Pannikar on Spirituality

Catholic Priest and proponent of inter-religious dialogue, Raimon Pannikar, summarizes the central ideas of all major spiritual traditions:

The essentials of the religious teachings could be summed up in three ideas: the relinking of onself with the rest of human beings, with our neighbours, with the community, with our true self; the relinking of humankind with Nature, with all things, with the environment, including machines; the relinking of humanity with the Divine, with Mystery, the Sacred, the Numinous, the Absolute, Transcendence.

“Religions and the Culture of Peace”, in Religion, Politics & Peace, 1999

Comments

[John]

Yes!

But at heart we are always already in a state of prior unity with everything, and The Divine Reality.

But how does each person, one at a time, do that, when the very essence of presuming to be a separate "person" over and against every thing "else" is FEAR.

With the result that every dimension of our being IS saturated with fear and trembling.

Such a turnabout into the prior state of Unity with everything, including The Divine Reality necessarily requires a passage through the "dark night of the soul". And such a passage cannot ever be done by any kind of self-generated effort or practice.

Such a conversion is Given by Grace alone.

Where does one find the RED PILL?

Or a NEO-like threshold person/being who has broken the collective separation trance, and thereby, potentially at least, established a pattern of/or possibility, whereby all others, one at a time, turn out into free unqualified relationship.

[Chris]

John: interesting comment, obviously influenced by Christian existentialism - positively dripping with Kierkegaard. :)

Can't say I'm keen on the Matrix reference, but it is apposite. :)

Best wishes!