Abhishiktananda and the Challenge of Hindu-Christian Experience - 1

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Abhishiktananda and the Challenge of Hindu-Christian Experience

Dr. Bettina Baeumer

from Bulletin 64, May 2000

Page 1 of 2

 

I. Introduction

Following the Indian tradition I will start with a peace prayer—Shantimantra:

 

May He bless us, may He nourish us, may we together accomplish a powerful work,

may our study be full of vigor and light, May we love one another.

 

And the Indian tradition also pays respect to the Master at the beginning of any

spiritual enterprise:

 

I pay homage to the Master by whose grace the darkness of my ignorance has

vanished because he has opened my eyes by his knowledge.

 

Guru means here the Master in any form, divine or human, who fulfills this role

of opening our eyes, irrespective of his or her name or personal identity, and

who inspires us and gives us insight.

 

If we take Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) as model for the " challenge of

Hindu-Christian experience, " , there are several reasons. For one thing,

Abhishiktananda understood from the beginning of his encounter with Hindu

spirituality that it is not a question of entering into dialogue with

" another, " , but that there is an inner challenge within Christianity that is in

need of the spiritualities of Asia in order to overcome the deep crisis of

Western Christianity.

 

In the development of Abhishiktananda's life, experience and thought, we can

discover a process with different stages—from the convinced missionary with a

certain fulfillment theology to the stage of one who was shaken by a real

encounter with Hindu spirituality and torn apart by two experiences, two

" ultimates, " , two identities, two worlds of religious expression, and, in his

own words, " two loves, " from there to a third stage of relativizing all

formulations, all " names-and-forms, " , all concretizations of the one,

unspeakable, inexpressible Mystery, and, finally, to a stage of re-identifying

the " correspondences, " which he discovered at both ends of his experience in the

light of an " explosion, " of all previous concepts. With all his theologizing

tendency, Abhishiktananda remained aware of the dangers of re-naming,

re-defining the Reality that is beyond all names and forms. He could not

completely escape this danger, but the reflections expressed in his spiritual

diary, which he often pushed to the extreme, are very helpful for those who have

come after him and are trying to trace the stages of this process.

 

Abhishiktananda remained faithful to his two identities to the end—his belief in

Jesus Christ and his acceptance of the Hindu experience of advaita—whatever may

have been the final synthesis that he discovered. What I would like to stress in

the experience of Abhishiktananda as being of utmost importance for our approach

to the future of Christianity and the future of religion in general in the

twenty-first century are therefore the following points:

 

1. One cannot (or should not) throw overboard one's own

religious/cultural/spiritual roots when encountering another religion. Even

those post-Christians who think that they have no roots cannot deny some hidden

identity which has to be integrated in one way or another. At the same time,

 

2. one has to take the other tradition as seriously as one's own.

 

3. The dialogue of religions is not a device, not only a way to understand the

other, not just an academic exercise or an institutional duty, and certainly not

an esoteric trip. Rather, it is the only way to respond to the challenges

humanity is facing at this turn to the twenty-first century, within and without.

At the same time it is a way to rediscover our own identity and to relativize

our false certainties.

 

4. Such a dialogue has to take place at the spiritual level, neither at the

conceptual/academic nor at the social/institutional levels. The latter are also

necessary, but they have to follow. This implies a stripping, an emptying of our

cherished beliefs and concepts, a plunge into the depth of the Divine Reality

without any support. This may not and cannot be the task of everyone, but just

as in other human fields there are a few who perform a certain task for the

whole of humanity, so also in this field.

 

Abhishiktananda used to insist that one should not try to imitate him. His way

was unique and yet has a pioneering value for all of us. At his time the very

idea of " double belonging, " would have amounted to heresy, but it has now become

an almost accepted term. Perfect advaiti that he was, he might have made his own

the strong words of the Katha Upanishad: " Whoever sees diversity/difference

here, only goes from death to death, " (4.10-11). And yet he was not for facile

reconciliations and compromises. Indeed, this is a path " on a razor's edge, " , as

the same Katha points out (3.14).

 

After these general introductory remarks, I want to speak more precisely about

Abhishiktananda's experience based on his diary.

 

II. Abhishiktananda's Experience

We may look at Swami Abhishiktananda's experience as paradigmatic in the context

of the four stages of his discovery as we find them documented in his spiritual

diary. As Raimon Panikkar writes in the Introduction:(1)

 

These pages offer a fascinating example of the evolution of a thought-process.

They enable us to witness the coming to birth of a conviction, the fruit not of

theory but of practice. The intellectual experiments with his ideas, the monk

does so with his life. Life itself, and not reflection, is the source of his

thoughts and convictions, which are born from and develop out of his lived

experience. (p. xv)

 

The value of the private diary of this monk lies neither in the ideas that it

contains (they are expressed better in his books), nor in the evidence of a life

(this would better emerge in a biography), but in its revelation of the depths

of a human being, in his subconscious levels. We witness the development of a

soul's archetypes under the influence of two different cultures. To live at the

meeting point of several traditions is the destiny of a large portion of the

human race. For very many people it is hardly possible any longer to feel at

home in a single culture. To camp out in the workshops of technology does not

answer to human aspirations. A new insight is required. This is where

Abhishiktananda's experience seems to me to be of great importance. (p. xvi)

 

We need not stop much at the first phase of Abhishiktananda's conviction, which

was very close to that of Abbé Monchanin: the fulfillment phase. As an example

we may see his exclamation when celebrating the first Christmas in India in

1948: " The mystery of Christmas, great here! Respond in the name of my people to

the Father's call! As Jesus came to respond in the name of the world to the

Father's call to the world . . . Be the summit through which my people reaches

God, " (December 19, 1948, p. 2-3).

 

His meeting with Sri Ramana Maharshi in 1948 soon shook his fulfillment

theology. In the light of this perfect incarnation of the advaitic experience,

all the deeply entrenched convictions of Christian superiority seemed to

crumble—though Abhishiktananda was always able to distinguish between Christ and

his followers (a distinction which brought forth more anguish since he was also

a lover of the Church). The Christian fulfillment idea was rather turned around:

it was in the heights of Hindu spirituality that he found his expectations

fulfilled.

 

The tensions created by the meeting of Hindu spirituality at its highest and

purest level were partly theological, partly psychological and spiritual. A

theology of the absoluteness of Christianity that is centuries old cannot easily

be overcome. But the real challenge for Abhishiktananda was in the psychological

and spiritual realm, where he had to ask himself whether he was up to the mark

of such a perfect state of consciousness as he encountered in Sri Ramana

Maharshi and later in Sri Gnanananda. This challenge remained with him till the

end of his life:

 

What gnaws away at my body as well as my mind is this: after having found in

advaita a peace and a bliss never experienced before, to live with the dread

that perhaps, that most probably, all that my latent Christianity suggests to me

is nonetheless true, and that therefore advaita must be sacrificed to it . . .

In committing myself totally to advaita, if Christianity is true, I risk

committing myself to a false path for eternity. All my customary explanations of

hell and the rest are powerless against a reality that exists in a way unknown

to me. . . . Supposing in advaita I was only finding myself and not God? And

yet, it is only since I made the personal discovery of advaita at Arunachala

that I have recovered peace and a zest for life.

 

What guru will enlighten me?

 

I pray as a Christian, but I am well aware that all those words are external.

The only truth is quietas at its actual source, within. The guru comes at the

moment when you are ready, says Hindu wisdom. What is the guru, ultimately, but

the outward projection of this thirst for the Self? . . . (September 25, 1953)

 

Being caught in this dilemma, he evidently tried to solve it at all levels,

including that of reflection, as for example when he compares the beyond-death

experience of St. Paul and of Ramana:

 

Paul had the experience (anubhava) of Jesus alive, although previously Jesus

" had died, " , the experience of a dead man who had come back to life, and to a

definitive life that " can never be taken away, " , by means of a faith in which

henceforth everyone could himself attain to life opposed at the same time to

death and to evil, for death and evil (sin) went together in Hebrew thought.

 

Ramana had the experience (anubhava) of " self-being, " , not of a dead man come

back to life, but of a " so-called, " mortal who possessed being in his inmost

depths, in the only true way, that which senses that this being " can never be

taken away, " by any power whatever, whether of nature or of will.(December 10,

1959, pp. 224-225)

 

The creative and painful tension between the two experiences would stay with him

till the end of his life, until it got dissolved at a higher level. But creative

it was and remains for us, because only when one takes both traditions seriously

can there be tension. And Abhishiktananda took the traditions seriously not only

in their peak experience, but also with the whole burden of their cultural,

religious, historical and philosophical differences. It was not an easy

relativization, not a simple denial of the one in favor of the other. In fact,

he did not deny anything of what he previously believed, but everything was

elevated to a level where the " names and forms, " became insignificant.

 

The stage of relativization came, therefore, once he penetrated more deeply into

the advaitic experience.

 

Christianity and advaita:

 

Neither opposition nor incompatibility—two different levels. Advaita is not

something that conflicts with anything else at all. It is not a philosophy—but

an existential experience [anubhava]. The whole formulation of Christianity is

valid in its own order, the order of manifestation [vyavaharika] (and so,

provisional), and not of the Absolute [paramarthika]. The Christian darshana

[perception] is no doubt opposed to the Vedantin darshana, but this is merely

the doctrinal level. No formulation, not even that of advaita, can claim to be

paramartha.(October 23, 1970, p. 322)

 

The solution to the anguish and tension cannot be found at the conceptual level:

" And people would like to have conceptual solutions—ready-made formulas like

those that come out of a computer—for their problem: Christianity/Vedanta. The

solution lies only in the original anguish of the person, " (September 7, 1970,

p. 319). As he wrote a year and a half later:

 

Concepts are dualistic and therefore falsify everything that they claim to

express about what is beyond dvandas. The dvandva: man/God in Jesus to start

with; the dvandva: sin/virtue, salvation/damnation. When Naciketas asks Yama

what is beyond religious law and irreligion [dharma/adharma], beyond made and

not made [krita/akrita], etc., Yama simply answers with OM! Truth cannot be

formulated, at least at the luminous apex where all its splendour is

concentrated. It can only be abhiklipta, integrated, experienced, received

[upalabdha]—in the sense that the mind is wholly " passive, " . No role for the

intellect as agent. No mental framework for one's reading. (April 2, 1972, p.

342)

 

We have seen in Abhishiktananda's own words his first fulfillment phase, the

second phase of crisis while encountering Hindu spirituality, and the third

phase of relativizing all conceptualization and particularizations. What is

fascinating is that there is a moment of " explosion, " , of " awakening, " , in his

own cherished words—but an explosion which amounts to a liberation, which did

not destroy his faith in Jesus but transformed it.

 

Whether I like it or not, I am deeply attached to Christ Jesus and therefore to

the koinonia of the Church. It is in him that the " mystery, " has been revealed

to me ever since my awakening to myself and to the world. It is in his image,

his symbol, that I know God and that I know myself and the world of human

beings. Since I awoke here [in India] to new depths in myself (depths of the

Self, of the Âtman), this symbol was marvelously developed.

 

Moreover I recognize this mystery, which I have always adored under the symbol

of Christ, in the myths of Narayana, Prajapati, Shiva, Purusha, Krishna, Rama,

etc. The same mystery. But for me, Jesus is my sadguru. It is in him that God

has appeared to me; it is in his mirror that I have recognized myself, in

adoring him, loving him, consecrating myself to him. Jesus not the founder-head

of a religion; that came later.

 

Jesus is the guru who announces the mystery. (July 22, 1971, pp. 331-332)

 

The ultimate experience which helped him to overcome the duality of his Hindu

and Christianity experience is in both traditions the final and true " I, " , aham.

 

If God is that Being to whom nothing is either earlier or superior—as the Bible

says (or even later or inferior, as the Upanishad says)—then he is in this very

I am in which I awaken to myself. And it is not satisfactory to say that he is

the " cause, " , the substratum. No, nothing can escape this parama, this Supreme

Being. This I am, this awakening to myself, is the very awakening of God to

himself (paradoxical use here of the 3rd person). This awakening is at once

within time and outside time. It is the awakening to a level that is in no way

measurable by time.

 

It is in this word aham heard in the depth of myself that the whole world was

made, exists, subsists: the five elements, time, the human senses, the human

body, etc . . . (all in view of this awakening. All a means to the awakening,

all an ascent towards the awakening). This aham asmi is the light of everything

[phos, jyotih], the life of everything [vita, bios, prana]. Beyond all darkness,

tamasah parastat.

 

This I AM [aham asmi] was made flesh [sarx egeneto].

 

Christ is the total transparency of this aham asmi to which I awaken at the

source of my consciousness. Christ—if he has any value for me—is the very

mystery of this awakening to myself.

 

He is the one who is totally awakened, even in his body [deha-jagarita] (deha

includes the manas). Christ is the " symbol, " par excellence of this

awakening—but here are also Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Buddha. . . .

 

Christ is the revelation of my aham, of my mutual relationship (parspara) with

every consciousness, every awakening. Each person is the absolute, singular and

unique, and everywhere each one is relative to the other. Each person comes from

the other, each person is born of the other. (July 2, 1971, p. 330)

 

For Abhishiktananda it was certainly not a question of finding a fascinating

esoteric Hindu spirituality at the expense of the Christian mystery. In the late

stage of his experience he no longer sought theoretical solutions but instead

discovered wonderful correspondences, " upanishads, " , between the two spiritual

experiences, precisely because he could see them from within:

 

In the depth of the inner cave [guha] there is no name and equally no non-name,

neither Shiva nor Jesus….

 

Jesus is that mystery that " grounds, " me, that " sources, " me, in the abyss, in

the bottomless guha—the mystery (as we say) of the Father—and extends me, pours

me out [expendit] into all that is. The Spirit, the prana, who makes me the Self

within everything [antaratman, sarvantaratman]—spread out into everything, lost

just as truly in this expansion that infinitely multiplies me as agent, as in

this " source-action, " , that infinitely reduces me, to be ultimately identical to

zero. . . .

 

A being lost in my source, a being lost in my fulfillment. And in this very

loss, I am. . . . Jesus is this mystery of advaita in which I can no longer

recognize myself separately. Lost as much in the space [akasa] of the heart as

in that of the span of the universe, as much in the Source as in the shining,

the radiance that empties me.

 

And I am Fullness, purnam; precisely in this letting-go, of myself everywhere,

sarvatra. . . .

 

And my purnam is precisely this emptiness of all self.

 

The kenosis of Christ! (December 24, 1971, p. 336-337)

 

At this stage there is advaita, non-duality, between his Hindu and his Christian

experience, a true liberation from the bondages of traditions and concepts.

There is a complementarity in the different approaches to the Absolute.

 

I will close this part on Abhishiktananda's experience with the very last entry

in his diary. It makes clear how his " awakening, " has made him transcend all the

tensions which he had to go through in the earlier stages:

 

The Awakening at the level of anyone who has consciousness is precisely to lose

oneself, to forget oneself. The Awakening is the shining out of the splendour—in

splendour—of the non-awakening, of the eternal not-born. The non-Awakening, the

not-born is manifested by a—what?—a brilliance, a light, a glory that envelopes

everything, that transcends everything, that seizes one and takes one beyond

everything, a sense of " Beyond, " , of the Beyond . . .

 

http://monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=305 & cn=0

 

The gift of wisdom, a deep connaturality, an explosion which one who has " felt, "

cannot evade. . . . (September 12, 1973, p. 388)