Living on Sri Arunachala, circa.1950

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The Current   [1]  

May 2023   Sw.Abhishiktananda (part 1)

Jul 2023   Sw.Abhishiktananda (part 2)

Quotes^[1] from some of Abhishiktananda's writings

Father Henri Le Saux is a French Benedictine monk who went to India in 1948 to fulfill a dream he had - to take the the Benedictine life to India. His story of transformation while in India is compelling. Here are some quotes that give some sense of his experience:

“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 mysadguru. 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.

Who can bear the glory of transfiguration, of man's dying as transfigured; because what Christ is, I AM! One can only speak of it after being awakened from the dead....It was a remarkable spiritual experience...While I was sitting on my sidewalk, on the frontier of the two worlds, I was magnificently calm, for I AM no matter what in the world! I have found the GRAIL!...

The more I go on, the less able I would be to present Christ in a way which could be still considered as Christian....For Christ is first an idea which comes to me from outside. Even more after my 'beyond life/death experience' of 14.7.1973 I can only aim at awakening people to what 'they are'. Anything about God or the Word in any religion, which is not based on the deep "I" experience, is bound to be simply 'notion', not existential.

Yet I am interested in no Christology at all. I have so little interest in a Word of God which will awaken man within history.... The Word of God comes from/to my own 'present'; it is that very awakening which is my self awareness. What I discover above all in Christ is his 'I AM'... It is this I AM experience which really matters. Christ is the very mystery that 'I AM', and in the experience and existential knowledge all Christology has disintegrated...

What would be the meaning of a 'Christianity-coloured' awakening? in the process of awakening all this colouration cannot but disappear... the colouration might vary according to the audience, but the essential goes beyond. The discovery of Christ's I AM is the ruin of any Christian theology, for all notions are burned within the fire of experience... I feel too much, more and more, the blazing fire of this I AM in which all notions about Christ's personality, ontology, history etc have disappeared.