclaim his infinite love. He himself is born from the Father, and has come down from heaven to obey his command and complete his work.23 According to Abhishiktananda, it was a case of nonduality that exceeded the usual formulation of adavitic experience: Jesus himself does not seem ever to have felt any of the anguish that mystics of every tradition so often feel when confronted with the infinity of God. He never felt that the “You” which he addressed to the Father separated him in any way from God. To be from God and to be one with God, in the depths of Jesus’ consciousness: these were essentially and quite naturally one. They were not successive moments in an experience which could be measured in length of time, nor did they indicate the different levels at which a unique experience would manifest itself in differing ways. Rather it was a case of non-duality—in the proper sense of the word—between his experience of oneness with, and his experience of otherness from, God is Father. That reason should baulk at this is not surprising. Nevertheless Jesus’ testimony still stands and cannot be evaded. The experience of the Absolute to which India’s mystical tradition bears such powerful witness is all included in Jesus’ word: “My Father and I are one”. . . . The conclusion is inescapable: the experience of Jesus includes the advaitic experience, but it certainly cannot be reduced to the commonly accepted formulation of that experience.24 All human beings, according to Abhishiktananda, are called to share in Jesus’ awareness of unity with the Father. Self-awakening is the way to the fullness of human life, because only through it can the person realize himself in the Trinity: “Every man who awakes to himself is therefore ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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called to share in the experience of Jesus as the Son and to sing with him to the Father the ‘Abba’ which fills eternity.”25 Because of the communication by Jesus of his Spirit, the Christian is admitted to the final secret of the fullness of God, where the Christian discovers the fullness and truth of his or her own being. In this way, the Christian shares in the “filial” consciousness of Jesus, the Word incarnate. In communicating the Spirit to us, Jesus communicates all that he has received from the Father, the intimacy of communion and love: “By giving himself, Jesus gives the Spirit; by giving the Spirit, he introduces man for ever into the life of God; he makes him to be.”26 When human beings receive the Spirit of Jesus, they acquire the right to address God as the Father, which is the expression of sonship: If, as non-Christians maintain, Jesus is only a man, then whatever natural endowments he possesses must necessarily be available to every man. And if he is the Son of God, as Christians believe, then they must not forget that, according to their faith, Jesus shares with them by grace all that he possesses by right of his divine Sonship.27 The Holy Spirit leads the Christian into the inner communion of the Trinity. The Christian experience is the Trinitarian experience, the experience of Jesus himself in which, through him, all are called to participate: If the Word is God, we cannot say two (in a numerical sense) of him and the Father; there is no place left for any division, duality, dvaita of any kind. But if the Word is with God, then God is not a mere monad either. Such is the glory ((doxa doxa)) that the Son possessed before the world doxa was (John 17:3) in communion with the Father. It is this essential doxology which the Son became man to teach mankind: he called them to share in this glory, provided only that they are ready to follow him and with him to pass through death and resurrection. This glory is at once communion and undivided unity; it is of necessity given, received and ceaselessly returned, in an eternal exchange in the non-duality of the Spirit at the heart of Being.28 By participating in Jesus’ experience, the Christian knows the mystery of nonduality. Here, in Christ, he realizes himself as son of the Father and is enabled to call God with the same word Jesus used: It is in this very presence of the Son to the Father, in this non-dual depth of the One and the Other, in which their reciprocal gaze wells up, that the soul finally recovers itself individually, in the incommunicability that is proper to it, in the irreplaceableness of its vocation, of its pre-destination,
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of the “doxology” that it is—that the soul hears pronounced its new name, its true name, of which the one given to it by humans or that which it tried to discover in the depth of its consciousness are nothing else but pale reflections. Now it is in total truth that in this Presence the soul can indeed cry: Abba, my Father; Eloi, my God.29 By receiving the Spirit, humans receive eternal life, which is the reason of Incarnation of the Son of God. This life consists in knowing the Father, living the advaita experience in the Spirit: As the Gospel says, Christ has come to earth so that men may have life; and the only genuine way—that which never ends—is that of knowing the Father and of being known by Him, in the bosom of the eternal IThou of the only begotten Son, in the unity of the Spirit.30 The Spirit of Jesus works in the human heart by opening it to others. With the Spirit, the Christian receives the love of Trinitarian communion: The mission of the Spirit does not involve communication at the level of sensation or thought, but aims at opening up the innermost centre of the heart. It effects the summing up of all in unity and love, as man awakes to God, and in God to all others, at the centre of himself. The mission of the Spirit is to release the fountain of love which is latent in every human heart, to bring about that communion which manifests and pours forth on all the love of the Father and the grace of the Lord (2 Corinthians 13:13).31 The mystery of God’s love in Jesus Christ regards all of creation. The awakening aroused by the Spirit of Jesus in the ultimate recesses of the self is in secret relationship with all of creation. At such a moment the creation is brought to fulfillment in the mystery of the human person who is enabled by the Holy Spirit to respond to God’s love: “Taken in all its amplitude, the mystery of Christ is in fact this awakening of the Son to the Father in the heart of men, and in the bosom of all creation.”32 6. The Advaita of God It is by realizing the mystery of Trinity within himself that man knows his being in the image of God. Man is created and lives in Christ; therefore he is called by the Father and in the innermost depth of his being he can, through the Spirit, live the mystery of the communion between the Father and the Son: ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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The Trinity, unfortunately, is too often presented to the Christian as an abstract concept, whereas it is the most concrete and most immediate reality that exists. But man must undergo the inmost experience of this reality of faith. He must discover in his own depth this reciprocal interiority of God and self. Indeed man was created in the image of God, of the Triune God. It is necessary that man discover himself ineffably, at one and the same time, as being of God and in God, on the model of the Son in whom he was created and in whom he lives. It is necessary that he know, beyond all thought and all feeling, that the Father calls him, in the eternal call of the Son, in the oneness of the Spirit.33 In this experience of self-awakening, the Christian realizes the Spirit as the advaita of God, that is to say, the love between the Father and the Son: “In Indian terms one can very well call the Holy Spirit ‘the advaita of God’, the mystery of the non-duality of the Father and the Son, and in the final consummation, the inexpressible communion of all in one.”34 Humans are called to experience the depth of Being. According to Abhishiktananda, the Spirit leads the whole Reality towards the communion of Being. He brings all creation into the unity of God. The Spirit is the inner dynamism of the cycle of Being. The creation is the self-expression of God’s love. God, through his self-gift, manifests himself in creating and calls man to respond to his love. Through the response of the human person, all creation returns to God. The Incarnate Word is the supreme realization of this response, which is the awakening to the advaita between Father and Son. The Spirit of Jesus makes himself known in the cave of the heart and leads man to inwardness, where the Spirit awakens him to the essential communion of Being. In this way, according to Abhishiktananda, man contemplates within himself the mystery of the Trinity and realizes that the Being is essentially a koinōnia (advaita) of love. In this co-esse of the Trinity, where Being is a threefold movement in a core of nonduality, the whole creation is united and integrated. According to Abhishiktananda, the mystery of the Trinity in the deepest level of man’s interiority is what Hinduism calls saccidananda. This word, which to advaitins designates the Absolute, consists of three parts: sac (sat, to be); cid (cit, consciousness) and ananda (bliss). In Upaniṣadic insight, sat is the act of existing. Abhishiktananda explains sat as follows: The origins of the Sanskrit term saccidananda are very ancient. Even in the Upaniṣads primitive forms of it are found, and for many hundreds of years it has been accepted in the spiritual vocabulary of India as one of the best symbols for the innermost mystery of God himself, so far at
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least as man is capable of stammering about it. But equally it signifies the mystery of the divine presence in the innermost sanctuary of man’s being. God’s presence to himself and his presence to me——these two mysteries cannot be separated, as the presence is at the same time twofold and also unique, as Indian sages have well understood.35 Just so, all that I can truly say of God is simply that “He is.” This is what was revealed to Moses at Horeb, and it was also realized intuitively by the rishis: “It is only by saying ‘He is’ that one may reach him! (Katha Upaniṣad 6, 12). “He is”—nothing more can be said of him. He simply is, because he is. When my consciousness is pure enough to give a perfect reflection, then pure being, sat, mysteriously and inexorably reveals itself in me in its utter simplicity; indeed, it not merely discloses itself to me, but it also takes me up into its own simplicity and absoluteness. It makes me realize that my very being and existence is nothing other than its own being and existence.36 Cit is consciousness: I am, and I can know that I am. This is the whole mystery of the human consciousness, the cit of Hindu tradition. Indeed, from the beginning nature contained within itself the potentiality of this self-awareness, which acted as a hidden force in promoting the development of the cosmic process. Finally in man the universe attained to self-awareness, the presence of the self to itself, in which alone sat becomes luminous and resplendent (if one may put it so) within itself.37 Ananda (bliss) is the inexpressible sense of peace, joy and fullness: For St Gregory of Nyssa the yardstick of man’s blessedness is the extent of his resemblance to God. Bliss is to gain access to the Original through beholding the image in the mirror of a pure heart. So also for India’s seers, bliss is to arrive at the final secret of the self, at the very point where man returns again to his Source and there discovers his own ultimate truth. When indeed pure self-awareness has been sufficiently realized, it is as if the whole being were flooded with an inexpressible sense of completion, peace, joy and fullness, the ananda of Hindu tradition.38 7. The Church According to Abhishiktananda, Christian experience is the epiphany of the experience of the Self. Therefore the Church has to allow human beings their awakening to the mystery of saccidananda: ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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The Church—that is, all those who are already awakened to Christ—as a humble servant of God and of his children, has to seek ways of leading each man through his own actual environment to an authentic awakening, that is, to a conversion, a metanoia, at the very source of his being.39 The Church is the Body of Christ, the continuation of Christ on Earth. It is not merely a social structure but is essentially a spiritual reality. It is founded on Jesus’ own experience and therefore has to transmit through all ages and all people the inner experience of Jesus. Finally, it is the communion of those who have realized the advaita experience of Jesus: But before all else, this signifies that the Church is primordially—beyond her manifestation on the mental and sociological planes—the very mystery of the Presence, lived among men gathered in the koinonia (communion) of the Spirit. Her veritable reason for being is to awaken them to it. The aim of evangelization is not, in the first place, to bind the peoples to a visible institution through which the communion of the Spirit is manifested socially, nor to make them accept the words and the notions through which a given tradition has formulated the experience of the Father that was made by Jesus Christ and such as it was shared by the apostles. Rather, the aim is to disclose in their hearts this experience of the divine I-Thou which is there waiting to be revealed, and to make it fully and really present to themselves, to God and to their fellow human beings.40 Abhishiktananda criticized a Church that is concerned only with the external aspects of her mission. According to him, the Church has to be a spiritual force which inculcates the values of contemplation in order to transform human beings’ lives from within. Her main and genuine vocation is to witness to the mystery of Trinitarian advaita: The whole of missionary work consists in placing man face-to-face with God by placing him face-to-face with Christ. That happens when a non-believer, upon meeting a Christian, recognizes in him or her the radiance of what we have called the I-Thou of the correlative Presence of the Father and of the Son.41 The priest should be like a guru. Instead of being a social reformer or a teacher, he should show the true way that leads to Christian advaita experience. His task is not merely verbal proclamation of the Gospel but living the good news in the midst of the world:
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The essential ministry in the Church is, consequently, the ministry of Presence. All the ministries are rooted in Christ, conformed to Him, and receive their value and their plenary efficacy from Him. In this age of secularization, there is a great temptation for the ministers of the Church to emulate lay persons and thereby give priority to worldly matters such as economic and political problems. However, they have been ordained for a specific spiritual ministry. In India, for example, Christian priests may not try either to become a kind of pandit or priest attached to the temple, nor may they compete with the technicians of all kinds who work on developmental projects. However, they may choose to be, in the manner of the sannyasis (“renouncing” monks) of earlier times and of today, the manifest sign among men of the Presence of the Spirit in the world.42 To show others the way of Jesus’ awareness, priests have to be truly contemplative men, without selfish or worldly motivation. “They must be such as to be immediately recognizable as gurus—that is to say, as awakened human beings and, consequently, able to awaken others in turn.”43 Abhishiktananda is convinced that the world awaits the priest who understands the role of the spiritual teacher as the Hindu tradition understands it, that is, as one who communicates an experience rather than one who teaches doctrines. Such a priest will be able to lead souls to an awakening to the Father in Christ, in the love of the Spirit. 8. Conclusion Abhishiktananda was not a systemathic theologian. He did not fully work out a theology. Nevertheless, his theoretical books are mature theological works. Saccidananda, in which the mystery of the Trinity is explored through advaitic experience, is certainly a masterpiece. Abhishiktananda’s theology is a reflection upon his intense spiritual activity. Its starting point is the experience of God. This teaching holds great promise for the future of theology. Theology cannot be an intellectual exercise. It must escape from mere conceptualism and abstract speculation. Patristic theology teaches that the formulation of Christian truths is accomplished through the grace of the Spirit in dialogue with the cultural context in which the Gospel is announced. Theology needs a full immersion both in prayer and in its social context. Abhishiktananda immersed himself totally in Hinduism, living as a poor man among poor people. He traveled, went on pilgrimages, met people of different nationalities and faiths. He lived in solitude and went ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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in search of a guru to learn about advaitic tradition. With a little Sanskrit he was able to study the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upaniṣads. This paper has pointed out how deeply Abhishiktananda looked into the mysteries of Christian faith in relationship to advaitic experience. The quest for the Self pushed him to reflect upon self-awakening as the key point of a new theology. In the vision of Abhishiktananda, the HinduChristian encounter must be read in reference to the Self-awakening of Jesus. The fundamental experience of Jesus (I AM) is, according to Abhishiktananda, the essential intuition of advaita. Jesus’ awareness of being one with God is the fundamental experience of every man who receives the Spirit of Jesus. This is the Christian advaita. Looking at Jesus’ consciousness, it is possible to intuit the correlation between the Christian mysteries and the advaitic perspective. The importance of penetrating Jesus’ self-consciousness is confirmed by Jacques Dupuis, who states: Thus, a penetration of Jesus’ self-consciousness, or, equivalently, his experience of God, is an indispensable theological task. The originality of the state of “awakening to God” experienced by Jesus, and the singularity of his concomitant self-awareness, must become the object of explanations and elucidations. The task is all more necessary and urgent in our particular context, where our concern is to establish a dialogue between Jesus’ and others’ experiences of God.44 In my opinion, this acknowledgement is more important than the criticism that Dupuis has made in his previous work, in which he expressed a conviction that Abhishiktananda failed in his attempt to solve the antinomies between Christian faith and Hindu advaita.45 Peter C. Phan states that, setting aside the difficulty of reconciling the Hindu and Christian conceptions, Abhishiktananda’s experience does not lose reality and validity: And yet this inability to reconcile theologically the advaita experience with various Christian doctrines did not diminish Abhishiktananda’s certitude of the reality and validity of his experience. He noted, not without enthusiasm: “The experience of the Upaniṣads is true—I know!”46 It is my conviction that there is something more interesting here. The legacy of Abhishiktananda is not only the validity of a spiritual experience. It is also a way of considering theology as rooted in spirituality, and an indication of a perspective in which it is possible to meditate on Christian mysteries in the light of the advaitic experience, that is to say, in light of the centrality of Jesus’ self-consciousness.
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Antony Kalliath, who attempts to understand Abhishiktananda with “theological sympathy,” acknowledges the worth of this perspective: “Abhishiktananda is of the opinion that Hindu-Christian meeting can take place in ‘Jesus Christ.’ Here the point de départ is significant in his vision.”47 Kalliath points out that Abhishiktananda’s credo in advaita as presented in the Upaniṣads, which began with his experience at Arunachala, takes place in the spectrum of Christian God-experience. This marks the difference between his Christian advaita and the advaita of Śankara. Thus Abhishiktananda’s advaita is not anti-Christian. It does not confuse the natural and supernatural orders. In particular, the adavita according to Upaniṣadic metaphysics transcends both pure monism and pure dualism and corresponds to the ontological tension between the two poles of Reality. According to Kalliath, Abhishiktananda assimilates Upaniṣadic advaita into his Christian faith-consciousness. At the same time, advaita changes his understanding of Christian experience and, consequently, Abhishiktananda speaks about the trans-advaita of Trinity and Love: Advaita helps him to understand his Christian faith experience from an unorthodox perspective—an atman perspective, implying the nuance of a new intensity and depth in the theological interpretation of the Christian God experience. It signifies that advaita introduces a new premise into his Christian self-understanding. So he looks beyond advaita in virtue of his Christian consciousness and speaks of a trans-advaita.48 Abhishiktananda, in understanding Upaniṣadic truth with a Christian nuance, conceives of God as the Supreme Unity, that is, the Self of God. The Self of God is the mystery of the processions in the Holy Trinity. It is this mystery that Abhishiktananda calls Saccidananda: However, he insists that this Supreme Unity is not an intellectual articulation but an experiential event in the ontological surge of being at the depth of man (atman). Man can only witness and live this Mystery. Abhishiktananda prefers to explain the internal life of Supreme Unity in the Indian symbol of saccidananda.49 In conclusion, Abhishiktananda, with his insertion of advaita into the Christian experience, founds Christian self-understanding in the transcendental point of God-experience whose condition of possibility is Jesus’ self-consciousness. It is Abhishiktananda’s conviction that advaita can lead the Church, through the atman, toward a conversion to the source, that is to say, Jesus’ experience (I AM). Finally, Abhishiktananda’s vision ISSUE 8, OCTOBER 2008
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suggests that the existential and experiential approach is a valid means of interreligious dialogue. Notes 1. Marie-Madeleine Davy, Henri Le Saux, Swami Abhishiktânanda: Le passeur entre deux rives (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997), 82. 2. Ibid. 3. Abhishiktananda, Saccidānanda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience (Delhi: ISPCK, 1974), xv. 4. James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda. His Life Told through His Letters (New Delhi: ISPCK, 1989), 271. 5. Emmanuel Vattakuzhy, Indian Christian Sannyasa and Swami Abhishiktananda (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1981), 75. 6. Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda, 100. 7. Abhishiktananda (Henry Le Saux, O.S.B.), Guru and Disciple (London: SPCK, 1974), 29–30. 8. Patrick Olivelle, ed., Upanishads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 236. See also Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.9.2-3. 9. Abhishiktananda, Guru and Disciple, 29. 10. Abhishiktananda, Hindu-Christian Meeting Point: Within the Cave of the Heart (Delhi: ISPCK, 1983), 98. 11. Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda, 79. 12. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 47–8. 13. Abhishiktananda, Hindu-Christian Meeting Point, 96–7. 14. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 63. 15. Ibid., 64. 16. Abhishiktananda, In Spirit and Truth: An Essay on Prayer and Life (Delhi: ISPCK, 1989), 7–8. 17. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 100. 18. Olivelle, Upanishads, 167. 19. Abhishiktananda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart, 329–30. 20. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 80–1. 21. Henri Le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda), The Eyes of Light (Denville, NJ: Dimensions Books, 1983), 32–3. 22. Ibid., 96–7. 23. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 80. 24. Ibid., 82. 25. Ibid., 92. 26. Ibid., 98. 27. Ibid., 83. 28. Ibid., 84–5. 29. Le Saux, The Eyes of Light , 99. 30. Ibid., 63. 31. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 99. 32. Le Saux, The Eyes of Light, 53. 33. Ibid., 117. 34. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda., 95.
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Ibid., 167. Ibid., 168. Ibid. Ibid., 170. Ibid., xiii. Le Saux, The Eyes of Light, 56. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 61–2. Ibid., 62. Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 269. See Jacques Dupuis, Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991). Peter C. Phan, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 75. Antony Kalliath, The Word in the Cave: The Experiential Journey of Swami Abhishiktananda to the Point of Hindu-Christian Meeting (New Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 1996), 346. Ibid., 376. Ibid., 377.
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