Michael Amaladoss

Swami Abhishiktananda was not a professional systematic theologian according to the current common understanding. He was a sage narrating his spiritual search, his encounters and pilgrimages and reflecting over his experiences partly to clarify (to himself) his own understanding of them and partly to explain to his friends, mostly in France, what he was living and thinking through. It was an ongoing conversation in which the responses of others to his reflections are not often available. The Diary of Marc, if and when published, would be interesting.

Swamijji lived in an epoch-making period for the church in general and for the Indian church in particular. After India gained independence in 1947 there was a move among the Catholics in India to become really Indian. The Second Vatican Council came as a providential opening of windows, followed by the National Seminar of 1969. Swamiji himself had theological conversation partners like Raimon Panikkar. A group of younger Indian theologians were ready to respond creatively to his theological intuitions and develop them further. The censors of Swamiji made sure that his original insights were published mostly posthumously.

Swamiji’s own thinking was in process filled with tension. He started as a convinced Thomist thinking in the framework of ‘preparation-fulfilment’ in the relationship of Hinduism to Christianity. His slow moving away from this paradigm was painful, though it is to his credit that he did not allow his intellectual convictions smother his experience. His disciples Marc and Therese did not seem to have had this handicap. Swamiji has not left behind fully developed treatises on any theological topic. Even his small treatise on sannyasa was a justification for the double initiation – Hindu and Christian – of Marc.

I have known Swamiji personally, though perhaps only from a distance. But I am not an expert in his thought, though familiar with it. I do think, however, that he has thrown out important theological challenges to keep Indian theologians busy. I shall try to spell them out briefly.

Methodology
From the point of view of method in theological reflection I would like to point to two areas that are important for Indian theology. Abhishiktananda is an early example of theological reflection that has experience as its starting point and context. He comes to India to lead it to Christ by exposing it to the spiritual and mystic dimension of Christianity. But he is blown over by his encounter with Ramana maharishi and later Gnanananda and their advaitic or non-dual experiences. He discovers a commentary of these in the Upanishads, which convey the experiences of other sages. He engages in a spiritual dialogue with these sages, seeking to share their advaitic experience rather than an intellectual dialogue with the different schools of Indian philosophy/theology. His reflections start with their experience. He claims to have had this experience only rather late in life. But his own experience does not radically question, but rather confirm, his reflections. In this process of experience-based reflection, he does not allow his Thomistic categories to control and define his experience. Rather he is open to change them. He is enabled to do this because of his constant reading of and reflection over the Upanishads, which mediate to him the experiences of other sages at other times. Does this not question the very idea of theology as a ready-made system, backed up by doctrinal and magisterial statements?

The second important element in his methodology is that it is dialogical in an interreligious context. His dialogue is not a comparative study of religions by someone who is outside them. His approach is not even comparative theology that explores similar theological systems by placing them side by side, while respecting their specificity. His reflection is born of shared experience. On the one hand, he read the Upanishads and searches for advaitic experience. On the other, he reads the psalms and celebrates the Eucharist. He experiences them as different, I am sure, but not as incompatible. This is a kind of Indian theology that it still uncommon, though I wish that it becomes habitual, not only in India, but also elsewhere. One speaks of inter-cultural theology. It is safer than venturing into inter-religious theology. But, in a way inter-religious theology is easier than inter-cultural theology. Inter-cultural theology is bound to get stuck in ‘names and forms’, while inter-religious theology can transcend them. I think that Swamiji experienced this tension while trying to express his experience in words. Symbols like light – Shiva’s column of fire – were more helpful to express his experience.

The Theology of Religions
The current orthodoxy suggests that, not only Jesus Christ, but also the Church is the only ‘way’ to salvation. Though people belonging to other religions may be saved in ways known to God alone, the other religions are not such ways. They are ‘inadequate’ to such a goal. But Bishops and theologians in Asia, in contact with the believers of other religions, suggest that these can be considered ways of salvation to those who believe in them. However, the goal, namely salvation, being one, the believers of other religions are seen as co-pilgrims to the same goal. In India, a seminar in 1973, asking whether we can consider the Scriptures of other religions as inspired, proposed a framework of three covenants, namely Cosmic, Judaic and Christian. The other religions belong to the Cosmic covenant so that their scriptures can be considered inspired analogously. A later seminar on ‘Sharing Worship’ suggested that the goal of worship, namely God, being one and the same, while the symbols used to approach God may be different, a sharing at the level of symbols is possible. This supposes that the other religions are seen as valid ‘ways’ to God. Theologians in India would today widely accept the other religions as ‘ways’ to God or salvation.

Swamiji contributed to such openness to other religions in his own way. On the one hand, he considered that the advaitic experience of the Ultimate went beyond ‘names and forms’ of any kind, whether Hindu or Christian. But his vision of sannyasa and his idea of a double initiation, Hindu and Christian, through two gurus were due to his understanding that, though sannyasa itself was acosmic, it was an element of Hindu tradition. On the other hand, he held on to some of these names and forms, both as ‘ways’ to and as expressions of the advaitic experience in ordinary life. He found the Upanishads and meditation on the one hand and the Psalms and the Eucharist on the other useful till his last day. The picture of the fiery chariot carrying the Prophet Elias into heaven remained an inspiration, though it may also have reminded him of the column of fire of Arunachala. He did not reject such means in a fit of total acosmism. While Swamiji would not have been comfortable with the ritualism in the Hindu temples, he felt inspired by Hindu sacred spaces and non-iconic symbols. He refers often to Shiva, who is non-iconic, unlike Rama or Krishna who to refer to historical people. He remained attracted to the sacred mountain Arunachala and the symbol of the column of fire in which Shiva is said to have manifested himself. I do not know whether the fact that Arunachala is said to be the centre of a field of cosmic energy has anything to do with it and whether Swamiji experienced it during the time that he spent there. He was also attached to the Himalayas and the Ganges, not to speak of the sacred places like Kedarnath, linked to Shiva. I think that the name Shiva simply indicates for him a cosmic experience of the Absolute in nature – in the five elements. His attachment to Hinduism therefore went beyond the Upanishads. On the other hand, when he describes the ritual of initiation of Marc, the celebration of the Eucharist replaces all the sacrificial rituals associated with Hindu initiation.

I think that the experience of Swamiji was not Christianity integrating some elements of Hinduism, nor vice versa. Nor was it an acosmic experience. It is rather an experience that transcends all ‘name and form’, which is however rooted and finds expression in both Hindu and Christian traditions. I would consider this an experience of ‘double identity’, which seems to upset both groups, some Christians thinking that he has become a Hindu and some Hindus feeling that he is still too Christian. Here we are in a territory unfamiliar to most theologians today. But once we are there we discover that such double identities exist at various levels: among Hindu and Christian and even Muslim pilgrims who visit the sacred shrines of others, serious Christian practitioners of Yoga or Zen and Hindu disciples of Jesus Christ. Swamiji refers in a letter to the Christ-experience of a Hindu friend, identified as Harilal, a disciple of Ramana: “A friend, who is a real advaitin, last month had a shattering vision of Christ, feet on earth, arms and head above the heavens, with arms held out ‘as if to hold me’”. He meets him later and finds that he “has gone back to the path of abheda-bhakti [bhakti without distinction between the Lord and his devotees] (…) And he explained to us in that way the love of Christ for the Father… All my theology and rationalism is put to the test by this vision (…) A reminder, I feel, from Him through such bhaktas and advaitis, not to rationalize the all-surpassing advaitic experience, and that He is still there who is God omnia in omnibus [all in all]”.

The theology of religions will have to break out of traditional paradigms like ‘exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism’ or complementarity or relativistic pluralism. Relativism denies an Absolute. Here, on the contrary, a strong affirmation of the Absolute relativizes, but includes, the many manifestations and ways to the Absolute. The Absolute itself transcends all that is relative. Swamiji says: “People are converted – they receive an initiation [diksha], they become Christian, Muslim, Sufi, Vedantin, etc. All those are superimposed forms. Whereas the essential thing is to strip oneself of all that is superfluously added, to recover one’s proper form [svarupa] that was lost.”

1. James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda. His life told through his letters. (Delhi: ISPCK, 1989), p. 268
2. Ibid., p. 272.

Jesus and the Christ
Such an attitude to other religions has implications for ecclesiology and Christology. Swamiji does make passing allusions to them, while not developing them too much. Swamiji often speaks an apophatic language. In his reflections on sannyasa he even seems to become acosmic. Some suggest that it was Marc who pushed him to such acosmism and possibly became acosmic himself in ways unknown to us. But Swamiji’s apophatism did not lead him to abandon symbols altogether, as we have already seen. In the Eucharist there is a sacramental dimension that goes beyond ‘name and form’ or mere sign. In our contemporary theologies of religions, speaking of many mediators and mediations, underlining the specificity of the incarnate Christ and the sacraments is necessary and is often forgotten, though this specificity does not mean exclusivity. Even the Church does not teach that the sacraments are the only means of grace. And yet they are different from other possible means of grace and this difference is related to the mystery of the incarnation. As long as Swamiji was faithful to the Eucharist he did not abandon the mystery of the incarnation.

But this attachment to the incarnation did not lead him to reify the mystery of Christ. As a matter of fact the history of Jesus leads him to the mystery of Christ which acquires cosmic dimensions. The Indian term ‘Purusha’ (the Person) helps Swamiji to reach out to the cosmic mystery of Christ, which is a sort of universal human form, somewhat in a Platonic perspective, but which can take many historical manifestations. Such a mysterical dimension of Christ sets limits to Jesus as a historical figure. Panikkar puts it pithily: ‘Jesus is the Christ, but Christ is more than Jesus’. This distinction, not separation, has often been opposed in terms of the oneness of the person of Christ. Those who distinguish appeal, on the contrary, to the distinction of natures in the same person. This promises to remain an inconclusive dispute. Swamiji almost refuses to do any ‘Christology’. But he is clearly inclined to the distinction. In a letter to Sr. Sara Grant, he writes:

For the Christian point of view, of course, Christ is the Unique – it is through him that we see all the theophanies. He is the End of them, their Pleroma (…). Wonderful, but from the standpoint of eternity… The brilliance of the paramartha overcasts [overthrows] all scale of values on the level of vyavahara! Our Cosmic Christ, the all embracing Isvara, the Purusha of the Veda/Upanishads… we cannot escape to give him such a full dimension, expansion… Yet, why then call him only Jesus of Nazareth? Why say that it is Jesus of Nazareth whom others unknowingly call Shiva or Krishna? and not rather say that Jesus is the theophany for us, the Bible-believers, of that unnameable mystery of the Manifestation, always tending beyond itself, since Brahman transcends all its/his manifestations?

3. Swami Abhishiktananda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart. (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), p. 379.
4. James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda, p. 273.

This distinction has been further developed by Panikkar and other theologians. Once again the tension here is to suggest that there may be other ways to go to God besides Jesus – though we believe that all are saved in Christ -, but that Jesus remains not merely one among many ways, but a special incarnate way, even if, for the people searching for God, this may not be crucial.

Swamiji confesses that he is “interested in no christo-logy at all.” He explains:
I have so little interest in the 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’… Christ’s experience in the Jordan – Son/Abba – is a wonderful Semitic equivalent of ‘Tat tvam asi’/ ‘aham brahmasmi’. Of course I can make use of Christ experience to lead Christians to an ‘I AM’ experience, yet it is this I AM experience which really matters. Christ is this very mystery ‘that I AM’, and in this experience and existential knowledge all christo-logy has disintegrated.

Swamiji’s understanding of the Eucharist, to which he was faithful till his death, is significant in this context because it seems to give all the same a special place to Christ as the Satpurusha. He explains its significance as a celebration preparatory to the initiation of Marc as a sannyasi.

In Christian understanding the Eucharist is that unique sacrifice (yajna) which Christ, the Satpurusha, the True Man, the Barnasha or Son of Man, once for all (ephapax) in the fullness of time offered to God as the summing up of all the sacrifices and offerings made by men throughout all ages under countless different signs and symbols. In his perfect offering of himself as the Adi-Purusha (the primordial, perfect Man) he passed, on his own account and on behalf of all those who put their faith in him, beyond the veil which is his body (cp Heb 10:19-20), and attained to the bosom of the Father, the guha which is at once the deep centre of all and beyond all (cp Col 3:1ff)… Jesus’ sacrificial offering means the gift of himself for the same of all, and is signified in the Eucharist by the gift of his body in the form of food and of his blood in the symbol of a beverage – a mystery which is prefigured in the Upanishads, where every being is expected to be annam and madhu, food and sweet drink, for every other being. (e.g. Br.Up., 2.5)

5. James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda, p. 349.
6. Swami Abhishiktananda, The Further Shore. Delhi: ISPCK, 1975, p.51.
7. Ibid.

This is the reason that Swamiji finds that, for the Christian, “his participation in the Eucharist and his sacramental communion will be his own personal commitment by which he binds himself to pass to the ‘beyond’.”

Swamiji does not speak much about sin and salvation. Advaitic experience is becoming aware of what one is, going beyond one’s current, limited, dualistic awareness. The fundamental sin from this perspective is, of course, ignorance or non-awareness, which can lead to egoism and other evils. But Swamiji hardly speaks about these dimensions of human life. He will look at egoism metaphysically, not morally. For him Jesus Christ is the great manifestation who assumes all of us in his own advaitic union with the Father.

Jesus is a person who has totally discovered, realized his mystery… His name is ‘I AM’… Jesus is saviour by virtue of having realized his NAME. He has shown and has opened the way out of samsara, the phenomenal world, and has reached the guha, the padam, beyond the heavens – which is the mystery of the Father. In discovering the Father, he has not found an “Other”: I and the Father are one. In the only Spirit, he has discovered his non-duality with Yahweh; it is the Spirit that is the link, the non-duality.

It is in this way that Jesus ‘saves’. It is this advaitic communion with the Father and the Spirit that makes Swamiji say “Christ is not a namarupa.” This is certainly very different from the current Christian emphasis on sin, satisfaction and salvation.

The Advaita
For Swamiji, the ultimate reality and experience is ‘I AM’. It is not the ‘i’ becoming the ‘I’, but the ‘i’ disappearing in the ‘I’. It is not the conclusion of an argument or reflection, but an awakening. Swamiji claims such an awakening at the moment of his heart attack, though he seems to have had it a couple of times earlier in the year. Such awareness is not monism in the manner in which Shankara is interpreted by some. Swamiji does not seem to have been interested in Vedantic philosophers, though he mentions reading Shankara. He prefers rather to read and meditate over the Upanishads. The Upanishads do not speak an ontological language of ‘being’, but of experience – in – relationship. So non-duality is not monism, but communion. It is significant that he refers to such an awakening in the context of his Guru-Sishya relationship of paternity-generation with Marc. Jesus too achieves such an awakening when he becomes aware of himself as the Son of the Father whom he calls Abba. Here is a summary of his vision in one of his last writings.

The absoluteness of the ultimate mystery is discovered in the absoluteness of the self itself, of oneself seen in its full truth. The Self is then seen in the self. In the light of pure consciousness, Being shines with its own light. Then the eternity, the aseity, the absoluteness, the sovereignty of God are no longer notions which man tries desperately to understand by way of analogy or negations. They are realized in their own truth in the discovery that oneself is, beyond all conditioning. Then God is no longer a HE about whom men dare to speak among themselves, nor even only a THOU whose presence man realizes as facing him. Rather, necessarily starting from oneself, God is discovered and experienced as I, the “aham asmi” of the Upanishads, the “ehieh asher ehieh” of the Burning Bush. It is not an I which I abstract or conclude from the Thou that I say to him, but an I of which I am aware in the very depth of my own I.

8. Swmi Abhishiktananda, Ascent, p.376.
9. Ibid, p. 357.

This is the experience of the sage, as different from that of the saint in the sphere of religions and the philosopher, who realizes that “there is a level of being, of truth, of Self, in which he is beyond the dvandvas (or pairs of opposites) of bhayam-abhayam (security-insecurity), mrityu-amritam (death-no death).” Swamiji suggests that three great traditions of the world stand by this intuition: the Upanishadic, the Buddhist and the Tao. But the Indian Christian tradition will not be very different. He writes to Marc:

The saving name of Christ is aham asmi [I AM]. And the deep confession of faith is no longer the external ‘Christ is Lord’, but “so’ham asmi”[I am he]. Like him at once born and not-born(…). The Father in relation to the Son-to me-to all. The Son in relation to me-all. Myself in relation to every conscious being; born in all, ceaselessly (…), and yet always face to face.

Oneness with the Self leads to a communion with everything. Writing again to Marc, he says:
Jesus did not cudgel his brains to make a philosophy about his advaita with God. He lived this non-duality with absolute intensity simply by gazing like a child at his ‘Abba’. And he taught his people to live, simply but deeply, a life of loving union with their brothers – a union of mutual giving without limit. And in the absoluteness of their self-giving to God and the neighbour, the non-dual Absolute is found and lived with far greater truth than in Vedantin speculations… In the dazzling light of the vision of Being, you have perhaps been over-strict in rejecting all the namarupas. And yet, in the sariram that we bear, it is in the experience of these namarupas itself that we discover advaita (…). If we set them in opposition, we have lost our way.

Swamiji refers to the example of Ramana living a simple life.

10. Swami Abhishiktananda, “The Upanishads and Advaitic Experience”, in The Further Shore. Delhi: ISPCK, 1975, p. 116.
11. Ibid., p. 109.
12. James Stuart, Swami Ahishiktananda, p. 305.
13. Ibid. Pp. 329-330.

The Advaita and the Trinity
In the final entry reprinted in his Spiritual Diary (dated September 12, 1973) Swamiji speaks of the relations between Jesus, the Trinity and the advaitic experience.
The Trinity can only be understood in the experience of advaita. The Trinity is an experience, not a theologumenon [theological formulation]. Or at least the theologumenon never conveys its truth. It is only discovered in the lucidity of the inner gaze. Jesus has lived this agonizing – and fulfilling – experience of advaita. Advaita, we call it, in order to try to get beyond the common idea – received from our social environment – of God and oneself, of oneself and others. That is the experience of duality [dvaita] which regards one’s skin as the boundary between oneself and other people – and which branches out on the basis of this experience of the ‘skin’. Whereas this experience, though divided into two by the skin, is only one. For the experience of oneself, the foundation of everything and the background, the infrastructure of everything, is only one. Jesus revealed to the human being what he is, what everyone is.

Swamiji suggests often that the Trinity is the Greek way of explaining the experience of Jesus. “The Trinity, is the way in which God appears to human beings in the circle of believers in Jesus. The Trinity only exists in relationship to us. No formula can explain the mystery of Being.” But when Jesus has his advaitic experience of “aham asmi” [I AM] the Trinity explodes.

The Trinity is God, the original source, Brahman, the Urgrund; It is the atman, the universal presence of God… And finally there is the atmavan, God in the form of a person, “one equipped with an atman”, with the spirit [pneuma]. To tell the truth, there is only one Person in the Trinity, and that is Christ, the Purusha. And I discover this Person in the mystery of my own aham, myself full of the Self [atma-purna], myself having come to my atma.

When I therefore experience “aham asmi” [I AM] even Christ disappears – of course, as a separate person over against me. In the light of his other reflections we can say that Swamiji would probably distinguish between Jesus and the Christ. As he says elsewhere, “Christ is not a namarupa. His true name is I AM. He is not encountered in a theologumenon, nor even in any noeme. He can only “be” in the very mystery of my being.”

Conclusion
The challenge of Swami Abhishiktananda to Indian theologians is to empty themselves of their attitudes and thought patterns inherited from the West and to open themselves to the advaitic experience of India. A realization of the Absolute in such an experience would lead them to abandon or to transcend much of what they have inherited as Western namarupa. The namarupa has to be used, but transcended. Abandoning the namarupa inherited from the West, we need not rush to adopt and absolutize the Indian namarupa either. That too may prove useful but will have to be transcended. A key question is: where do we draw the line between namarupa and the Real when we are faced with the mystery of the incarnate Word, when the Real becomes namarupa. Would the ideal of a jivanmukta lead to the Buddhist Madyamika principle that ‘Nirvana is Samsara’? Could the disappearance of both the disciples of Swamiji, Marc and Therese, show that an acosmic experience may tempt the people to become acosmic themselves in some way?

Out-of-body or pre- or supra-conscious experiences can be produced in various ways. How do we judge the authenticity of an advaitic experience? Different religious traditions claim or aim at such experiences. Swamiji himself speaks of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. There is no reason to exclude some Christian mystics like Meister Ekhart and some Sufi mystics too. Once the namarupa are transcended can we claim that all these experiences are the same? While preparing for the double initiation of Marc, Swamiji refers to his discussions with Swami Chidananda and says,

Swami Abhishiktananda, Ascent, p. 388.
Ibid., p. 305.
Ibid., p.299.
Ibid., p.357.

However open both he and we may be, we cannot think of the Absolute (for at the level of the vyavahara we indeed have to think of It) except in our own terms – in his case Hindu, in ours Greco-Christian.

Swamiji then goes on to refer to the classical Christian difficulty: “The Christian likewise finds it very difficult not to attribute absolute value to what he regards as superior forms of prayer and contemplation.” He could have made similar comments regarding Hindus and Buddhists too.
While keeping in mind the symbolic value of sannyasis like Swamiji pointing to the Absolute in an increasingly secular world, what would we recommend to the more than 99.99 per cent of ordinary mortals, especially those who do not believe in rebirth? We must realize that in a poor country like India various liberation theologies attract the younger Indian theologians than Swamiji’s advaita. He may be read more abroad than in India. Besides, under the prevailing circumstances, Swamiji’s theological affirmations would prove bold and controversial even today. But Indian and Asian theologians have been developing them, though a new synthesis and language are yet to emerge. In this sense Swamiji continues to remain a theological challenge to India and to the world.

James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda, p. 329.

Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions, Chennai, India.