Om Namah Shivaya. Rest. Rest for a second. Shalom Aleichem, [...] Shalom.

[01:19]

Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. The first question that was handed in is a written question, and it was handed in by a whole group of the panel members. Must Christians set aside their exclusive claims in order to be faithful to the truth? Then anyone who wants to speak to this topic is invited to raise their hands and we'll try to take them in order. I think the distinction has to be made between my exclusive claims and the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ.

[02:37]

And this is, as I tried to point out the other day, a point of crucifixion for a Christian, a point of pain. I cannot claim to fully understand any claim of Jesus Christ. And therefore, I have to be willing to die to my understanding of it, as Peer Valaya said so beautifully this morning, leaving resurrection to God. knowing, however, that there is a resurrection. This problem of the concrete does not arise primarily from my consciousness, from my experience of my personality, which is largely illusory, speaking personally, because certainly I'm deeply convinced that God has not finished purifying me. Perhaps the best philosophical presentation of this problem was given by Karl Rahner when he said that there are two ways we must look upon God, as transcendental cause of everything that is, and as categorical cause in a special way of certain things, and as that second way that provides the scandal and the pain.

[04:03]

Brother David of Mount Savior has a comment. If I hear you correctly, Father Martin, you're saying this is the claim to exclusiveness. That's the question. The claim to exclusiveness is not my claim as a Christian, but is Christ's claim. Would any other Christian here, believing Christian, like to address himself to this question? Is Christ's claim the claim to exclusiveness? Professor Thomas Berry has a comment. I would like to say that I'm not sure that there are exclusive claims. There are unique claims. Christianity and Christ have exclusive claims only because everything is included. In other words, the inclusion, the universal inclusion, is what makes for the exclusion.

[05:16]

And I do not myself accept what might be called exclusive claims. If I understand it correctly, you are basing your argument on the point that truth is always inclusive. Pir Vilayat Khan Only through me can you reach the Father, means only through imminence can you reach transcendence. Professor Panikkar I would not like to be philosophical, but I'm almost obliged. First, the exclusive claims of Christ cannot be distinguished in any human statement from my understanding of those exclusive claims.

[06:31]

Thus, my understanding of the exclusiveness of Christ belongs in an inseparable way to any kind of claim to those claims of Christ as exclusiveness, i.e., I would contest the correctness of the question if by exclusivity or exclusiveness of Christ we understand any type of exclusiveness which is independent from my understanding of that exclusiveness. Second point. If this is the case, my understanding of the exclusiveness is limited to the very categorical world in which I am thinking. And the second point could be simply formulated without developing is, I think I could prove that the greatness and at the same time weakness of the whole Semitical thinking, including by that Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Western tradition, is a way of approaching intelligibility based on the primacy of the principle of non-contradiction.

[07:56]

A is not non-A. So that the more A is A, the more A is not non-A. So that any kind of affirmation, I am your God, you are my elected people, you are the universal savior, etc., etc., is understood when our thinking is based on the primacy of the principle of non-contradiction as synonymous with You who do not belong to that particular category of thought in that statement are exclusive to that. The main basic pivot on which the Asiatic, mainly Hindu and Buddhist thinking is based is on the principle of identity. So that A is the more A, the more A is A and thus indistinguishable from A. I cannot now develop like that. But if this is the case, the whole problem of the exclusiveness of Christ should be understood theologically and anthropologically as a kind of particular interpretation belonging to a particular culture.

[09:09]

And if I had to speak of a Christian, which I am always unhappy when people put labels on me, I would say that this is not the only exclusive way of understanding the message of Jesus Christ. Archimandrite Callistus, where? At the moment, I can speak only within my cultural tradition as a Christian in the West. And for me, as a Christian speaking to other Christians, the problem is this. The nature of the incarnation of Christ As Christianity has been traditionally understood, Christ is Son of God in a unique sense. He is not just a superior prophet, the first among the prophets.

[10:11]

He is Son of God by nature, and all of us are only sons of God by grace. Now, if we give this up, we must be very clear that we are giving it up. and understand why. And we must not jump this hurdle without noticing what we are doing. Rabbi Arthur Green has a comment. Thank you. I thought that was very clear and honest. I want to say something historical. I think this sin, and I call it the great sin of Western religion, is really ours and it's an Old Testament sin. And it comes from the prophets and the Psalms, the gods of the nations are sticks and stones, eyes of they but they see not, and so on.

[11:13]

But I want to understand that as the protest of a religious revolution against religion. What the prophet there is saying, religion fui. What I have to tell you is not religion as religion has ever been understood. And in that sense, he means the gods of the nations are sticks and stones. That's garbage, that religion. Now, of course, to turn it around and become a religion and then say, no, the prophets meant that we have the one true religion and other religions are false. Pir Vilayat Khan. I wonder under what authority we set ourselves up as judges of the greatness of Christ. under the authority of humble disciples trying to understand his message.

[12:15]

Dr. Alan Watts has a comment. This is getting to the nitty-gritty of a troubled religious question. Because everybody in religion is playing spiritual one-upmanship. And there are very, very interesting forms of spiritual one-upmanship, such as that I'm more tolerant than you are. I'm more inclusive than you are. I'm more aware of my sins than you are. And because, you see, the nature of recognizing oneself as being a member of an in-group is that you have to do so by contrast with an outgroup. And St. Thomas Aquinas gave the show away by announcing that occasionally the saints in heaven would walk over to the battlements and look at the souls of the damned suffering in hell and praise God for his justice.

[13:29]

It's a much more profound statement than you might think because St. Thomas was a very great philosopher. But We have come to a point where Christianity must be seen in a different context than that of Mediterranean culture, the cosmos in which it originally found itself. Let us suppose that there are human beings on other planets in this galaxy and indeed on planets in other galaxies altogether. Now, if God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever believed on him should be saved and have eternal life, are those human beings on other planets going to have to wait for missionaries on spaceships from planet Earth in order to be saved?

[14:37]

The probability, the merely statistical probability of there being other human beings in this universe is colossal. So if God truly does love the world, which is the basic assumption of the whole thing, then obviously there could have been incarnations of the Logos Sophia, the only begotten son of God, in other cosmoses, in other worlds. Now what is the difference in principle? between another planet and say, at the time of the birth of Christ, the civilization of the Incas in Peru or the Chinese. They were as out of touch with Mediterranean civilization as Alpha Centauri is out of touch with us today. The Bible and the teachings of the church do not say that the man Jesus of Nazareth was the only historical incarnation of God the Son.

[15:43]

They just don't say it. The only begotten Son of God is the second person of the Trinity. Jesus of Nazareth was the avatar or incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. There is no saying that that was the only incarnation of the second person in all time and space. That just isn't said. When it is said that in the name of Jesus every name shall bow and that only in the name of Jesus may man be saved, the name of Jesus is not J-E-S-U-S or I-S-S-A or I-E-S-O-U-S or however else it may be spelled. We pray in the name of Jesus. Now that doesn't mean that the name of Jesus is a signature on a blank check over which you may put any amount. When you pray in the name of Jesus, you pray in the spirit of Jesus.

[16:45]

You ask the sort of thing that Jesus would ask for. So the name of Jesus means the spirit of Jesus, which is identical with God the Son, the Logosophia. So I'm laying it down to you in strictly theological language that there has been a ghastly mistake that you have confused one extremely genuine incarnation of the only begotten Son of God with the only incarnation of the Son of God in all time and space. And that is deplorable shortsightedness. Because now, you see, we have a different conception of time and space than was had in those days. When they had a Ptolemaic conception of the solar system, they knew nothing about the nature of the Milky Way.

[17:47]

They knew nothing about the nature of other galaxies. And furthermore, one must not suppose that the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, knew all things that there are to know. Because it is expressly said by St. Paul, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of man, thought not identity with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself and made himself of no reputation, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient to death. Because if Jesus did not become a human being in the full sense, he did not become man. I mean, if God the Son, I should say, rather than Jesus. And I'm talking in strict terms of Catholic dogma. Therefore, he had, in order to be genuinely human, to renounce omnipotence and omniscience. In the fullest possible senses of those words, whatever they mean.

[18:48]

And so he did not know, for example, that Moses didn't write the book of Genesis, as we do now. There are a lot of things he didn't know. He never said anything about the existence of China. There are an enormous number of things he didn't know, because he accepted the limitations of his own culture. And therefore, if in a culture where you believe that God is the universal monarch, patterned after the image of the pharaohs of Egypt and the Cyrus's of Persia, Kyrie eleison, Cyrus have mercy on us. And you say you come in and you've had this cosmic consciousness and you've experienced that you're identical with the Godhead. And you say, I'm the son of God, that means of the nature of God, like one says, son of Belial, son of Perdition, son of a dog in Arabic, son of a donkey, means of the nature of Ebenezer Lamar, son of a donkey.

[19:52]

So when one says of someone son of God, it means they're of a divine nature. Now the whole thing is made clear in the Gospel of St. John. The moment when Jesus said, I and the Father are one, It says in the Gospel, the Jews took up stones to stone him. And he replied, many good works have I shown you from the Father, and from which of these do you stone me? And they replied, for a good work we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being man make yourself God. And he said, isn't it written in your law, he was quoting the 83rd Psalm, I have said you are gods? Now if God said that to those whom he gave his word, and you can't contradict the scripture, how can you say that I blaspheme because I say I am a son of God? No answer. If you, of course, read the King James Bible, it says, because I said I am the Son of God, and you will see the the printed in italics as if for emphasis.

[21:03]

All things printed in italics in the King James translation are interpolations by the translators. It says in Greek, a son of God. So I find nothing in our dogmatics or in our scriptures to oppose the notion that the Son of God may have been incarnated more than once. Father Burkhardt Neuenhauser, Professor Collegio Sant'Anselmo at Rome. But let me say, it would be wonderful if we could start with this supposition for any incarnation, not only once in Christ Jesus, several times. It would be wonderful. I don't know if we as Catholic Christians can speak so.

[22:05]

I can give you a brief answer to this. There is a sufficient number of Catholic theologians in good standing who at this present time hold this opinion precisely based on the arguments that Alan Watts presented of other planets and so forth. This is exactly the line of argument. So this is at the moment an acceptable Roman Catholic doctrine. I have no difficulty to admit it in another planet, but here, in our earth, I don't know if you could say so. I don't know any theology of today who would speak so, and I would refer me to the words of the Gospel of John. Nobody comes to the Father through me, and this to me is not only the eternal Son of God, but this eternal Son of God incarnated in Christ Jesus. Therefore, for us human beings in this earth, I don't see any possibility to come to the Father, if not through this only one incarnated in Christ Jesus in an historical time.

[23:18]

You have made your point very clear, Father, and a decisive word that you used was, for us. Now what does this for us imply? That is the question with which we are confronted now. Who is this us? Does what Alan Watts says, the Mediterranean culture, represent this us and the others are as far removed as planets? Or, that's the question before us. Would someone like to address him, sir? John D. Keister, chaplain of Roanoke College, Virginia, has a comment. I simply wanted to quote Paul Tillich, and I think rightly, when he said that Jesus died to himself, he died to Jesus to be the Christ, so the particular died to the universal. I don't want to prolong this particular line of discussion unduly because it will become a Christian discussion about the New Testament and that can lose interest for other people.

[24:34]

But it does point out how important the New Testament is for our normative prophetic utterance about who we are. Actually, the New Testament, following Jesus himself, avoids the term Son of God, because Son of God means King. It doesn't, as far as we can ascertain from the New Testament, speaking now first historically, that is, as an historical analysis of what we have as a witness, Jesus avoided nearly all the claims that were made for the Messiah of his day. And I would offer the reason being because they were all inadequate. And he purposely shied away from them. I won't get into a whole bunch of form critical stuff, but just one interesting one. When he was said, tell me now, that is Mark 14, 62, Are you the Son of the Most High?"

[25:38]

And he said, you have said it, and you will see the Son of Man coming. And if Jesus preferred a title, it was Son of Man, which is so enigmatic that four oceans and six mountains of ink and paper later, I must confess in 20 years of my own work, I don't think we're much wiser. So this question is one that throws us completely into a mystery, and I see there are real providence of God. Without getting, again, into all the historical problems, Homo euseon and all the other words that were introduced were introduced Because we, of a Mediterranean background, that is as a Christian I come from that background, we're having problems understanding the prophetic witness to the experience of Jesus in his death and resurrection. And the famous phrase of St.

[26:40]

Augustine talking about persona in the Trinity I think is valid. And we have always considered in the apophatic way of understanding God that formulations are like the sides of a dike and the truth is the beautiful clear water in the middle. If you're the kind of fellow that needs dikes, well, you're going to bump into them, you're going to have to fight about it, and good luck. But if you're the kind of fellow who swims in the middle of the water and enjoys it, tanti auguri, fine. And we are in a dike situation. The last point, and then I'll stop for a moment, is that the onama of Jesus in that particular text in Philippians is kirios. at the name that Jesus bears, namely Kyrios. And Paul there is trying, in his way, which is much deeper and more mystical, but from an intellectual point of view perhaps underdeveloped, to say Kyrios is the normal translation for Adonai Yahweh in the Septuagint.

[27:49]

He is saying Jesus bears the same name as Hotheos. He bears the name Kyrios. And it is because he has been, after not clinging to this reality, he has been by the action of the Father raised up. And every tongue confesses, Jesus Kyrios. Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That's the confession. And what he's saying, in real Semitic fashion, is they bear the same name. Well, what does that mean? Well, you figure it out. I agree with what Fr. Martin said. This might turn into an internal Christian dispute. However, For the moment, I think we must still clarify a little bit more about this point. Father Kallistos' question has not been adequately dealt with yet, namely the point that Christ is Son of God in a unique way. And I think that this discussion seems to focus at this point on what does it mean to be Son of God.

[28:55]

And I think a mistake that has been made at times is that we consider Son of God to be a philosophic term, a predicate that can be predicated of this man. Son of God is not a philosophical term that can be predicated because philosophically, Son of God makes absolutely no sense. It is pure nonsense. If you know what God is, then Son of God is impossible. So Son of God must be taken in its context, which is a scriptural context. The question falls back, what does the scripture mean by Son of God? That seems to be the question under consideration. We have Steve Durkee and Father Panica as the next questioners. Nuri Rasool, there is a saying in Islam which is, if thou art Khidr, who is the Prophet, then put on the sandals of Khidr. If thou art Khidr, if thou art the Prophet, put on the sandals of the Prophet. In John it says, and their birth comes not from human stock, nor from nature's will, nor from man's, but from God's.

[29:57]

Okay, so that is the understanding of where it is to be a son of God, a child of God. Comes not from human stock, nor from nature's will, nor from man's, but from God's. The idea that there is one only begotten son is true, because there is only one begotten son. Because the word is made flesh, and it is this flesh, as the Buddha says, verily this six-foot body is it. And it is the realization of each one of us of that which is the nexus of what this is hung on. We can talk philosophy forever. And we can talk all about all of that, all around all of that. The critical, crucial point is whether or not I realize I, meaning I in flesh, we are the Word made flesh, our beings, realize God within ourselves. I am the only begotten Son of God, as are you. I bow to you. Thank you. It seems to me that Stephen has well expressed a particular point of Christian doctrine, namely what it means to have faith.

[31:06]

It does not primarily mean to subscribe to a series of propositions. It means a living existential reality, namely that becoming of which you were speaking. However, one has to ask, do others here who are believing Christians accept this formulation? Can they enter into it? This is still before us. Let me in fear and tremblement propose an effort at intelligibility at this juncture. We are speaking of how Mediterranean Christianity is, and I can't agree better or more But what I constantly fear or feel is that any effort at overcoming Mediterranean categories is done with Mediterranean categories.

[32:13]

May I offer as theological hypothesis, in order to figure out the real problems which obviously exist, the following Mediterranean way of thinking. Otherwise, I understand fully what has been said, and I fully agree, but I understand also the uneasiness of many other people who feel that that's a kind of gnostic, et cetera, et cetera. Could we not allow for a radical distinction between Individual identification and personal identity. Have we not mistakenly considered both as totally synonymous? Individual identification is

[33:22]

What the police uses, time, space, your coordinates, born, name, father, son of Mary, Pontius Pilate, 20th century Palestine, is an individual identification by which those who take the categories of space and time as the fundamental things to limit, to locate the individual are totally satisfied. The individual identification of the Son of God, the Son of Man, Jesus, the Redeemer, the cosmic and the personal, the historical, etc., I think are clear and Christians do well in not allowing to blur that individual identification. Otherwise, we do not know what we're speaking about. Any lover, any human being, any personal experience will allow that if something does not express what I am, or what my fiancé or my father is, or my friend is, it's just the individual identification.

[34:34]

If I mistake the mystery of an I-Thou relationship, the mystery which through faith I enter into something that becomes really alive, and I can say, this is my father, my wife, my children, my friend, something in which I enter, I am part of that, that is the personal identity. Well, the personal identity is not the individual identification, and when we speak to use dangerous words because of the overloading of theological jargon. The Christ of faith, we perhaps would not like to mean only the individual identification. I may say that my Hindu neighbor in the individual identification, he cannot accept the individual identification, but the personal identity which can only be discovered in a personal relationship through faith, love, hope, tattering, doubt, and many other things, may be, and I have not the criteria to deny that the personal identity of what goes under the name of something which to me is almost obnoxious,

[35:44]

refers to the same thing which I cannot but discover through the personal identification of my particular tradition. If this were the case, we do not need perhaps to make any other hypothesis in order to discover that this Jesus the Christ, who had other sheep whom even the disciples didn't know, who was before Abraham, who is Alpha and Omega and also in between, Delta, Beta, Delta, Gamma, etc. We forget that these are some three points there. If this is the case, the personal identity is something which only in prayer, in contemplation, in respect of the different formulations of the others, then Christ would not be the monopoly of Christians. Thank you very much, Dr. Paniker. It seems that this distinction gets us way ahead. One has to apologize at this point to all those who have already overcome the Mediterranean categories.

[36:46]

Because if Father Paniker says that one has to overcome Mediterranean categories by Mediterranean categories or by arguments within these categories, this is true for those who stick in them. But all those who have already overcome them, should remember that at one time they had to go through the same process. Professor Thomas Berry has a comment. That's an excellent thing that we work in Mediterranean categories but now unfortunately we're into global categories so that we must necessarily enlarge our terminology. And to some extent that is the key to this. The beginning of a resolution.

[37:51]

Now, I would myself incline to think that this relationship between savior personalities is not really given us to adequately deal with. But one of the things that I would suggest as regards this idea of the other Savior personalities, and anyone with a sense of divine providence and anyone with a Christian sense at all would have to believe that there are other Savior personalities that are functioning throughout the world and in and through whom divine providence is bringing about a communication of His love, His reality, and so forth. The relationship, and there is really only one problem as I see it, is the Buddha-Christ issue. But the thing that I suggest is simply to look down and look at each of these personalities as they present themselves.

[38:58]

Buddha as the Dharmakaya, a person can't fight over it. In other words, or if a person considers, goes into the Hindu background, to see how these present themselves. Now, we are to some extent creating a false problem, because we are taking the idea of Christ and saying these other people are opposed to this idea. Well, it's not really so, because if you look back, and that's why I said uniqueness. Christ has a uniqueness. Buddha has a uniqueness. We must not rob these people of their uniqueness. One is not the other. They did not function in the same context. And so that a person who begins with the idea that one is claiming to exclude the other,

[40:01]

Well, in a certain sense, it doesn't make adequate sense. Now this, so that the resolution are a way toward it. Now there is the issue of how do these relate? And I think myself that the more a person studies Buddha, the more a person studies Confucius and Lao Tzu and the sages and the avatar idea of the Hindu, the more a person can see that what they're saying is in no way a challenge to what basically and fundamentally Christians are saying and vice versa. So that in my own approach to the problem, I find a relatively little difficulty. There certainly are certain areas of how do these relate. And that is a difficult thing. I still do not know of anyone who has studied Buddha and has studied Christ sufficiently to even state the problem.

[41:09]

No scholar that I know of has ever done it. And so that what we are doing is functioning on a certain inadequate basis and entering into non-existent problems to a certain extent. Whereas a large part of the problem is dissolved in simple understanding of the historical cultural facts. And then a person would find throughout the whole of the spiritual, religious life of mankind, a person can believe. A person cannot limit divine revelation, divine providence, divine redemptive functioning to a little people or to a sector of humanity. Neither a Hindu can believe it, nor a Christian. and so that there is the certainly now these revelations again do not equate they are unique

[42:11]

They're not contradictory. It's a very simple thing. When you go through the spiritual classics of the world, they give internal evidence, a person might say, of validity, of acceptability, and they're not simple human documents or classics or something like that. They are imaging forth a divine revelation. James Forrest has a word. I would just like to say that one of the things that is evident in our gathering is so evident in our wider society, and that's simply the commercialization of consciousness itself. Just as we have made it a kind of crisis as to what brand of toothpaste deserves to go on our toothbrush, what kind of car we ought to put our

[43:17]

six feet in, what kind of paint brand we should use on the walls surrounding our eyes. So the same commercialization, the same crisis of purchase seems to infect, afflict our appetite for truth. George Simons, chaplain at Oberlin College. I think that we are the people, as Alan put it, of Alpha Centauri. With very few exceptions, and maybe saying with very few exceptions is a problem of Western consciousness, we are not the people of the Mediterranean culture. There's something new going on all the time. We have representatives of Buddhism with us.

[44:19]

the early history of buddhism as the early history of christianity shows already different perceptions of the meaning of the buddha uh... form criticism has shown the growth of the different perceptions of the meaning of the christ even the formation of the scriptures themselves so what i'm saying is that our time in our age and we ourselves are already just as other as were perhaps Buddhists and Native Indians at the time of Christ. The problem lies in, we've easily disabused ourselves of an essentialist view of scripture, of an essentialist view of theology, but I think we have to disabuse ourselves of an essentialist view of history. History is ongoing. It is not static. Anyone who I dabbled in history for a while, but works at history.

[45:24]

Finds that every time he makes a point at history, he makes a lie. He's taking a photograph, and a still photograph is not the truth. I presume that's why we're not supposed to take still photographs. So I don't know what about movies here, but I just want to say that I think that other things are going on, and we look at Roman Catholicism right now, and other things are going on in terms of the objectives, the goals, the experiences, the styles, what the mantra of today were as opposed to what they were in the monastery 20 years ago. That's what's happening. Swami Satchidananda wishes to speak. I'm not here as a Christian or a Catholic, but an adorer, a worshipper and a believer in Christ. Fortunately or unfortunately,

[46:29]

I had gone through some of the other sects also, even within Hinduism. When you read Bhagavad Gita, at very many places Krishna says, I am the only one, believe me, trust me. Just meditate on me, forget everything else. And if you go to the Saiva Siddhanta philosophy, And the other Vaishnavite philosophy, Shakta philosophy, in Hinduism itself, they are called the Siddhantas, as opposed to the Vedanta. Each Siddhanta says, that is the only one. As a Saivite, when I was a young boy, I was not even asked or allowed to read a story of Vishnu. When I want to go to a temple of Vishnu or read the story of Vishnu, my Saiva Siddhanta parents will open the book and say, you are a worshipper of Shiva.

[47:42]

If you go and listen to anything of any other God and His glory, you are sinning against Him. You will even go to hell. Even today you have those scriptures. But one thing, there were about 63 Nayanar saints recognized in the Saiva category who worshipped Shiva and there are many All Wars who worshipped Vishnu. During their time of worship, they never fought among themselves. They never worried about the other people. Why? Because they were concentrated on them, on their method, while the others concentrated on their method. Even today I believe that if you believe in one thing, in one approach, that is the unique thing for you.

[48:46]

You should stick to that. But to claim the uniqueness over all of other unique things, There comes the trouble as a friend said just couple of minutes before, kind of commercial. Wine is the best. And the reason for it is in the spiritual field, why do we do all this? Why do we pray, meditate, concentrate upon a name and a form? To fix the mind on it. and to develop those qualities and the image in the mind. As you think, so you become. If you think of Lord Jesus and his qualities, you constantly develop that ultimately to become that. It's a psychological fact. If you keep on thinking of something, you will become that. That is the basis behind all the concentration and meditation.

[49:51]

And therefore, if you take Lord Jesus as your Ishta Devata, think of him, meditate on him, speak of his glories, so that you can develop that one-pointed concentration. But if you dig a well here, and then Buddha well there, and Shiva well there, Vishnu well there, you won't get water anywhere. So each one is correct. When you select an Ishta Devata, stick to that. When the other man selects another Ishta Devata, let him stick to that. But fortunately or unfortunately in the present age, it is very difficult to keep us separated like that. We seem to come across people, symposiums, conferences and all publications. You can just buy any book. Those days you can't even get a book other than your religion. There were no books. So the main thing is to concentrate the mind on one thing, develop it.

[50:53]

Once you reach the summit of what you are worshipping, then probably you will see the others are also walking towards the same summit. And then you will shake hands with them, come on let's have a cup of coffee. Thank you. Thank you very much, Swamiji. I think Swamiji has made two very important contributions. On the one hand, he has focused all this back on the spiritual formation. This is precisely the link where all this is tied up with spiritual formation. On the other hand, he has enunciated very clearly a principle which is also the principle of the Center for Spiritual Studies, of which Swamiji is one of the co-founders. Namely, that we want neither eclecticism, picking out tidbits here and there, nor syncretism, a mixing up of everything and making a new thing out of it, but going so deeply in your thing that you come out recognizing that it's the same that everybody else is going into. Thank you. Joshu Suzuki Roshi, by way of Kiyokanda, translator.

[52:01]

I just, I have just become a Christian. To me, it doesn't matter what he said about a son of God or the son of God. But what is important is that he spoke because he has, he realized the truth. He, in this case, means Christ. If Christ would have said that I like those and I do not like those, then that does not... If he would have said that, it does not mean that he realized the truth. I heard that... Dr. Alan Watts' speech, the term, I am Father One, how do you think we Christians should realize this statement?

[53:26]

Is this One, Father One, the One, relative one, against two, or the absolute one. You cannot be a true Christian believer if you cannot realize that when Jesus Christ said, I am Father One, And that statement did not come from the overwhelming absolute confidence that he realized all. And therefore, for Jesus Christ, Therefore, it was not necessary for him to look around anymore.

[54:32]

It wasn't necessary to make any distinctions when he made that statement, when he realized whole, all. And if you cannot realize this fact, then you cannot be a true Christian. Christ realized that God, Truth, is universal. Therefore, I came here. I came here. Well, that is the reason I came here. I came here to shake hands with Christ. When he mentioned, he said that I am Father One, he grasped, he realized the truth.

[55:42]

He realized the God. At the same time, when At the same time, the statement that I am Father One also indicates the particularity which is firmly based on the universality. When there is no self, you cannot live. Without particularity of Jesus Christ based on the universality, there is no Jesus Christ or God. Just as if there is no particularity of women and men, there will be no human being.

[56:46]

When Christ expressed himself to the people, he was expressing the necessity and the importance and the inevitability of this particularity, which is based on generality. Without having this universality, only attached to particularity, then that is the end of any religion. When you keep continuing only religious talks in religious languages, then the the majority, the rest of people will not follow. Nobody, no scientist or people who have scientific mind would really care about resurrection, et cetera, samsara incarnation.

[58:02]

The thoughts of resurrection was the, not the words of Christ himself, but the the later people's tradition. The word resurrection, the meaning of resurrection or incarnation or any religious terms is that you understand or you realize the particularity which has this universality as foundation. We have our own particularity in tradition, and that is fine. The problem is those religious leaders who do not realize the universality blinded by the particularity.

[59:11]

As Professor Panica mentioned this morning, he mentioned in a panel discussion that the formation of religion, or unity, or whatever, has to start from oneself, namely from converting ourselves first. I'm a Christian, but I really haven't studied Christianity, but I'd like to think that Jesus Christ must have had this understanding. Not only through religious experience, but also through pursuit of knowledge, we have to clarify this basic position of, basis of Christ and the meaning of his statements.

[60:24]

I'd like to address to some of the people who think that who thinks that the God of Christianity is only God. This attitude is like thinking that only his wife is a woman. Nobody shouldn't be so foolish. Thank you very much, Roshi-san. Brother Gabriel from Mount Saviour would like to address the world to us. What I have to say is not to, you know, do away with all problems, because I know people enjoy problems.

[61:31]

But these are just a few quotes that come to me from the Christian scriptures, and I can't even tell you where I get them, so we'd have to go into that later. This, in some ways, is meant to comfort Christians who may be trembling in their boots, you know, after this kind of a discussion. It also is meant to encourage all those who are not Christian here in viewing Jesus as The name of Jesus, of course, means Savior. So that indicates something already. And Jesus himself said very simply, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

[62:33]

Now what I want to concentrate on for this moment is, when he said, I am the way, he says, no one comes to the Father except through me. But as you read the texts that surround these statements, such as the following, which is very strong, he says, or is quoted as saying, if you do not acknowledge me, I will not acknowledge you. Now this seems like a very strong statement where, well, you know, if you simply do not acknowledge me as son of God with a terrific number of prerogatives and whatever, you will not be saved. But that is not at least what I think he is saying. Because we acknowledge Christ, we accept him as the way when we live as he lived.

[63:36]

And in all our discussions here, You know, very often we say, oh, we mustn't get entangled in the abstract. And I agree, because life has to be lived. And this acknowledgement then of Christ is to walk as Christ walked. Now, there are many who walk the way of Christ. without knowing the historical Christ. I'm a fond reader of Jakob Böhme, who points this out, and he's a 17th century Lutheran mystic, and apparently, I don't know how he became so familiar with the Far Eastern traditions, but he seems to be very familiar with all of them, and many of the things I've heard during this week simply confirm my conviction that he has one of the broadest scopes of any person or any writer I've ever read.

[64:46]

And he mentions certainly Mohammedans and gives a passing reference to Hindus and has very many scathing remarks for Christians who claim to live a better life simply because they acknowledge the historical Christ but actually do not live according to the way that Christ taught. Whereas, he says, the Turks and the Muslims, the Hindus, referring to Far Eastern religions, are in Christ because they live according to the way he taught even though they didn't know him. And I think this is very important for us to realize that in the Christian scriptures Christ

[65:54]

seems to me, is not so much concerned with having himself proclaimed, but he immediately encourages his disciples to love as he loved and walk as he walked. Thank you very much, brother. Brother Gabriel has touched here on a topic that Raymond Panica has many times discussed more extensively, namely that Orthodoxy is a means to an end, and the end is orthopraxis and not vice versa. The right doing is the end, not the right teaching. The right teaching only on account of the right doing. But here's the word after Pierre Vachon from Saint-Romain-Chenin, and I think that this will exhaust our time, but we have one more raised hand that will exhaust our time for this morning. The second question was, one must die and dissolve before becoming and what is the willingness on the part of institutions to die?

[67:03]

I'm a priest and that way I'm part of the institution and I am an institution. If I... Yes, yes. And to me, to die to that institution of priesthood means to try to become a brahmin, a shaman, to become a rabbi, to really become. And it means also to allow my Hindu brother, my Hindu brahmins, my brothers the shamans, my brothers the rabbis, to take and live the priestly institution, which means in the concrete, the last analysis, to celebrate the Eucharist, excuse me.

[68:09]

But in order to do this, there must be a deep transformation within ourselves and if we have not united mystically, we shall never unite institutionally. If we are to unite mystically, I think then that there must be on our part, we the Christians, a readiness to die to arrive at a non-duality, to live this disincarnation to the utmost, as Pierre mentioned. And we cannot be Christians unless we live this disincarnation which has been expressed and lived so beautifully by our Eastern brothers, the Hindus and the Buddhists.

[69:15]

We must become nothing, no Christ, On the other hand, if we are to be truly Christians, and if we are to be know Christ, then we must incarnate. And this is the point which I feel has not been brought out sufficiently. The particularization, the uniqueness of Christ, I reject the exclusiveness of Christianity and of Christ. But I hold on to the uniqueness of Christ and of Buddha. And I feel that we must hold on to this uniqueness, this incarnation. We must be ready to live the incarnation to the utmost. And if we are to live the incarnation to the utmost, as I said, we must disincarnate. But in order to disincarnate, we must also incarnate. And which is first, which is last, belongs to each one of us.

[70:17]

It is not up to me to say that we must dissolve first, incarnate after, or incarnate first and dissolve after. Which comes to this, that to simplify things, if I want to be a Christian, I must be a Hindu and a Buddhist. And if I want to be a Hindu and a Buddhist, I must truly become a Christian. And when we start at the mystical level to live this, then maybe at the institutional level we can share the Eucharist together, we can share the Hasidic celebrations together, we can celebrate Krishna and Rama, and do it all with a great confidence and love. And I think that we've got the beginning of a global situation which Father Barry is speaking about. Thank you very much, Pierre Vachon. I think this will now, with Raymond Panica's comments, conclude this morning's session.

[71:19]

No, I don't want to make any comment and I was hoping I would not be given the floor. I wanted only publicly apologize for my quick answer to a very deep and pertinent question of Piripi Laya Dinaid Khan, for which I feel sorry for my answer, because I think that he pointed out something which we have forgotten during the discussion. If you remember, I was questioning our ability to assess the place of Jesus Christ, establishing ourselves as judges of his rank, which means, of course, whether it was his exclusiveness or whether we felt that there could be others who are of the same rank. I felt that we were not in a position to be able to do this. It would be placing ourselves in a very high position indeed.

[72:23]

Rev. Paniker's reply, which he apologized for, was, I thought, a very strong one. It is only the weak minds who need arguments to strengthen their conviction. There's a story amongst the Sufis that when people ask Majnun why he... Oh no, there's a... They say that in order to be able to assess the beauty of Leila's face, one has to be Majnun. In order, I think that when a child says that my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, I think that he is speaking from a place that nobody could question. And therefore I do not feel that we have the right to question anybody's feelings about the place that a person occupies in his heart.

[73:34]

It's a question of love and not of judgment. The Beloved, all this comes first. su rex in Christus. Alleluia, [...] in rex in Christus. Alleluia, [...] in rex in Christus. Alleluia, Alleluia, Hallelujah. [...] Praise Him, praise the Lord.

[74:35]

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Praise Him, praise the Lord. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Praise Him, praise the Lord. O die, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Surrexit Christus. O die, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Surrexit Christus. O die, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

[75:26]

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