Raimon Panikkar

[Balder]

I'm recreating a thread on Raimon Panikkar because I found another essay by him that I would like to share here.  First, here are the first several posts from the original thread on the old IPS forum (full thread available here), and then I will attach the new essay in the next post.

 

~*~

 

Balder said Nov 28, 2008, 8:41 AM:

 

Adding another log to the fire of discussion on (the possibility of) postmodern and/or postmetaphysical theology, which started with Cameron's essay…

From Gerard Hall's Multi-Faith Dialogue - In Conversation with Raimon Panikkar

 

The Cosmotheandric Vision 

Panikkar develops his cosmotheandric vision of reality with reference to three major religious traditions to which he 'belongs': the Christian Trinity; the Vedanta Hindu advaita; the Buddhist pratityasamutpada. He claims, nonetheless, that the threefold pattern – traditionally Theos-anthropos-cosmos – are invariants of all religions and cultures. He describes the cosmotheandric principle as an “intuition of the threefold structure of all reality, the triadic oneness existing on all levels of consciousness and reality.” In Christian terms, ultimate reality, the Trinity, is one but also three; in Hindu terms the ultimate unity of all things is literally neither one (advaita) nor two (advitya); in Buddhist terms everything is radically related to everything else (pratityasamutpada).  

The cosmotheandric principle could be stated by saying that the divine, the human and the earthly – however we may prefer to call them – are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real, i.e., any reality inasmuch as it is real… What this intuition emphasizes is that the three dimensions of reality are neither three modes of a monolithic undifferentiated reality, nor are they three elements of a pluralistic system. There is rather one, though intrinsically threefold, relation which expresses the ultimate constitution of reality. Everything that exists, any real being, presents this triune constitution expressed in three dimensions. I am not only saying that everything is directly or indirectly related to everything else: the radical relativity or pratityasamutpada of the Buddhist tradition. I am also stressing that this relationship is not only constitutive of the whole, but that it flashes forth, ever new and vital, in every spark of the real.  

In particular, Panikkar's formulation of reality as cosmotheandric contests the assumption that reality is reducible to Being: there is also Non-Being, the abyss, silence and mystery. Nor can consciousness be totally identified with reality: there is also matter and spirit. As Panikkar expresses it: “reality is not mind alone, or cit, or consciousness, or spirit. Reality is also sat and ananda, also matter and freedom, joy and being.” In fact, this is for Panikkar the fundamental religious experience: “Being or reality transcends thinking. It can expand, jump, surprise itself. Freedom is the divine aspect of being. Being speaks to us; this is a fundamental religious experience consecrated by many a tradition.”

Three assumptions lay behind Panikkar's cosmotheandric vision. The first is that reality is ultimately harmonious. It is neither a monolithic unity nor sheer diversity and multiplicity. Second, reality is radically relational and interdependent so that every reality is constitutively connected to all other realities: “every being is nothing but relatedness.” There is, if you like, organic unity and dynamic process where every 'part' of the whole 'participates' in or 'mirrors' the whole. This corresponds to the ancient notion that every reality is a microcosm of the macro-universe. A contemporary version would be the Gaia principle. Third, reality is symbolic, both pointing to and participating in something beyond itself. We do not have a God separate from the world, a world that is purely material, nor humans that are reducible to their own thought-processes or cultural expressions. While it is important to recognise the “symbolic difference” between God and the world, as between one religion and another, for Panikkar, all cultures, religions and peoples are relationally and symbolically entwined with each other, with the world in which we live, and with an ultimate divine reality.  

THEOS
 

The divine dimension of reality is not an 'object' of human knowledge, but the depth-dimension to everything that is. The mistake of western thought was to begin with identifying God as the Supreme Being (monotheism) which resulted in God being turned into a human projection (atheism). Panikkar moves beyond God-talk to speak of the divine mystery now identified in non-theistic terms as infinitude, freedom and nothingness. This essentially trinitarian inspiration takes as its cue the notion that “the Trinity is not the privilege of the Godhead, but the character of the entire reality.”  As he states, he wants “to liberate the divine from the burden of being God.”

Panikkar's concern is not to overthrow the central insights and experiences of the theistic traditions but to acknowledge that “true religiousness is not bound to theisms, not even in the West.” He is especially sensitive to the modern secular critique of traditional religions in their generation of various forms of alienation, pathology and disbelief. The suggestion is that we need to replace the monotheistic attitude with a new paradigm or a new kosmology precisely in order to `rescue' the divine from an increasingly isolated, alienated and irrelevant existence. Sardonically expressed, the divine is not a ”Deus ex machina with whom we maintain formal relations.” Rather, the mystery of the divine is the mystery of the inherent inexhaustibility of all things, at once infinitely transcendent, utterly immanent, totally irreducible, absolutely ineffable.

Of course, this divine dimension is discernable within the depths of the human person. Humanity is not a closed system and, despite whatever forms of manipulation and control are exercised, the aspect of (divine) freedom remains. Nor is the world without its own dimension of mystery since it too is a living organism with endless possibility as the astro-physicists, among others, are showing us. Moreover, the earth has its own truth and wisdom even if this has largely been ignored in recent centuries by too many cultures and religions.  

ANTHROPOS  

Consciousness is, if you like, the human dimension of reality which is, however, not reducible to humanity: “Consciousness permeates every being. Eveything that is, is cit.” In other words, consciousness relates not only to humans who know but to everything else that is actually or potentially known–including a far galaxy on the other side of the universe. In this sense, “the waters of human consciousness wash all the shores of the real.” From the other perspective, the human person is never reducible to consciousness. It is evidently the case that humans participate in the evolving cosmos of which they are a part. They also participate in the divine mystery of freedom. 

Panikkar presents human experience as a threefold reality: aesthetic, intellectual and mystical. He critiques technocratic culture for reducing human life to two levels (the sensible and the rational), forgetting if not despising the `third' realm (the mystical). The `third' realm is not a rarified psychological state, but a `further' depth-dimension within all human awareness. This 'mystical' dimension which comes to the fore as a moment of realization that a certain experience is unique, ineffable, non-repeatable.  

Panikkar's intention is to show that genuine human experience involves the triad of senses, intellect and mystical awareness in correlation with matter, thought and freedom. Each act en-acts the cosmotheandric mystery: 

We cannot sense, think, experience, without matter, logos, and spirit. Thought and mystical awareness are not possible without matter, indeed, without the body. All our thoughts, words, states of consciousness and the like are also material, or have a material basis. But our intellect as well would not have life, initiative, freedom and indefinite scope (all metaphors) without the spirit lurking as it were, behind or above, and matter hiding underneath.

This cosmotheandric insight stresses human identity with the worldly character and temporal nature of the cosmos; it also manifests a human openness towards the infinite mystery that ipso facto transcends human thought. The basis of such affirmations is human experience itself which somehow refuses to sever itself from the totality of Being: we experience ourselves to be something `more' than mere pawns of nature in the evolution of matter, passing egos in the flow of time, or temporary insertions in the expansion of space. This too has been the fundamental insight of every religious tradition.  

COSMOS 

The world of matter, energy, space and time is, for better or worse, our home. These realities are ultimate and irreducible. There is no thought, prayer or action that is not radically cosmic in its foundations, expressions and effects. The earth is sacred, as many a tradition proclaims. More than this, there is no sacredness without the secularity of the world (literally saeculum). Panikkar speaks of “sacred secularity” as the particular way in which the divine and conscious dimensions of reality are rooted in the world and its cosmic processes.

He insists, for example, there is something more than pure materiality in a simple stone. Through its existence in space and time, the stone is connected to the entire universe with which it shares its destiny. Notions of inert matter, amorphous space and neutral time are superceded with reference to the ancient wisdom of anima mundi: the universe is a living organism constitutive of the Whole. Moreover, science itself is on the way to recovering something of this lost insight through its recognition of the indeterminacy of matter, the open-endedness of space, and the indefinability of time.  In Panikkar's terms, there are “no disembodied souls or disincarnated gods, just as there is no matter, no energy, no spatio-temporal world without divine and conscious dimensions.” Every concrete reality is cosmotheandric, that is, a symbol of the `whole'. It is not only God who reveals; the earth has its own revelations. 

Matter, space, time and energy are then co-extensive with both human consciousness and the divine mystery. There is something unknowable, unthinkable, uncanny or inexhaustible which  belongs to the world as world. This means that the final unknowability of things is not only an epistemological problem (due to the limits of the intellect) but also an ontological reality (integral to the very structure of beings). Other traditions will call this dimension nothingness, emptiness or even Non-being insofar as it is that which enables beings to be, to grow, to change–and even to cease-to-be.

 

~*~

 

And in this CrossCurrents article, Panikkar enumerates Nine Ways Not to Talk about God, which is useful to read in light of the above.

 

~*~

 

Tom said Nov 28, 2008, 10:00 AM:

 

Just a few thoughts.  Great vision.  The reporting could perhaps convey the vision more sensitively.  For instance:

He insists, for example, there is something more than pure materiality in a simple stone.

A little more thinking before reaching for the keyboard would bring the observation that “pure materiality” is what matter does, which is to differentiate, become conscious, etc. etc. etc.: anything one sees.  Stones aren't so simple.

Having allowed that observation to germinate, statements like:

Every concrete reality is … a symbol of the `whole'. It is not only God who reveals; the earth has its own revelations.

might be reformulated more creatively, as, say:

Everything is concrete, so the concrete is universal, mirrors and is the whole.  God was buried in the earth when he died.  I hear something grew in the place he was buried.

“Has its own revelations” … is a bar just around the corner from the hotel Descartes' Dualism.

 

~*~

 

maryw said Nov 28, 2008, 2:53 PM:

 

As always, thanks for this great Panikkar stew, Bruce. A fine (post)-Thanksgiving meal! Who knows …. someday I may become more than just an incompetent spy in the house of post-metaphysical theology …..  :-)

I remember that Cross Currents article from a few years back (a link you provided on the Integral Naked forum); I just love it. Every now and then I take the time to read it again because I feel that it expresses a “truth” I've “known” on subterranean levels for some time – something I have not had the words (nor the depths of brilliance) to articulate. After re-reading his words, I sense an opening and a widening in my heart and mind … divine freedom ever flowering.

Agape,

Mary

 

~*~

 

theurj said Nov 29, 2008, 10:36 AM:

Panikkar discusses in the following excerpts some of the themes we've touched on in several threads. He says in “The crisis of Maadhyamika and Indian Philosophy today”:

Is the Maadhyamika's claim tenable at all, i.e., without self-contradiction?

It should base itself on something outside that is even higher than reason. And, in fact, it does this (cf. p. 163). This is the dogma and the true tenet of the Maadhyamika, but as a real dogma it lies beyond the realm of a [formal] dialectical process.

The “higher level” does not belong to dialectics.

Now, how does the Maadhyamika account for its position? If it were nihilism, it could be somehow consistent, at least to the extent of pseudo-destroying itself. Since it is not pure nihilism it must transcend dialectic, and with that it must transcend its claim of no presupposition and its “anti-dogmatic” attitude.

In fact, Indian philosophy in its entirety rests on the tension and polarity between the aatman-view and the anaatman-view. The Maadhyamika is the ingenious attempt to transcend both views by denial, by suunya. Could not Indian philosophy in its present stage, after a full elaboration of its implications and a deeper contact with other philosophical traditions of mankind, be aware of another possible solution by eminence, by transcending both views equally, i.e., not by mere denial, but by a positive synthesis, which is not a simple mixture or a syncretistic compromise, but a third and yet qualified affirmation? Is there not that middle way which the Indian mind has always been passionately looking for as the path of salvation, the via media of a philosophical path that is aware of the itinerant character of being, the contingent feature of ourselves, including our philosophy? Is there not a middle way between the static being that cannot move and change and become, and the perennial flux that has no consistency, no identity, no being? But it must be a way and not a denial of all ways, because we are still pilgrims here on earth and our philosophizing is still itinerant. Could not Indian philosophy become aware of what the metaphysical tradition of the European Middle Ages called the analogy of being? There would be no need for India to copy it or to adopt it uncritically; but could she not discover something of this kind that would enable her to follow her best absolutist trends, without losing the sense of the relative?

What is the underlying presupposition common to both the aatman and the anaatman views? That change is not possible, that becoming is contradictory because Being is immutable. Either what “is” is and then cannot become, come to be, because it already is; or what “is” is not, because we can nowhere find such an “is.” The moment that we “imagine” we have caught it, it vanishes away – it “is” no more, there exists no such “is.” Ultimately aatman and nairaatmyavaada present the same structure: There is only one way of being a “being.” No “phenomenon,” no “thing” in this world fulfills its requirements. The “is” lies beyond this world, devoid of anything that might contaminate it. It is pure transcendence. And this is the aatman as well as the anaatman. It does not matter at all if pure unrelatedness is or is-not. It is not only that we have no way to prove it, or to speak about it, it also makes no difference. The “thing” – i.e., the cow, the house, my soul, my thoughts, this earth – is not. Either it is-not, for the aastikas, because it, the cow, etc., insofar as it is, is Brahman; or for the naastikas it is-not, because it, the “thing” is, neither as “thing,” nor as something else.

What “is” it, then? It “is” certainly not “being”; but it is not “not-being” either. In the analysis of that “thing” that changes lies the whole business of philosophy; and in finding a balanced answer consists the real “crisis” of Indian wisdom.

The dilemma is…[one of] identity and difference: in one word, relation. It is Brahman-aatman, or Absolute-relative, or Being and beings, or in Platonic terms the One and the manifold, or again reality and appearance, or eternity and time.

Quite rightly, the Maadhyamika puts all dialectic problems of philosophy on one side; all belong to the relative, to the contingent, to the sphere of reason, it will say. On the other hand, there is intuition, `suunyataa, nirvaa.na, the real, Being. It provides us also with the internal dialectics to recognize the inefficiency, the insufficiency of the first side. Moreover, it will never again allow us to “substantialize” the first side, as if it were something of its own. Naagaarjuna says quite forcefully that “Nirvaa.na is the reality of sa^msaara, or conversely, sa^msaara is the falsity (sa^mv.rti) of Nirvaa.na” (p. 162). Its only internal defect would be that it imagines that we can jump from the first shore to the second, out of the frustrations and contradictions which we find in the realm of the contingent. The jump is certainly possible; but it is, first of all, an existential pass-over, in which we really do not jump, but are taken over, by the other side. The grace of God, the gift of intuition, the higher knowledge of faith, and the like are here more or less adequate terms expressing this existential situation of ours. And this is quite a common opinion among the Indian systems, the Maadhyamika not excluded. It is not a dialectical maneuver that saves us, or that saves philosophy, but a descending redemption, the obedience to a higher “calling,” the realization of, or, rather, the being “realized” by, the real.

 

~*~

 

Balder said Nov 29, 2008, 6:44 PM:

Mary, you are a most welcome spy in this house!  I am glad you appreciated this “side dish” this Thanksgiving!  I hope you had a lovely one…

Edward, thank you for finding this essay!  I had been looking around on the web for excerpts from The Silence of God or The Cosmotheandric Experience, but hadn't been able to locate them – or much else, in terms of Panikkar's original writing.  So, this is great… I've read your excerpts and about half of the actual essay.  It is quite relevant to what we've been discussing.  Panikkar is well positioned, really, to address some of the questions we've been considering, being steeped almost equally in postmodern, classical Indian, and Thomist thought, among other streams…

 

~*~

 

theurj said Nov 30, 2008, 9:52 AM:

Gerald Hall has another article called “Intercultural and interreligious hermeneutics.”  I've copied-and-pasted below from the section called “Diatopical hermeneutics.” Mythos precedes the subject-object duality (pre-rational), logos creates it (rational) and the symbol is what provides that “higher level” that relates them (post-rational). And for you aestheticians notice how the “poetic word” is an example of this symbolic relation: “It is rooted in the lifeworld of a particular people, place and culture while also being open to transformative, even transcendent, meaning.”

On a personal note: When I went “integral” and rejected my previous “religious” Order, I did so because I interpreted my prior experience as a retro-Romantic regression into mythic belief. What Panikkar is helping me to realize is that the symbolism we used via ritual performance (the “poetic word”) might not have been mythic or retro-Romantic at all but indeed a bridge to a postformal, postmetaphyical enactment of the nondual divine/human interaction through mythos and logos.

From the article:

Stated differently, diatopical hermeneutics arises in response to the challenge of interpreting across cultural and religious boundaries where the hermeneutic circle has yet to be created. In this sense, diatopical hermeneutics is thoroughly postmodern in its refusal to colonize the 'other' with one's own set of religious or cultural presuppositions. However, in contradistinction to some postmodern literature, Panikkar does assume that communication among radically different worldviews is possible–indeed, indispensable. For this to occur, he introduces what he calls the imparative method, “the effort at learning from the other and the attitude of allowing our own convictions to be fecundated by the insights of the other.”  As distinct from the comparative method, which privileges dialectics and argumentative discourse, the imparative method of diatopical hermeneutics focuses on the praxis of dialogue in the existential encounter. Panikkar is explicit on this point: “it is only in doing, the praxis, that diatopical hermeneutics functions.”

In order to appreciate the imparative method of diatopical hermeneutics, it is necessary to be aware of Panikkar's distinctions between mythos, logos and symbol. These foundational categories effectively operate as three distinct yet interrelated means of intersubjective communication and modes of discourse. To begin, he distinguishes mythos and interpretation (logos):

A living myth does not allow for interpretation because it needs no intermediary. The hermeneutic of a myth is no longer the myth, but its logos. Myth is precisely the horizon over against which any hermeneutic is possible. Myth is that which we take for granted, that which we do not question; and it is unquestioned because, de facto, it is not seen as questionable. The myth is transparent like the light, and the mythical story–mythologumenon–is only the form, the garment in which the myth happens to be expressed, enwrapped, illumined.

The most important mythical stories are those that tell of a particular tradition's origins. Mircea Eliade viewed cosmogonic myths–stories of tribal origins–as the most significant feature in the identity-formation of primal cultures. They are no less important for cultures and religions, ancient and modern, today. What Panikkar adds to this is the view that the very power of myth is founded in its unquestionableness. How then is the myth communicated? The myth may be narrated in story or parable, or otherwise transmitted through symbol and ritual, but the moment we begin to explain or interpret the myth we have already converted it into an object of thought (logos). Mythic discourse precedes this subject-object dichotomy and, in so doing, highlights the primacy of experience over interpretation. The pervasive power of myth is in its ability to capture the heart rather than the mind which it does by revealing itself from the transcendent horizon of mystery. Every culture and religion has a mythic foundation, a set of taken-for granted truths about reality, which constitutes that tradition's horizon or lifeworld. The meeting of religions and cultures is often an unsatisfactory experience precisely because there is a clash of myths, each with its own universalist claims.

When Panikkar speaks of the “myth of pluralism,” he is locating pluralism within this mythic realm. “Pluralism,” he states, “is indeed a myth in the most rigorous sense: an ever-elusive horizon in which we situate things in order to be conscious of them without ever converting the horizon into an object.” He is the first to agree that pluralism cannot be logically deduced from pure reasoning since, in the meeting of religions and cultures, we often find ourselves confronted with “mutually exclusive and respectively contradictory ultimate systems.” Because we are dealing with such radically different horizons, languages and worldviews, ordinary interpretative procedures of historical hermeneutics and dialectics are not equal to the task. In this situation, diatopical hermeneutics turns to the symbol as it primary category for truth, meaning and communication. Unlike the mythos, which stands behind a community's beliefs in an unquestioning manner, or the logos, which subjects its beliefs to the narrow rules of argumentative discourse, the symbol moves between these two worlds of meaning linking subject to object, mythos to logos, darkness to light, understanding to interpretation, and faith to belief. In Panikkar's words:

What expresses belief, what carries the dynamism of belief–that conscious passage from mythos to logos–is not the concept but the symbol. Symbol here does not mean an epistemic sign, but an ontomythical reality that is precisely in the symbolizing… . The symbol is neither a merely objective entity in the world (the thing 'over there'), nor is it a purely subjective entity in the mind (in us 'over here'). There is no symbol that is not in and for a subject, and there is equally no symbol without a specific content claiming objectivity. The symbol encompasses and constitutively links the two poles of the real: the object and the subject.

In his own definition of hermeneutics, Panikkar focuses on the communicative and redemptive power of symbols. The task of hermeneutics is one of “restoring symbols to life and eventually of letting new symbols emerge.” Symbols run the risk of becoming mere signs and, thereby, losing their ontomythical power. This occurs when, for example, a religion is reduced to a set of doctrinal beliefs; or when a language becomes, as we say, a “dead language” without a living relationship with a community of speakers. It can also occur when the power of the word is reduced to a mathematical formula or a technical term which is precise in meaning but unable to express a more primordial truth. The poetic word is, for Panikkar, an example of the symbol: it is rooted in the lifeworld of a particular people, place and culture while also being open to transformative, even transcendent, meaning. In this sense, the symbol always has more to tell us yet. Symbols are both bounded and open. Symbol systems are also at very heart or living cultures and religions.

We have seen that it is only in the praxis that diatopical hermeneutics functions. This is because diatopical hermeneutics is primarily concerned with symbols, and symbols do not exist in the abstract realm of ideas severed from the hearts and minds of those who experience their power for truth and meaning. However, unlike myths which refuse critique–since to critique the myth is to destroy it–, symbols are able to take on new and extended meanings in the context of communicative praxis and even ideological challenge. When this occurs, we have what the philosopher Susan Langer calls a “symbolic transformation of experiences” which, she adds, “may illumine questions of life and consciousness, instead of obscuring them as traditional 'scientific methods' have done.” Symbolic discourse moves between what the mind thinks (logos) and the heart believes (mythos) without being the prisoner of either.

In this context, Panikkar makes a seminal distinction between faith and belief. He has long maintained that faith is a “constitutive human dimension” coterminous with all people, cultures and religions. One does not have faith in doctrines, concepts or other 'things,' but in “the ever inexhaustible mystery, beyond the reach of objective knowledge.” Faith is that human dimension that corresponds to myth. In other words, faith is not the privilege of the few but the “primal anthropological act.” Not that there is such a thing as “pure faith,” since faith is always mediated through symbolic expressions and specific beliefs which embody faith in a particular tradition. However, authentic, human belief is not represented by the logos but by the symbol, that “vehicle by which human consciousness passes from mythos to logos.” At a third level, belief is mediated through doctrines, ideologies, rituals and practices. There can be no effective discourse at this third level unless there is a shared symbol system, a commonly held set of beliefs and values that unite believers within a tradition–or across traditions. It is this latter challenge which diatopical hermeneutics squarely faces through its focus on the necessity of symbolic discourse–or what Panikkar also calls “dialogical dialogue.”

What needs to be clear at this point is that diatopical hermeneutics, through its focus on the symbolic transformation of experiences, is the very antipathy of the kind of value-free neutrality that is the ideal of scientific and phenomenological methods of understanding associated with dialectical discourse. Nor can diatopical hermeneutics be based on prior rules of interpretation since this would be to assume an already-existing hermeneutic circle with its agreed criteria as to what constitutes truth, value and right judgment. Clearly, in cases of intercultural and interreligious understanding, no such hermeneutic circle can be presumed. In this sense, diatopical hermeneutics cannot be universal; its interpretative procedures and rules of engagement must emerge from the dialogue itself.

[Balder]

The additional essay I would like to attach is entitled, Religion, Philosophy, and Culture. I will attach the full essay to this post as a Word document.

Excerpt:

3. What it is that we are talking about

Given the contingent fact that today's Western languages are somewhat intercultural vehicles, we could adopt the Hellenic word philosophy as a symbol of something, which, up till now, had no reason to be present in the meaning of what was called philosophy originally and that is still called philosophy.

What we could call intercultural philosophy would then not be a new species of philosophy, alongside the classifications offered to us by the histories of philosophy, but it would be a new genus of philosophy, an enriching of the term beyond its cultural limits.

Just as – as we shall see – the great cultures of mankind are not real species of a real genus, but each one of them is rather a genus (with subcultures as species), so the intercultural notion of philosophy would represent a distinct superior genus (which we could perhaps continue to call philosophy) and not another species of a unique genus.

This kind of supergenus, of a purely formal character and valid only within a specific moment of time and space, would be a transcendental, and not a categorial relation with what, until now, has been called philosophy. This philosophy would be a formal transcendental and not a category. In this sense, intercultural philosophy does not exist as does an idealistic philosophy (one which presents certain common traits), or a Catalan philosophy (without content that is necessarily common, but cultivated by the Catalans or in the Catalan language). An intercultural philosophy exists only as transcendental to the different human activities which correspond homeomorphically to what, in a certain culture, we call philosophy.

As I try to follow this middle way which avoids solipsism without falling into colonialism, I shall try to describe in a very provisional manner, as follows, the philosophical activity that would have a certain intercultural validity:

Philosophy could he understood as the activity by which Man participates consciously and in a more or less critical manner, in the discovery of reality and orients himself within the latter.

By saying activity, we wish to surmount the reductionism that is represented by a certain conception of philosophy as being something purely theoretical. An intercultural philosophy cannot eliminate the dimension of praxis, understood not only in a platonic and/or Marxist sense, but also eminently existential, to use another polysemic word. The word "activity" also indicates that it is a matter of acting, of a human agere, which need not therefore be limited to a mere mental or rational operation.

By using the word Man, we refer to the philosophical activity which is specific to the human being. Neither angels nor animals philosophize. Philosophy is an activity, belonging to Man as such. Philosophy would be that primordially and specifically human activity.

The notion of participation in our description claims to indicate the passive aspect of philosophical activity.

Life, as well as the reality in which we live, has been given to us and we find ourselves immersed in it. We are, as we participate in it, something anterior and superior to ourselves, both individually and collectively. Philosophical activity is an activity of acknowledgement before being one of pure knowledge.

By qualifying philosophical activity as conscious, we wish to indicate that consciousness embraces an activity and a reality which is much broader than reason, not only because Spanish and French words include very wisely moral conscience, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, but also because while it includes rationality and intelligibility, it does not limit itself to the latter. We are aware that there is something that we do not understand, we are aware that both Nothingness and Being, even if they are unintelligible, can be real. There exists a thinking which is non discursive, non deductive, an imaginal, iconic awareness, a non reflexive intuition, etc. And experience shows us that many cultures have cultivated these types of consciousness which are not included in rationality – without necessarily falling into irrationality, the latter being incompatible with philosophical activity, thus abandoning the realm of the human strictly speaking. 5

We add the word critical because we seek to underline both the intellectual dimension of philosophical activity and its questioning character. Every man could potentially be a philosopher, but the word "critical" suggests that the first innocence has been lost, and that, in the vision of reality held by any man, the philosopher asks the why of what is given to him. The word "critical" comprises also reflection, skepsis and introspection. Human consciousness is constitutively consciousness: it is a gnosis which knows that we are not alone (ni estamos ni somos solos). We have added degrees to critical consciousness, for even if a minimum of self-consciousness seems to belong to all philosophy, it is not necessary to accept a Kantian type of "critique" as being essential to the notion of philosophy.

No matter what, with a more or less critical consciousness, philosophy is a discovery of what is and of what we are. Not only is reality disclosed to us by itself, but we also discover it in virtue of our active participation in the dynamism of reality itself of which we are a part. There is no point in saying that this discovery or revelation takes place within some limited parameters that make us who we are and of which we are aware. Philosophical activity is as much a discovery of reality as that of what we are. It is a partial, hypothetical, doubtful, imperfect, contingent discovery but a revelation in the last analysis. A revelation which, because it is one, continues to be so; i.e. an unveiling which never ceases, not only because of a possible infinitude of reality, but because of our own finitude, which results in that every discovery is at the same time a covering over. Practically all philosophies have known that truth has a seductive appearance; it simultaneously reveals and hides itself. Not only would absolute truth dazzle us, but it would not enlighten us, for it could not be total if we ourselves were not in it. Or, as we shall insinuate further, all incursion of the light or of the intelligibility of logos within the obscure realm of the mythos is accompanied by another shadow that the logos leaves behind it and which the mythos discreetly covers anew. All demythization is accompanied by a remythization; 6 it is always necessary that something be "pre-sup-posed".

By reality, we understand all that is, or is thinkable, all that can enter our consciousness, the representation (whether realistic or idealistic), the idam of the Upanishads ... We exclude neither Being nor Nothingness, nor do we limit ourselves to what can be expressed by the verb to be. We use this word as the broader and (maybe) deeper of all – not as all (no theory whatsoever is formulated here), but as an ultimate symbol which would hence encompass also what could dialectically appear as non-real. Let us not forget that the great challenge of interculturality is the relativization of all apriori.

The notion of orientation, finally, wishes to underline the vital aspect, both practical and existential, of philosophy. It is through philosophy that Man gives orientation to his life, forges his destiny and moves towards what he considers his goal (whatever may be its meaning). Philosophical activity would thus be that specifically human activity by which Man realizes as such – what many cultures have called the salvific character of philosophy, or of what it is customary to translate by religion. This orientation may postulate a North or at least a magnet, but it is philosophy, as conscious activity about the meaning of life or of reality, which puts the compass into our hands. And while some extremist positions say that we should do away with the compass, that waying on our own without an (external) compass, would also be the interiorization of a compass which does indicate no other direction but the one that we create or imagine. From the starting point of interculturality, philosophy can be considered as the conscious and more or less critical companion of Man's journey – corresponding in many cultures to what could be translated by religion.
It is obvious that every word used will be differently interpreted by different philosophies. It follows that an intercultural philosophy questions all notions, and each one of the notions of a current in a given culture.

After having taken all these precautions, I believe that one can speak provisionally of intercultural philosophy as being a transcendental relation to what we call philosophy. We have not thereby left our culture, we have not jumped over our own shadow but we have opened ourselves, as much as possible, to the experience of the reality of other cultures, ever ready to dialogue with the latter, as we shall now say.

[Balder]

Raimon Panikkar's last published book is The Rhythm of Being.  I haven't picked it up yet, but based on these reviews -- and in honor of his recent passing -- I am planning to do so soon.  He is telling a metaphysical story in this book, from what I gather, but with a post-metaphysical understanding of his mythopoetic story-telling.

 

~*~

At a time of a much-heralded postmodern return to religion, much of it still vague and tentative, Panikkar actually offers bold alternatives that attempt to diagnose our religious condition and meet our spiritual needs. It is a mark of the sad insularity and provincialism of the modern Western academy that many of its practitioners are largely unaware of the vast body of religious thinking in other parts of the world. They could do worse than study Panikkar, a thinker with whom Martin Heidegger had conversations for over twenty years, but about whom he was characteristically silent in his published work. 
~ From the foreword by Joseph Prabhu

Twenty years after he delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Raimon Panikkar's The Rhythm of Being is finally published. One of the world's most important philosophers of religion reveals the unity of cosmic Mystery in this distillation of the wisdom of East and West, North and South. The Rhythm of Being had its origin in the Gifford Lectures, delivered in Edinburgh in 1989 under the title "Trinity and Atheism: The Dwelling of the Divine in the Contemporary World." The long gestation allowed him to incorporate issues of Christology and theological anthropology that he pursued in his Christophany: The Fullness of Man, as well as questions about God published as The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, to mention only two of his recent publications in English.

One of the world's leading proponents of interreligious dialogue, Panikkar, who has doctorates in chemistry, philosophy and theology, has taught in Europe, Asia, and North America, including at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, for at least sixty years of his life has engaged in center-to-center unions between no fewer than four traditions: Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and modern science. While in The Rhythm of Being he writes in a largely philosophical register, he also makes clear that the ground and springboard of his thought is spiritual experience filtered through metaphysical reflection.

According to Joseph Prabhu in the foreword, one reason why reading Panikkar is as challenging as it is rewarding is because of his mastery of different disciplines and multiple cultural idioms expressed at a high level of philosophical abstraction. It is nonetheless worth the effort because he deploys his vast learning and religious experience to meet some of the urgent challenges of our age in a daring and almost prophetic manner.

What for long has driven and unified Panikkar's thinking has been his cosmotheandric vision of reality, what he calls the trinity of cosmic matter, human consciousness, and divine presence in co-constitutive relationality. These three basic and irreducible dimensions of reality interpenetrate one another and exist only in relation to one another:

There is a kind of perichoresis, dwelling within one another, of these three dimensions of Reality: the Divine, the Human, and the Cosmic.

Panikkar's use of the theological term perichoresis, taken from the discussions about the Trinity by the Greek Fathers and paralleling in a loose manner the three moments of the eternal dance of Siva Nataraja creation, destruction, and preservation, is deliberate and is designed to articulate four closely related aspects of reality: (1) its trinitarian structure, (2) its differentiated unity, (3) the open-ended character of reality, and (4) its essentially rhythmic quality.

The trinitarian structure of reality not only allows for but invites differentiation and diversity. Nonetheless, the Trinity is unbroken because the three dimensions of reality in their relationality do not fragment or break up reality into parts. The life of the Whole courses through each and every one of its manifestations. This is the basis of the distinction Panikkar makes between the pars pro toto (the part standing for the whole, which it obviously cannot because it is a part) and the totum in parte, the Whole expressed and manifested in the part, which Panikkar's notion of full-fledged relationality tries to capture. He takes pains to distinguish his holism from what he calls the totalitarian temptation. To speak of reality as a whole is not to speak of the whole of reality. It is rather the attempt to discern the unity that underlies the differentiation. Likewise, the cosmotheandric intuition is the awareness of the undivided reality of the whole.

In The Rhythm of Being, Panikkar offers readers a Nietzschean genealogy of theism, tracing its origin to the Parmenedean equation of Thinking and Being, developed further in the laws of non-contradiction and the excluded middle, and receiving one of its clearest expressions in Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason.

According to Prabhu, one of Panikkar's signal contributions in this area is to insist on the prevalence of such intuition not only in well-known mystics, but also in common experience. Mystical insight is a potential everyone has, but under the sway of a rationalistic culture the ability is sadly underdeveloped.

The perspective of The Rhythm of Being is twofold. First, it tries to overcome the monoculturalism of our present times, even though Panikkar uses the words of western tradition in order to make sense to most readers. His horizon is mainly that of the indo-European world from which he draws most examples and the majority of the words. Vast fields of human experience remain outside this angle of vision in spite of his efforts to make some sense of the sensibilities of peoples belonging to other cultures. He makes clear from the very beginning that words like World, Being, and God claim to have a universal meaning, but this is not the case; such words convey only one vision.

According to Panikkar, interculturality does not mean that we deal mainly with the problems of other cultures as we see them, but that we try to integrate the ways of thinking of other peoples into a contemporary intelligible language, as much as this is possible. The other perspective of The Rhythm of Being is that it is a contemplative work. The long delay in publication helped Panikkar delete any sentence that was not the fruit of an experience.

Simply to follow Panikkar as he sweeps across times and cultures and languages in the attempt to nuance each detail of his thinking is demanding enough. But more humbling than his erudition, which is without equal among twentieth-century theologians, is the way Panikkar allows the core ideas of his book to make light of his own attempts to grasp them. Only such a humor of wealth and poverty is worthy of the rhythms of being and of the extraordinary musician who has spent his life on this unfinished score. 
~ James W. Heisig, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture

Raimon Panikkar is a unique thinker of our age -- a philosopher, theologian and mystic; a Christian who has also internalized central moments in both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This book, a product of years of deep reflection, is his most accessible and his most moving. I highly recommend it to all philosophers, theologians and religious seekers. 
~ David Tracy, University of Chicago

For over half a century, Raimon Panikkar has been developing a world-view and vision of reality weaving together the most profound experiences and insights of eastern and western religious traditions. This book offers a distinctly clear and systematic exposition of Panikkar's unique method, central ideas and original concepts .... The Rhythm of Being will be a source of inspiration not only for Panikkar's many fans and followers, but for anyone in search of a vision of reality transcending the confines of a particular cultural or religious system of thought.  
~ Catherine Cornille, Boston College

I could not read this book. I had to keep putting it down to ponder it, to feel it, to let it sink in. This is Panikkar at his best. In language that is as philosophically profound as it is poetically engaging, Panikkar creatively and sometimes playfully draws on his multi-religious identity and knowledge to present his vision which is really his experience of the triune inter-being of the Divine, the world, and humanity. 
~ Paul F. Knitter, Union Theological Seminary

[Balder]

Here's the description from the Youtube page:

Swami Abhishiktananda: An interview with Raimon Panikkar conducted by Dr. Christian Hackbarth-Johnson.

Swami Abhishiktananda (1910--73), originally Fr. Henri Le Saux of Saint Anne's Abbey in Kergonan, France, is well known for his deep immersion into the Advaitic spirituality of India.

Abhishiktananda came to India in 1948 as a missionary with the concrete goal of establishing a form of Benedictine monasticism inculturated to the Indian context. In his first years in India he toured ashrams to gain an idea of Hindu monasticism and was deeply taken when he visited the ashram of the famous holy man Ramana Maharshi in Tamil Nadu. This led to a growing appreciation of Advaita Vedanta on its own terms, apart from any desire to convert Hindus to Christianity. For two decades, to the end of his life, Abhishiktananda pursued the Advaitic goal of immersion into pure, unqualified consciousness, beyond personal identity. At the same time, Abhishiktananda maintained his identity as a Catholic priest, celebrating Mass and praying the psalms to the end of his life. His deep fidelity to two traditions made for an extremely valuable experiment. Different people draw different conclusions from his life, but for good or for ill, his life was, in the words of Bettina Bäumer, "a laboratory of spiritual alchemy"
___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Raimon Pannikar was born as the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and a Hindu Indian father in Barcelona. His mother was well-educated and from the Catalan bourgeoisie. His father belonged to an upper caste Malabar Nair family from South India. Panikkar's father was a freedom fighter during British colonial rule in India and escaped from Britain and married into a Catalan family. Panikkar's father studied in England and was the representative of a German chemical company in Barcelona.

Educated at a Jesuit school, Panikkar studied chemistry and philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic Theology in Madrid and Rome. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Madrid in 1946 and a doctorate in chemistry in 1958. He earned a third doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1961. He compared St. Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy with the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Ādi Śańkara's Interpretation of the Brahma Sutras

He entered the Opus Dei organization in 1940. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946, and was a professor of philosophy at the University of Madrid. He made his first trip to India in 1954 where he studied Indian philosophy and religion at the University of Mysore and Banaras Hindu University, where he met several Western monks seeking Eastern forms for the expression of their Christian beliefs. "I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be Christian," he later wrote.