Abhishiktananda was an extraordinary truth seeker. Arriving in India in the late 1940s, Dom Henri Le Saux, OSB (his Christian monastic name), attempted to grasp the significance of Advaita Vedanta (nonduality) in the context of his own Christian beliefs. In India, Abhishiktananda lived the ascetic life of a simple mendicant and cave dweller, observing periods of silence, much the same way the Desert Fathers did. Rather than theorize about the truth of his spiritual path, he chose to experience it. And experience it he did, in abundance.
Abhishiktananda initially met the great sage Ramana Maharshi, then later spent many months in caves upon the sacred Arunachala Mountain, in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. This remarkable video on the life of Abhishiktananda follows his path throughout India: from the beginnings of Shantivanam, the hermitage he founded in South India, to his wanderings in the Himalayan foothills.
The rich details of his inner life and experiences are beautifully narrated through his own words. This is a journey that is deep and meditative—a journey well worth taking.
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Reviews
“Abhishiktananda asks very important questions in the utter intimacy of pure mystical intuitive awareness, where transcendence is swallowed up into pure immanence.”
—Br. Wayne Teasdale, author of A Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life
“This truly extraordinary video chronicles Abhishiktananda’s life in India as a monk and sannyasi. It is a beautiful example of one who earnestly sought, and found, the deepest truth of Christ’s teachings through the profound and timeless principles of Advaita Vedanta.”
—G. Madhavan, IDJ Review
“We follow Abhishiktananda’s long pilgrimage, which is also that of Everyman, towards integration and simplicity.”
—James Stuart
Excerpt
” . . . the realization of this ‘all-pervading’ presence of God in my being, as in everything . . . Satori, the illumination, is the real baptism. This new view of oneself and of the world is not an intellectual knowledge, but an abyssal, cataclysmal transfiguration of one’s being.”
—Abhishiktananda