“It is precisely the fact of being a bridge that makes this uncomfortable situation worthwhile. The world, at every level, needs such bridges. The danger of this life as a ‘bridge’ is that we run the risk of not belonging to either side; whereas, however harrowing it may be, our duty is to belong wholly to both sides. This is only possible in the mystery of God.”—Swami Abhishiktananda, Letter dated 9.2.1967(2)

This passage from a letter sums up the vocation of the French Benedictine monk who immersed himself in the spiritual world of Hinduism to become as fully and completely as possible a Hindu sannyasi. In this process, Swami Abhishiktananda did not take lightly either the demands of asceticism and discipline of both traditions, or the theological implications of this “belonging wholly to both sides.” It was a struggle and a complete surrender to this very special call “in the mystery of God” that made it possible for him finally to attain the goal and to reach equilibrium. By treading this difficult path he has opened a way for others—not only for Christians in their meeting with Hinduism but for persons seeking a spiritual meeting between any two spiritual traditions.

I can never forget my first meeting with Abhishiktananda. In Rome, Raimon Panikkar had given me Abhishiktananda’s first book, Hermits of Saccidananda (in French), which ignited me. I was then a student, 23 years old, and I was irresistibly drawn to meet this hermit in the jungle of South India. Thanks to Panikkar, this first journey to India became possible, and in November 1963 I visited Abhishiktananda in his Shantivanam Ashram. The inner contact was immediate and I could feel his deep involvement with India, her people, her spirituality, and especially with Advaita as lived by Sri Ramana Maharshi. His enthusiasm was contagious. I was equally impressed by the utter simplicity of his life, a quality that would stay with him till the end of his life. Although deeply in love with silence, he had an urge to communicate with kindred souls. He shared with me about his meetings with spiritual personalities. I was very inexperienced at that time, with little knowledge about India, but he never gave me any feeling of inferiority. Rather he had the gift of drawing out the best of a person and lifting her up to his own level.

I would like to stress some points that were so characteristic of Abhishiktananda and which do not emerge so clearly from his books: his great simplicity of life, and his indomitable faith in the spirit of India. In spite of being misunderstood—more often by his Christian brethren, but also by others—he was never discouraged from the path he had chosen, and he never lost faith. In fact, there were not many who could understand him and he passed through phases of loneliness—not a psychological lack of company, but the price he had to pay for the uniqueness of his path. As he wrote in his diary on November 18, 1970, “The hermit must accept the Solitude of God. If he tries to fill up this solitude with gods or with the supreme god, he does not obtain the Supreme Abode. [I should] Accept the indescribable solitude of God, not manifested, without a name, without sign, and not fill my solitude with the thought of this solitude.(3)

Another sign of his true contemplative spirit was his love for nature—in Shantivanam it was the majestic river Cavery that inspired him, and later, in the North, the sacred and wild Ganga (the River Ganges) flowing by his cottage in Uttarkashi.

Many years later, when I settled down in Varanasi in 1967 and was working with Raimon Panikkar, Swamiji(4) used to come for a visit, sometimes using this as a stopover on the way from the South to the Himalayas, and these were always times of intense discussions and spiritual sharing with Panikkar, myself, and a few friends. He would also celebrate some unforgettable liturgies in the Indian way of worship, in the small chapel of the Little Sisters of Jesus by the Ganga, or at the students’ chapel. The word “experimenting” is not fitting for those liturgies; they were rather his natural way of integrating the beautiful symbolism of the Hindu puja with his “attachment” to the Christian tradition, letting them flow together and giving each its own place and significance. The transformation which took place within him at the crossroads of two completely different traditions always found expression in his liturgy, until it reached the utter simplicity and almost wordless form of the last months of his life. The Mass never ceased to have meaning for him, but it was a meaning that was neither static nor repetitive—it was always a new discovery. So we find this entry in his diary: “The Mass is not for getting anything whatever—nor is communion, for I have everything from the moment I exist—, but it is like the expression of my being, like the expectation of and approach of the moment that comes in the moment that now is, in the same way as I draw breath in the power of this actual moment, bringing about also my presence to the moment which is coming” (entry for December 1, 1970).

Another aspect of the human side of Abhishiktananda that is known only by those who had met him personally was his sense of humor. It somehow belonged to his down-to-earth character and his natural humility. He could laugh at himself and did not take himself too seriously. Unlike some spiritual persons, he did not mix up the seriousness of his concerns and ideals with his own person. Without compromising on his ideals, he accepted the contingency of the human condition. And therefore, when ultimately the supreme experience overwhelmed him, it was only the Divine, the Ultimate Reality, shining through him, reflected in his “eyes of Light.”(5)

Thirty years have now passed since the time of this great experience and his passing beyond(6) (how much he loved this word “beyond,” au-delà!) to the “further shore of darkness” (cf. Shvetashvatara Upanishad). What, then, is the relevance of the life and thought of this hermit in our contemporary situation of interreligious dialogue?(7) Both India and Christian theology have changed tremendously in the last thirty years. Was not his ideal of a spiritual India too idealistic? And was not his Catholic theology based too much on the historical form it had in the forties and fifties of the twentieth century? Yet in spite of these changes (to which he would certainly have responded had he lived a few decades more), the message of his life and thought is still not only relevant but even prophetic.

Religion and spirituality play an increasingly important role in our times, but they are often distorted, either by a narrow fundamentalism or by a superficial esotericism and eclecticism. The interreligious dialogue taking place in air-conditioned five-star hotels among religious leaders and intellectuals—necessary as it may be—cannot really penetrate to the core of the problems of a multicultural, multi-religious world, divided into rich and poor nations. Swami Abhishiktananda experienced in his own person the encounter and tension between two different worlds—East and West, Hindu and Christian (in over-simplified terms), and taking both seriously he attained new insights and an integration at the spiritual level. His discoveries—based on sometimes painful, but more often blissful experiences—have far-reaching implications: for the Church, for a new spirituality, for a true interreligious understanding. By giving a call to go “beyond” names, forms, dogmas, and institutions he did not mean a cheap escapism from the spiritual or theological demands of one’s tradition, but he showed a way of transformation, in the light of a deep encounter. It is not possible within the limits of this article to work out the implications of such a meeting, as elaborated by Abhishiktananda himself and as they could be developed on the basis of his insights and applied to new situations, both in India and in the West. But it can certainly be affirmed that Abhishiktananda’s most important contribution in this field was an authentic mystical experience at the confluence of two traditions.