S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 1 1 Enrico Beltramini a predominantly allegorical interpretation of reality, by which I mean an unworldly, spiritual, ahistorical, and eventually asocial interpretation of reality. He relativized, and sometimes refused to recognize, the value of the literal, that is, the material, the historical, and the social. In his own words, “what seems to dominate within me is this non-historical sense of life. Everything seems like a superficial game… I do not give much importance to outer events; is this perhaps an unbalance between the inner and the outer life, as if I had too much inner life?” (Panikkar 2018a, 125). Thus, he was not a “real” monk in the sense that he did not belong to a monastic order and was not recognized as such, but he was a monk nevertheless because he perceived himself as such (a monk within) (Panikkar 2018a, 182) [17]. Or, to be more nuanced, he believed that the literal is always already included in the allegorical, so that the allegorical always positions, qualifies, or criticizes the literal. Panikkar’s “obliteration of the literal” was at the core not only of his work, but also of his life: this is the message from Fragments. Biographers will decide whether this obliteration was due only due to mystical predisposition or to other more concrete, personal situations (Panikkar 2018a, 291–92) [18]. Panikkar’s vision, in his own words, implies the eclipse of religion as an institutional, dogmatic, and confessional form of faith: “it is a fascinating vision, that of your Presence everywhere and in the midst of every religion and every being” (Panikkar 2018a, 42–43). This vision is not theologically neutral. His framing of Christ as Cosmic Christ forced him to a reformulation of Christianity after the eclipse of religion. “But then what about the Church? …The Ecclesia of the Universe, the priestess of the cosmos serving every being, praying for everything, considering herself in union with Christ” (Panikkar 2018a, 42–43). In this end, this reformulation is, in fact, a grandiose project of deterritorialization of Christ and, at the same time, of reterritorialization of Christians (Christianness). At an intellectual level, the project was successful, in the sense that the project and its author received the scholarly attention they deserved. At the more modest level of Panikkar’s personal life, however, the project was far from being satisfactory. Panikkar neither deterritorialized himself completely from the older belonging nor reterritorialized himself in a space he could call his own. The problem Panikkar raised is, of course, relevant: once Christ is spatialized – that is, once He is in everyone and everything – what is left to Christianity, as a religion, and to the Church, as an institution? Panikkar’s priesthood, therefore, is a cosmic priesthood, a mediation of the absolute with “all structures – religious, sacred, cultural, and profane – of the world” (Panikkar 2018a, 42–43). Not surprisingly, Panikkar could find himself at home wherever he was, with Hindus and Christians, with other priests and lay people. He was a mediator of Christ with all. This is the intellectual elaboration. In the context of the concrete and intricate reality of human existence, however, Fragments tells a different story, a story of estrangement and solitude [19]. 6 Conclusion Raimon Panikkar, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, is in many ways a man without a spiritual biography (Hühnerfeld 1950, 9) [20]. The publication of Fragments attempts to respond to this deficiency. Fragments is merely a fraction of Panikkar’s personal notes, and scholars should resist the temptation to draw too much from a partial exposure to Panikkar’s internal dialogue. That said, Fragments confirms certain hypotheses that Panikkar scholars have already articulated and, for this reason only, it must be granted a crucial place in his scholarship. This article has traced some connections between the internal life and the peripatetic existence of an intellectual giant of the 20th century. More specifically, the article shows how Panikkar might have faced a certain level of trouble to match his Kairos, his moment of insight, in the practical circumstances of his life. In a note written in California, during his first year of teaching at UC Santa Barbara, Panikkar explained that “it is hard to have mystical awareness… and live an ordinary life” (Panikkar 2018a, 89). Here is the core of the matter: the difficult, at times impossible merger between the initial mystical vision, the sense of the Presence, and the acosmic orientation, on one side, and on the other, the ordinary life of a priest, an academic, and a husband. The question arises about what exactly the life of a mystic should be according to Panikkar. Modern mystics in the Roman Catholic tradition like Therese of Lisieux and Charles de Foucauld have seen the answer to that question in authentic and modest testimonies of life that reveal, by contrast, the triumphant and undeniable presence of the divine. Therese offered her “little way,” namely doing ordinary things with extraordinary love; de Foucauld, instead, showed that God can be found in hidden and laborious forms of life. The more one perceives him/herself as nothing, the more he/she is permeated of divine grace. This is the inverted, paradoxical, and kenotic perspective of these modern mystics. It was definitely not Panikkar’s perspective. He thought he had to find his own way, and the tortuosity of his life is there to show how the enterprise revealed itself as demanding.
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