Raimon Panikkar, one of the great thinkers of our epoch, represents a real meeting point between West and East.
His most important centres of interest are God, Man and the Cosmos; Christ-the Trinity, Man, the mystery of the “cosmotheandric” reality; dialogue among religions and cultures. Without watering down his own faith, he lets himself to be challenged by the plurality of cultures, beliefs, and theologies and is courageously engaged in dialogue. The present work, The Fullness of Man, represents a great synthesis, opening new perspectives for the third millennium.
(From Julien Ries’ presentation).
“This study constitutes an attempt to concentrate the pathos of the entire life into few pages[…] The first part of the work constitutes a reflection on the central figure of Christian consciousness and proposes a deepening of classical Christology. This “new” discipline, named christophany, intends to offer to the contemporary word […] a response to the yearning for the fullness of life that burns in every heart.
The second part consists in an attempt, bold perhaps, to decipher the mystical experience of Jesus of Nazareth, since it is difficult to understand a message without knowing, to a certain extent, the messenger’s heart.
The third part is limited to describing, in nine sutras, the christic epiphany in the light of an experience that has passed through the scrutiny of the methodology mentioned in part one [….]
These pages constitute a reflection on the human condition in its deepest dimension, least conditioned by historical vicissitudes.
I am convinced that the world finds itself before a dilemma of planetary proportions: either there will be a radical change of “civilization”, of the meaning of the humanum, or a catastrophe of cosmic proportions will occur. This leads me to see a genuine meeting of cultures as a first step towards a metanoia pregnant with hope”.
(From the author’s preface)