Raimundo Panikkar
Man as a Ritual Being Ritual is neither accidental nor incidental to the more important concerns of life. Rather it has a central claim upon the shaping of our lives and upon the construction and re-creation of our world. PROLOG UK A FABLE
Once upon a time there "was" a Man. Unlike "primitive" Man, this Man had lived consciously for millenia. He had outlived his history, and had all the data and riches of the world at his disposal, but he seemed to have no hope. He could not bear to look toward the future any longer. He remembered too well. He remembered the fiasco of all kinds of "progress," and the failure of every sort of "humanism" to free Men from their own inhumanity. Wars~ revolu¡ tions and violence had upset him, and resolved nothing. All the sophisticated gadgets of human ingenuity had long since become boring and repetitious. And all the ex a 1ted achievements of the human spirit had not managed to fulfill even the most elementary human needs. And though he was "educated" and well-fed, millions were starving, victims of injustice. The Man felt troubled, uncertain-a future for him seemed unlikely to be bearable, his pres. ent he found quite uninhabitable, and his past he knew to be lost to him, irretrievably. He was only too conscious that he could not bring back the past, but he also knew that if he could bring it all back he would not want to live there either. He had constructed an entire world-view, which some would call ideology. He had thought about everything: he thought all thinkable things and found the impotence of reason along with the need for it. He could demonstrate the existence of God and could equally invalidate every proof; he could think of life as meaningful, but he could equally find arguments in favor of its meaninglessness. He could imagine technology 5