We begin with chanting the Gayatri Mantra, the most sacred mantra in the Vedas, and it is used at the beginning of sacred discourse. And the meaning of it is, let us meditate on the glorious splendor of that divine light. May He illuminate our meditation. Thank you. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti So, I hope that puts us in the mood

[01:04]

to reflect on our Christian faith in the light of the Oriental tradition, mainly Hindu, but also Buddhist, Taoist, the whole Oriental tradition. I believe that the world today is at the beginning of a new age, and I think the Church also is at the beginning of a new age. You all know the movement which has been taking place in Western science, how physics has begun to discover that matter is not the solid substance it was supposed to be, it is a field of energies. And within that field of energies, they see that also there is consciousness. And psychology has begun to discover that the human consciousness is not limited to the ordinary level of human consciousness. There is a transpersonal consciousness where we can go beyond our limits

[02:07]

and open ourselves to a transcendent consciousness. And so the Western world is opening itself up to the Eastern world, and many, as you know, are discovering Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism as a way of life. And I feel that the Church today is challenged by these two movements. The movement of Western science, which is really a revolution after centuries of materialism, mechanistic universe, we're discovering an organic universe, an opening on the spiritual world. And at the same time, we're discovering the whole tradition of Eastern spirituality. And how does the Church respond to this? Well, I want to suggest that the Church herself is at the beginning of a new age. For nearly 2,000 years, the Church has been moving westward.

[03:07]

We've all inherited a Western tradition of the Christian faith. And only today are we becoming aware of this Eastern tradition and that it would be possible to express our Christian faith not in terms of Greco-Roman philosophy or of European thought, but in terms of Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, in terms of the Oriental tradition. And that, I feel, is the challenge of the Church today, whether we're prepared for this new age. And I want to suggest in these talks how we can prepare ourselves for such a change. Now, I think we can learn a great deal from the tradition of the Church. As you know, Christianity came out of a Semitic world, out of a Jewish culture.

[04:08]

Jesus was a Jew, he spoke Aramaic, went to the synagogue and to the temple, celebrated the Eucharist entirely in the Jewish tradition. And yet Christianity was at the meeting point of that Jewish tradition and the Greek tradition. It's profoundly interesting, really, that Jesus taught in Aramaic, as far as we know, and that the apostles, the first apostles, spoke in Aramaic, but the New Testament was written in Greek. Christianity is at the confluence of two cultures, the Jewish-Semitic culture and the Greek culture, so that it's always been a dynamic power. The Gospel is not confined to one culture, it was at a meeting point of two cultures. And what happened was, within a century, the Church moved out of the Jewish-Semitic culture

[05:10]

into the Greco-Roman world, and a whole faith and the whole Church was organized along the lines of Western tradition of the Greco-Roman world. I don't know whether you all realize the extent to which the Church and all the churches are Westerned in their whole structure. And perhaps as a comment on this, it's worth reflecting that after hundreds of years of missionary endeavor in Asia, hardly 1% of Asia is Christian. After all these missionaries are full of zeal and preaching the Gospel and organized in the most wonderful way with all opportunities offered them, yet not 1% is converted. Why? Because we presented the Gospel in terms of Western culture. And ask any Hindu today, he will say, Christianity is a foreign religion.

[06:10]

That is their objection. So, we are challenged by the fact that ours is a Church which has been structured along the lines of Western culture and specifically of Greco-Roman culture. I don't know whether you realize our churches are organized in dioceses. And a diocese is simply a province of the Roman Empire. We still keep the same word taken from the Roman organization. And it applies to the liturgy. The liturgy, naturally, it comes from Palestine. It comes from Jesus himself, his own words. But the structure, the form of it has developed along Western lines. In the Eastern Church, you still have a more Oriental tradition. The liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and so on has a very rich Oriental character. But the Roman liturgy has always been rather sober, realistic, typically Roman and Western.

[07:12]

And we've inherited that Western liturgy. And then in theology, our theology came from Palestine, in Semitic terms, but it was translated into the language of Greek philosophy. And all our dogmas today are expressed in terms of Greek philosophy. We speak of three persons in the one essence, of two natures in the one person, all nature, person, essence, substance, all terms of Greek philosophy, translating the Christian message into the abstract language of theology. A necessary, important task, but still conditioning the gospel, you see, in terms of the Greco-Roman world. And then, of course, we have the organization of the Church. It had Rome as its center, which was the center of the Roman Empire. And it developed its organization

[08:13]

along the lines of the Roman Empire. And it had its canon law, which developed along the lines of Roman law. So we've inherited a Greco-Roman Church. And the fathers expressed their theology in terms of Platonic philosophy. Later, Aristotle was discovered and St. Thomas Aquinas expressed the Christian faith based on the Bible, illumined by Platonic philosophy of the Greek father, St. Augustine, and then articulated in the language of Aristotle. And that was the great achievement of the Middle Ages. And we inherited that theology of St. Thomas right up to the present century. And when I was studying theology for 30 years ago, we were still expected to use the theology of St. Thomas

[09:13]

as the basis of all our teaching. So that is the situation of the Church up to the present day. It's a Western structure, Western in its liturgy, in its theology, and in its organization. And the Vatican Council, the Second Vatican Council, came and it opened the Church from this narrow, somewhat narrow, though very profound tradition, opened it to Western culture as a whole. The Constitution on the Church in the modern world opened the Church to all the movements of Western culture, Western still. And the decree on ecumenism opened us to other Christian churches. And all the work of the Reformation was made open to us. But thirdly, of course, the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions opened the Church for the first time to other religions.

[10:13]

Never before had the Church taken a positive attitude towards other religions. And so our whole situation now has changed. We're open to the culture of the world, we're open to other Christian churches, and we're open to other religions. And that is the challenge which faces us now, how to build on this foundation which has been laid by the Vatican Council. Well, as I say, Christianity developed along those Western lines for all these centuries. But we should also mention there was a movement of the Eastern Church in the form of Syrian Christianity. When I was in Kerala for ten years, I was a member of the Syrian Catholic Church. We celebrated our liturgy in Syriac. And it was a very interesting experience to see Christian faith expressed not in these Greco-Roman terms,

[11:16]

though it was influenced by the Greek to some extent, but in really Semitic terms. You felt very close to the Bible, to the original source of the Gospel. And Syriac is really a form of Aramaic. It's very close to the language which Jesus spoke. And that Syrian Church, from the 5th to the 10th century, spread right across Asia. There were hundreds of monasteries and bishoprics right across Asia to Pekin, to China. And it spread also to India. But in the rest of Asia, the Mongol invasions and later the Muslims overwhelmed it and scarcely anything remained. But in India, the Syrian Christian Church, they're both Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, still remains and is a very vital force. So there is an Eastern Christianity. But it's Middle East. It's not Far East. It's a Semitic.

[12:19]

We felt very close to the Muslim. In fact, in our prayer, we prostrated just as a Muslim does, on the knees, head touching the ground. And many things were obviously of the same culture. But that is not India. That is not the Far East, you see. So it doesn't take us very far. And now we've got to go beyond Europe, beyond the Middle East, and face the challenge of Asia and the Far East. Now, the pioneer in this, as most of you will know, was Robert de Nobili. In the 16th century, this Italian nobleman came to India, lived as a sannyasi, wearing the kavi, sign of renunciation, and going above all castes, and studied Sanskrit and Tamil, the language of South India, and tried to express the Christian faith in the language of Vedanta and of Tamil philosophy.

[13:22]

It was a wonderful pioneering effort, but it didn't last for long. Within a hundred years, the Church returned again to her Western forms, and the Church in India today is almost entirely Western in its structure, in its theology, and in its way of life. So, the pioneer attempt was made by de Nobili. But then the rest of the world began to become conscious of the Oriental tradition. Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society in the 18th century and did a great deal of work translating Sanskrit into English. And then Max Muller, in the 19th century, produced the Sacred Books of the East, which are still a valuable source, translating the main scriptures of the East into English. So, gradually, the West has become conscious of this Oriental tradition. And now, of course, in the 20th century,

[14:24]

there's been an explosion. The communications have opened the Eastern world to the West, and we're all now exposed to Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, other communities all over Europe, all over Asia. We can't avoid it anymore. It's challenging us. And as you know, many Christians, many Catholics, are deeply influenced by these other religions. Thousands come to India every year in search of an experience through meditation, which they find in a Hindu ashram or a Buddhist monastery or some other group of that kind. So, the movement is going both ways. Western people are going to India and the East to learn of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Hindu and Buddhist and Sufi teachers are coming to the West and teaching doctrine here. So, we're in a new world now, facing this.

[15:27]

And in our small ashram in the South of India in these last 10 years, it's been most moving, in a sense, you know, to find people coming from all over the world, from all five continents, and at least 50 different countries, and all of them in search of God, you could say, of an experience of God. And that is the key to it, you see, that the Oriental always sees religion in terms of experience, whereas the Christian and the West tend to think of it in terms of dogmas, of moral laws, of a system, and each has its value, obviously. But today, people are looking for an interior religion, for an experience of God, as a rather amusing story. I was told there was a priest in North India who was studying Hinduism and made friends with a Hindu professor, and at last he felt he was intimate enough

[16:29]

to be able to ask him, and he asked him what he thought of the Christians, Christian churches, and so on. And he hesitated to reply, but at last he said, Well, if you want to know, I think you're very good people and I admire all the work you do, but I can't see that you have any religion. You see, for him, religion is meditation, is inner experience, and he sees us with all our good works, but he doesn't see us sitting, meditating like a yogi in Padmasana, you see, and that is religion to him. That's by the way. But it does show, you see, the difference in the approach. Well, now, there is our background, and now we have to ask ourselves, what is it that the Oriental tradition can give us? What change will it make in our lives, in our thought,

[17:30]

in the whole structure of the church? And I would say the first and fundamental thing is that the Oriental tradition is always orientated towards experience, the experience of God. And, for instance, in Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama is, they give lectures on Tibetan Buddhism regularly, and I'm told that they always tell you unless you assimilate what you've learnt in the lecture by meditation, make it part of your own inner life, you're wasting your time. It's no good just getting theories, information about Buddhism. You must learn to assimilate it, to meditate it, to make it become part of yourself. You've got to experience it, you see. So that is the dimension that the Oriental brings to us, this dimension of, I would call it, contemplative experience. And all theology,

[18:33]

and not only theology, but all life has to be orientated towards this contemplative experience, this experience of God. That is the basic character of the Oriental tradition. And this is where I feel that our monastic calling comes. You see, a monk or a nun, I hope if I use the word monk, sisters will understand I'm including them. You can't always say monks and nuns. But the monastic calling is a call to contemplative experience. You see, other orders of the church have their work to do. And it's true that a monk may undertake a parish work or a school, a college, so many other things, but in that he's no different from any other religious order or congregation. The unique calling of a monk is to be dedicated to seek God,

[19:34]

as we say, as St. Benedict says, to the experience of God. Our calling is that all our work, whatever it may be, is orientated towards contemplative experience, the experience of God. And it applies to all work. And here it is, I think, that the monastic calling has a meaning for human life as a whole. You see, what has happened in the Western world is that work has become almost entirely separated from spiritual experience, from contemplation. Contemplation and action have been separated. And consequently, work no longer brings spiritual fulfillment, and it becomes positively alienating as a result. And that is our situation, that work tends to alienate people from themselves and from God, from the source of life. And so all work has to be restored to its relation to contemplation,

[20:35]

to the experience of God, to find God in your work, whatever it may be. And so also with study. In our monastic life, we have time for work, we have time for study. And we may study secular sciences or philosophy or psychology or whatever, but the same way, that study has to be orientated towards contemplation, towards the experience of God. And we all know how difficult it is. Once you get absorbed in these studies, they carry you away and you no longer relate them to the real end of your life. You get distracted from it. And yet our monastic calling is to be bringing it back, all that we do, all that we study, bringing it back to contemplation, to the experience of God. And thirdly, prayer. Now, prayer need not be a contemplative experience. And I would honestly say that most religious prayer is not a contemplative experience.

[21:36]

It can be an experience of prayer, of openness to God in many ways. But very often, it doesn't bring you into that state of oneness, where you experience the indwelling presence of God in your heart. And that is the real end of prayer. So, work, study, prayer have all to be orientated towards this experience of God. And now, to try to define more clearly what we mean by experience of God. And here I want to introduce a theme which will be basic to everything I have to say, and that is that human nature is constituted of body, soul and spirit. In the recent theology for many, many centuries, we have a body-soul psychology. But in St. Paul, it is body, soul and spirit. Soma, Suki and Numa. And it's fundamental

[22:37]

in St. Paul's outlook. And that continued in the 2nd century with Saint Irenaeus, in the 3rd century with Origen. But after that, the body-soul took over. And the disadvantage of that is this, you see, that you get the idea that a human being is a body-soul, a psychosomatic unity, it's good as far as it goes, but then God is something beyond, totally transcendent. And you have this gap between yourself and God. But once you introduce the spirit, the spirit is the point where the human person is open to the spirit of God. St. Paul says it beautifully, the spirit of God bears witness with our spirit, our human spirit, that we are children of God. Only at that point of the spirit do we become aware of ourselves as children of God, you see. It's the point of openness. So every human being has a physical being, which we share with the rest

[23:38]

of the physical universe, we're part of the physical universe. And every human being has a psychological character, senses, feeling, imagination, reason, will, total psyche. And that is common to us all. And many people think that that's where the human being ends, with the physical and the psychological. But according to St. Paul and according to the whole Oriental tradition, beyond the body, beyond the soul, is the pneuma or the atman. In Sanskrit it's the atman, the inner spirit, the self. And that is the point of human self-transcendence. And I would like to mention here that to me the one theologian in the West today who really opens on the Oriental tradition, though he doesn't know much about it or anything I think about it, is Karl Rahner. You see, in his theology he bases it all on the understanding that the human being is constituted by the capacity for self-transcendence.

[24:40]

Beyond our self, beyond our ego, we have this capacity to go beyond and to experience what he calls the holy mystery. And that is precisely the Oriental point of view and that is also St. Paul's point of view. Beyond your body, beyond your soul, you have this point of the spirit, which is actually God's spirit acting in you. And at that point you're open to the transcendent reality, to the one being, to God himself. So this is the key, you see. And when we speak of the experience of God, we don't mean a physical experience or a psychological experience, but experience of God in the spirit. And that is what we mean in our Christian tradition by contemplation. It's not merely in the psyche, it's in the spirit. And St. Paul makes a clear distinction between Anthropos Psychikos, the man of the psyche, the man of the soul, and Anthropos Pneumaticos, the man of the spirit, of the pneuma. And for him, the psychic man

[25:42]

is the natural man without grace, you see. But the spiritual man is the man who is awakened to the reality of God. So, when we speak of spiritual experience, we mean experience of God in the spirit, beyond word and beyond thought. And this is the problem, you see. You have to go beyond words and you have to go beyond thought. And at that point you experience this inner unity, this non-dual reality. You see, the rational mind always thinks in terms of duality, subject and object, mind and matter, body and soul, time and space, and so on. All these are the categories of the rational mind. Very valuable and necessary in their place, of course. We don't discard them. But you have to go beyond those dualities. And as you enter into the spirit, into contemplation, you transcend the dualities, you transcend reason and logical thought,

[26:43]

and you open yourself to the direct experience of the spirit within. And that is the unifying experience, you see, the unity. So, that is what we are seeking, how to go beyond reason. And to a large extent, you see, our Western world and our Western church is dominated by the reason, the logical reason. And it has its great value, of course, and one can't discard it. But it's absolutely necessary to go beyond. And I think, you see, all over the world today, as I mentioned, you see, people are seeking this, consciously or unconsciously, they want to get beyond the body, beyond the psyche, and experience this spirit within, you see, the interior experience of the spirit. That is what people are looking for. And I think the hope of humanity is that they're awakening to this spiritual reality which is taking place all over the world. So, that is the first and fundamental thing,

[27:46]

that the whole of life is orientated towards the experience of God, and the experience of God is an experience of God in the spirit. Though I should mention, and this is important, you never separate the spirit from the soul and the body. Man is an integrated whole, and nothing is experienced in the spirit which doesn't have its repercussions in the body and the soul. As you know, they now study people in meditation and see its effects on the brain waves, you have the alpha and the beta waves and so on. And so it has a physical effect, and obviously on the psyche also it has an emotional effect, it has an effect on one's whole mind, it changes it. But the source is in the spirit, and one must go beyond the body, beyond the mind, discover the source in the spirit. And that point of the spirit is the point of integration of the human personality. We're not fully human

[28:47]

until we discover this point of the spirit where we're in communion with God. You see, the illusion is to think man is just this psychosomatic person which is simply the ego, the ego personality. And that is our lower person, you see, and it's what we have to get beyond. And the true man and the true self is not in the body, not in the soul, but in the spirit. That is where we become ourselves. And in the Hindu tradition, of course, the Atman, the spirit, is the self. It's your true self. And you're not your true self as long as you're an isolated individual only when you go beyond your ego, your isolated and empirical self and awaken to the transcendent self which is your real being, your being in God, in Christ, in the spirit. You see, that is what we're seeking. So, this point of the spirit is the point of the integration of the human personality

[29:50]

and that is for everybody. The spirit is present in every human being. It may be totally concealed, they may never discover it, but it's always there and without it you're not fully human. You see, it is the point of human fulfillment. And so, it's this point of integration. But the next thing is this, that when we reach that point of the spirit we experience ourselves in unity with the rest of mankind. As a body, we're all separated. Every body is a different physical structure and we're all different. And all racial differences and national and language, all these things come from our bodily differences and you can never get over those. And psychologically we're all different. Men and women are different and Asians and Europeans are different. There are psychological differences and each human being has its own psychological characteristics and we're all different.

[30:50]

And only when we go beyond the body and beyond the soul, the psyche, to that point of the spirit, do we find our point of... pain on the level of the body and the soul. Only when people awaken to the spirit can they find this genuine unity where they are one with one another. And so that is the second thing. We find ourself and we find ourself in this communion with others, in this oneness. And then thirdly, beyond that, not only do we discover our unity with mankind, we find ourself in this communion with others, in this oneness. And then thirdly, beyond that, not only do we discover our unity with mankind, we discover our unity with the whole creation. And this is a very profound experience As you go beyond yourself, you become aware of your links with the whole creation,

[31:51]

with the earth, with the planets, with the stars, with the galaxies. And again, you know, this is very interesting that modern physics now sees matter as a field of energies which is totally interdependent. The person I rely on in these things is Fritjof Capra. Most of you would know his Tower of Physics, and a still more important book, The Turning Point, where he applies this knowledge of the physical world to psychology, medicine, and economics, saying how it's going to transform the whole of our way of life. And this transformation, the physical universe is conceived, as he calls it, a web of interdependent relationships. There is nothing in the world that is not dependent on everything else.

[32:53]

Francis Thompson once wrote a poem, saying, move but a wing, and stir but a star. The smallest movement on earth has its repercussions throughout the universe. It's extremely profound. The whole is present in every part, and we're all linked with the whole cosmos. And so we're parts of this cosmic whole, and in meditation, in this experience of the spirit, we go beyond our human limits, and we discover our link with the whole created world, with the whole universe. And here, of course, you see, we link up with the Oriental tradition, particularly the Tibetan. I was listening to some of the tapes of those three Tibetans who were staying, Sister Pasqueline, and I was struck by the fact that, again and again, they try to relate to all sentient beings. It's not simply human beings, all sentient beings throughout the whole universe. You put yourself in harmony with the universe.

[33:56]

So at that point of the spirit, we integrate ourselves, we integrate ourselves with the whole of humanity, we integrate ourselves with the whole cosmos, and we're returning to the source, you see, to the center from which we've all come. So that is the goal, really, of this whole Eastern tradition, to help us to rediscover ourselves, our true self. And in doing so, I feel we can rediscover the meaning of the gospel for us today. You see, you can think of sin and the fall as essentially a fall from this unity vision. We were created in unity with God, and to see the world in the light of God. And sin and the fall are falling away from the unity vision into the dualities.

[35:02]

We're exposed to dualities, conflicts all the time. And redemption or atonement, at-one-ment, is the restoration of mankind and the universe to its original unity. And that is the work of the gospel, that is the work of the church, to restore mankind to its unity with the whole creation and with the whole of humanity. And that is what St. Paul means by the new creation. He has that marvelous vision that the whole creation groans in travail, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God. The whole creation is moving towards this unity, but it can only take place when mankind is redeemed, when man rediscovers his unity in God, in Christ, and then the creation itself takes part in this experience of God. The whole creation is taken up into the life of God. And then mankind comes together in this unity.

[36:03]

And as I said, I do not see any way in which mankind can be really united unless we reach that level of spirituality. And that is why it seems to me this is such an important stage in human history in which we're living, that people are awakening all over the world to this spiritual dimension and are discovering that we can get beyond our psyche, beyond these dualities, and can awaken to the unity of the Spirit. And that is taking place all over the world. And that, to me, is the hope of the future. So, sin separates us from this unity vision and plunges us into this world of dualities, of conflict, of disintegration. And the redemption in Christ restores us to that lost unity, restores mankind, restores the creation to unity in the body of Christ. And the body of Christ is the body of humanity.

[37:06]

You know, St. Paul speaks of Christ the second Adam, and the Fathers conceived Adam as humanity, as man. And through sin, Adam is disintegrated. St. Augustine says, Adam, when he fell, his limbs were scattered over the earth. The man was divided, disintegrated, and we're all living in this disintegrated state. And Christ, the new Adam, the second Adam, comes to put all these limbs together to reunite the body of humanity, to make humankind one body in himself. And then in Christ and through Christ, we return to the Father. We return to the source of all, you see, the origin. So we can try to see how our whole human life is this work of the Spirit, which is present in the whole creation, present in all humanity. And every human being, the Holy Spirit is present at work, whether they ignore it or deny it or whatever, that Spirit is present to them.

[38:10]

And that Spirit is moving creation and humanity towards this unity in Christ. And then as humanity and creation comes together in Christ, we return to our source. We rediscover the source from which we've come. We pass beyond the dualities and we enter into that final, absolute unity, the unity of the Father. And so I think we can interpret, as I say, our Christian faith in the light of this Oriental tradition along those lines. And in the course of the week, I hope we can go into more detail to see, particularly from a Hindu point of view, how this Oriental vision, how it's articulated, how it's developed in the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the tradition of Vedanta, and then see how it relates to our Christian faith. And in doing this, I think we have to do very much what the Greek fathers did to Greek

[39:17]

philosophy. They didn't just take it as it stood. They interpreted it in the light of their Christian faith. And we have to do the same. You can't just take over Vedanta or Mahayana Buddhism or Taoism. You have to interpret it in the light of Christ. And that, I feel, will be the task of the Church for maybe the coming centuries. It's a huge task. But we're all engaged in it in some way now, I feel. We've all called to open ourselves to the Oriental tradition and try to see our Christian faith in its light. And many of us now have experienced this over many years. And the very important discovery has been that the more one goes into the tradition, the more one deepens one's Christian faith. Many people are afraid, you see, of a kind of syncretism, that you simply mix the different religions. But those who do it seriously discover that you assimilate, you get a new perspective

[40:18]

on the Gospel. You see it from a new point of view, and it's deepened and enriched by it. And so there is a continual movement of opening to the Hindu, the Buddhist, and the Taoist, and then rediscovering Christ, the Holy Spirit, in a new light. And that is what we have to seek, the work of the Church as a whole, how to integrate, you see, all this Eastern tradition into our own life. And it's a mutual thing. As we open ourselves to the Oriental tradition, we hope that the Oriental, the Buddhist, the Hindu, opens himself to the Christian vision. But then, of course, our Christian vision must be presented to him in a way that's meaningful. And at present it is not, you see. The way the Christian faith is presented to the Hindu in its Western form has very little meaning for him. That's why there are practically no conversions, you know. From the educated Buddhist or Hindu, you'll get practically no conversions. I said there's only 1% of Asia, but even that 1%, it's mainly among the uneducated

[41:21]

tribal people, or Harijans, as we call them, the former untouchables in India. The number of caste Hindus, educated, and pious Hindus who convert, it's negligible almost, you see. So this is the challenge, that we must present our faith to Asia in terms which Asia can understand, and that means we've got to understand the Asian tradition, and then we hope they also will begin to understand our Christian tradition. And so there will be a coming together of the different religions of the world, and that's what we must hope, a convergence. And I often describe the process in terms of fingers on the palm of the hand. Fingers represent the different religions. Let's say Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity. And Buddhism is miles from Christianity, you see, on the surface here. But as we go deeper into any tradition, we begin to converge. And the deeper you go into your own tradition, the more you discover the depth of the other

[42:24]

traditions, and you begin to discover the source from which they come. There's a convergence on the source, and that is what we have to seek. But syncretism is mixing at this level. You take a bit of Hinduism and Christianity and mix them together, and that is syncretism. But ecumenism, or the path of convergence, is when we go to the depth of each tradition and discover ourselves in the depth of the Spirit, you see, at that center of unity. That is our final goal. So I think that's really all I wanted to say. And I would sum it up by saying, as I said, that the Holy Spirit is at work in the whole creation, in the whole of humanity, drawing all men and all things to unity in Christ. And as we come together into unity in Christ, in the mystical body of Christ, we become open to the Father, we're able to say, Abba, Father, and to return to the source.

[43:25]

The Father is the source from which all things come. And I would like to conclude with a very wonderful saying which the guru speaks to his disciple after the sannyasa diksha. Sannyasa, you know, is the solemn renunciation of the world to seek for God alone. And this kavi, as it's called, this color, is the color of sannyasa, of renunciation, recognized all over India, though not in America very much. And that signifies that you're committed to this search for God. And at the end of the ceremony, the guru says to the disciple, go, my son, across the wide spaces of the mind, go to the source, go to the unborn, your self-unborn, go to that which you have found and from which there is no returning.

[44:26]

And that is the journey which we're setting out on, really, to return to the source, across the wide spaces of the mind, across the whole human experience, returning to that source. And for us, it is the return in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. And so we ask that the Holy Spirit may guide us all in our reflections, our meditations, to rediscover this unity, to find ourselves in the unity of the Holy Spirit in Christ and the Father.

[44:58]

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