This new book by Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux), a Benedictine monk who lived in India for twenty five years — from 1948 to his death in 1973—contains some of his earliest experiences in India. However, due to its nature as something of a personal journal, he felt that it should not be published until after his death.

In 1949, Abhishiktananda went with Fr. Jules Monchanin to visit Arunachala where Sri Ramana Maharshi lived. Sri Ramana was a Sage who had left his home and family after an intense experience of the Self, when he was a young man. He had gone to the mountain of Arunachala, one of India’s most sacred mountains. Indian mythology holds that Vishnu and Brahma contested over who was the greater. As they disputed, a vast column of light appeared before them. They decided that whoever would first find either the foot or the summit of this column of fire would be the greater. Though centuries passed, neither was able to find the beginning nor the end of this tremendous column of flame. This was because the column was the revelation of Shiva, who is infinite Fire, Flame and Light, who is Love, who is unique and infinite with the uniqueness and infinity of Being Itself. In the second Age of the world, the column of fire transformed itself into a mountain of diamond and then of ruby, and finally in our age into a mountain of rock, which men might approach without fear and which would bring them salvation. For in the very hearts of those who approach him, Shiva Arunachala suddenly appears, a pillar of fire which has no end, a consuming flame, a spring of eternal Love.

Sri Ramana was one of the major figures who lived on this mountain, first as a hermit in various caves, and later as part of the ashram which formed around him. According to a disciple, the most central point in Sri Ramana’s teaching is the mystery of the heart: “Find the heart deep within oneself, beyond mind and thought. Make that one’s permanent dwelling, cut all the bonds which restrain this heart and hold it at the level of sense and external consciousness, all the fleeting identifications of what one is with what one has or does.” “Heaven is hidden in the depth of the heart, that glorious place which is found only by those who renounce themselves.”

Abhishiktananda met Ramana only briefly before the holy man’s death. But he returned to the mountain a number of times over the years. He lived in various caves on the mountain and depended on the bhiksha (alms) of others for his food and sustenance. The book tells of his varied experiences during his time on the mountain and with various persons whom he met there. Some of these were truly authentic sadhus, good and virtuous wandering monks, who had attained a depth of experience which was instructive to him. Others were good intentioned persons who had missed the point. Abhishiktananda spoke of these as being like rockets which are destined for liars or Venus. “If there is the slightest miscalculation, the rocket will probably end up circling endlessly around the sun instead. In the same way, the slightest initial deviations when one is projected on the path of jnana (knowledge, wisdom) are no less dangerous; one supposedly departs from the self, but instead of arriving at the Self, one is in great danger of being lost in the obscure and ungovernable regions of the psyche.”

Both the mountain and the life and doctrine of Sri Ramana had an intense influence on Abhishiktananda. For him both were signs of the unique Mystery, the unique Presence. His awareness of the dangers involved made him even more alert to avoid aberrations, and he remained true to Christ throughout all. Both the mountain and the man were voices summoning him within to that place of encounter which was from then on at the center of his life. Like Ramana, he found the secret at the heart. Living within the heart of the mountain led him within to his own heart. “Man’s primary task is to penetrate within and there discover himself. Whoever has not found himself within himself has not yet found God; and whoever has not found God within himself has not yet found himself. God is he who is at the heart of all, at the origin even of the utterance of that ‘Thou’ with which I address him. So long as anyone has not penetrated to that inner source from which diversity itself originates, he is merely cherishing the external idols which he has created on his own petty scale.”

Arunachala became his guru and master; the one who led him into this inner-stripping, which allowed the true Self to flower forth within himself. As Ramana expressed in one of his poems: “You only give yourself, Arunachala, to those who have nothing at all—stripped of their body, stripped of their hearts, stripped of their spirit, stripped of their very self; to those from whom you have snatched away all in them that might still have power to say: ‘I’.”

The book expresses something of the process of this inner-stripping through which Abhishiktananda passed and which he learned both by his own experience and that of those whom he met there. The book serves as an excellent insight into the heart of this man who adopted India as his mother and who stands as an example of the true integration of the East into the heart of a Westerner. As Arunachala and Ramana were for him, so he can be for us in this book, a sign which leads us into Reality.

The book is excellent for its personal nature as a private journal. It allows one to perceive the action of grace on one who is basically a Westerner and a Christian monk. To this extent it shows the possibilities that exist for us as well, if we are but willing to follow the path to the heart and to be content with the poverty entailed in that “place”. The heart can be found not only on the mountain of Arunachala, but basically wherever we are. Christ stands at the door and knocks, and only we ourselves can let him in.