Swami Abhishiktananda: An Interview with Rev. Murray Rogers

Swami Abhishiktananda: An interview with Rev. Murray Rogers.

Swami Abhishiktananda (1910--73), originally Fr. Henri Le Saux of Saint Anne's Abbey in Kergonan, France, is well known for his deep immersion into the Advaitic spirituality of India.

Abhishiktananda came to India in 1948 as a missionary with the concrete goal of establishing a form of Benedictine monasticism inculturated to the Indian context. In his first years in India he toured ashrams to gain an idea of Hindu monasticism and was deeply taken when he visited the ashram of the famous holy man Ramana Maharshi in Tamil Nadu. This led to a growing appreciation of Advaita Vedanta on its own terms, apart from any desire to convert Hindus to Christianity. For two decades, to the end of his life, Abhishiktananda pursued the Advaitic goal of immersion into pure, unqualified consciousness, beyond personal identity. At the same time, Abhishiktananda maintained his identity as a Catholic priest, celebrating Mass and praying the psalms to the end of his life. His deep fidelity to two traditions made for an extremely valuable experiment. Different people draw different conclusions from his life, but for good or for ill, his life was, in the words of Bettina Bäumer, "a laboratory of spiritual alchemy"
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The Rev. Murray Rogers, an Anglican priest, and his wife Mary went to India as missionaries in 1946. In 1954 they established the ecumenical ashram of Jyotiniketan in Uttar Pradesh. It was there that Abhishiktananda met them in 1959. They soon became close friends, and Rogers played an important role in the publication of several of Abhishiktananda's works.

Dr. Christian Hackbarth-Johnson, a German theologian who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Abhishiktananda, interviewed Murray Rogers on July 17 and 18, 2006, three months prior to his death on October 17 at the age of 89. The interview was made possible by Shirley Du Boulay, writer and author of The Cave of the Heart. The Life of Swami Abhishiktananda.

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