This book illustrates the great gift of friendship that emerges in the letters between Raimon Panikkar and Henry Le Saux (Abhishiktananda), two of the most important men of the 20th Century, not only in the field of dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism but also in that of the mystical exploration of Christianity.
Reading this correspondence, one cannot help but feel great respect and immense nostalgia for the developments that took place between the 1950s and 1970s, a few years after India’s independence (1947). This was a time characterised by an open, bold, generous and fruitful exchange between Hinduism and Christianity (…)
Here we have two very different personalities who shared the same vibrant pathos, the same desire to create a dialogue between Christianity and Hinduism, but sought to achieve it in very different ways, each from his own mystical peak, which for Le Saux was the naked life of monasticism/Saṃnyāsa beyond all names and forms, while for Panikkar it was the acceptance and celebration of the profusion of names and forms. (…)
(from the Prologue)