The Coming Interspiritual--Archive Edition

a tiger from the zoo appears from beneath a canvas. As a young boy, he had eyeballed this tiger up close through zoo bars, when he had attempted to feed it by hand and been snatched away from the danger by his father. On that occasion he had seen in the tiger’s eyes a sentient creature —indeed, a soul—whereas his father saw only the potential of his young son’s demise as tiger prey.

The incident points to two very different ways of seeing reality. But what if both are true? What might this say about God? The tiger bears the name of Richard Parker. When the tiger becomes hungry, he’s once again a threat to Pi. So Pi now kills again, this time fish to feed the tiger. Pi’s face is being rubbed in the raw realities of everyday survival on this planet of ours.

Pi and Richard Parker are destined to be at sea together some 227 days. In time they achieve a standoff, guarded by the threat of mutual injury if not death, until the 450-pound Bengal tiger’s energy wanes as a result of thirst and its existence becomes endangered. Pi takes the noble creature’s head in his arms as he contemplates its seemingly imminent demise—an event averted by the unexpected discovery of a Pacific island.

Life of Pi introduces us to the concept that civility is ultimately far more deeply a part of our nature than the thin veneer of civilized behavior that can so easily be ruptured by a threat to our survival. It invites us to recognize a kinship in all creatures, a fundamental oneness that must ultimately undercut our barbarism and move us to a deeper sense of connection, manifest in a practical caring for each other in everyday reality—such as not cutting corners in electrical wiring codes in factories to make a buck.

Pi’s discovery of kinship with Richard Parker in an instant of recognition through the bars of the zoo must undergo a slow and treacherous unfolding in the days aboard their life raft. Isn’t this true of all our experiences of connectedness? It takes time for the surface recognition to deepen to its roots in our ultimate oneness.

Life of Pi suggests that the veneer of civilization which sustains a majority, while daily failing masses of humans, is in the final analysis thicker than water—thicker even than blood. It is rooted in a connectedness that is seeking to emerge in a growing consciousness of our ultimate oneness in God. The movie is advertised as “The Journey of a Lifetime,” with its double meaning including not only Pi’s journey at sea but also ours in daily life. The venture afloat on the ocean serves as a metaphor for what it takes for individuals with differences of creed and culture to recognize their common participation in a divinity that doesn’t intervene to calm the waters, but whose presence is nevertheless not absent even in life’s most violent, chaotic, raging storms.

The book and movie address the question of God. Is there a God? And if so, where is this God to be found? Pi began life as a young boy who wanted to get the flavor of a variety of different faiths. Why shouldn’t he draw from his Hindu background, Catholicism, and Islam? His father