Swami Abhishiktananda (; 30 August 1910, in Saint Briac, Brittany–7 December 1973, in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India), born Henri Le Saux, was a French-born Indian monk. He moved to India in 1948 in search of a more radical form of spiritual life, adopted sannyasa in accordance with Indian tradition, and became one of the pioneers of Hindu-Christian dialogue. Multiple contacts with prominent saints such as Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Gnanananda Giri, and Sri H.W.L. Poonja led him to profound advaitic experience as well as to final recognition of the truth of advaita during the last years of his life.Swami Abhishiktananda at Monastic Interreligious Dialogue http://monasticinterreligiousdialogue.com/index.php/bulletins
Biography
Early years and Benedictine monastic life (1910–1948) Le Saux was born on 30 August 1910 in St Briac, a small town on the north coast of Brittany. He was the first child of Alfred Le Saux and Louise Sonnerfaud, who gave him the names Henri Briac Marie. In 1921 his parents sent him to the minor seminary at Châteaugiron, from which in 1925 he went to the major seminary at Rennes. From his boyhood he had felt a monastic vocation: "What has drawn me from the beginning and what still leads me on is the hope of finding there the presence of God more immediately than anywhere else..."Letter of December 4, 1982, in Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000, p. 29. At the age of 19 he was admitted as a postulant to the Benedictine monastery at Sainte-Anne de Kergonan where he spent another nineteen years (with a short break between the years 1939 and 1941 when he was required to participate in World War II as a sergeant of the French Army).
The call to India was heard by Le Saux at Kergonan, as early as 1934, within five years of entering the monastery. It was closely related to his vocation to a more radical contemplative life that he lacked within the existing framework of western monasticism. He expressed this feeling in his characteristic phrase that became his motto: "Beyond, always beyond."Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.11. In May 1947 he wrote to the Bishop of Tiruchirappalli, asking his help in "settling somewhere in the neighborhood of Tiruchi so that, living in some hermitage, he might there lead the contemplative life ... in the closest possible conformity with the traditions of Indian sannyasa."Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.12. The letter was eventually replied to by a French priest, Jules Monchanin, who had left for India in 1939 at the age of 44. The latter did his best to help Le Saux in arranging his arrival in India. In his correspondence of 7 August 1947, Monchanin advised his future partner: "Learn as much English as you can. You will have no objection to a purely vegetarian diet (essential for the life of a sannyasi). You will need unshakable courage, complete detachment from the things of the West, and a profound love for India..."Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.14.
Sannyasa life (1948–1968) Le Saux arrived in Colombo on 15 August 1948, and a few days later joined Jules Monchanin in Kulittalai (Tamil Nadu). In January 1949 the two seekers visited the ashram of one of the greatest sages of modern India, Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950), at the foot of Arunachala mountain in Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu). Le Saux's meeting with the sage had a profound effect on his life as he recounted it in his diary: "I consider this stay at Tiruvannamalai as a real retreat and at the same time as an initiation into Hindu monastic life. I want to ... enter into the great silence and peace which, as I have read and also been told, is to be found at the ashram..."Diary, 24 January 1949, in Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000, p. 29. The darshana of Sri Ramana Maharshi became for him the first introduction into the wisdom of advaita: "In the contemporary Sage of Arunachala it was the unique Sage of eternal India that appeared to me... it was a call that pierced through everything, rent it in pieces, and opened a mighty abyss."Abhishiktananda, Swami, The Secret of Arunachala, Delhi (ISPCK), 1979, p. 8-9.
In 1950 Le Saux and Monchanin following their monastic vocation and emerging spiritual ideal, established the Saccidananda Ashram (Shantivanam) on the banks of the holy river Kaveri (Cauvery), with the aim of allowing monks of different traditions to live together in contemplation, sharing the "silent communion in the quest of the Unique".Letter to Joseph Lemarié (March 18, 1952) in Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000, p. 54. In accordance with Indian tradition they adopted new names for themselves: Le Saux became Abhishikteshvarananda ("Bliss of the Anointed Lord"), later shortened to Abhishiktananda, and Monchanin as Parama Arubi Ananda ("Bliss of the Supreme Formless One"). The daily routine in the ashram was based on the three sandhyavandanam-s (prayers at the meeting points of day and night and at midday), enriched with Sanskrit and Tamil texts and hymns. Much time was given to spiritual and indological study, although the two monks remained in silence for the greater part of the day.Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.39-40.
From 1952, to 1955, Abhishiktananda made several visits to the sacred mountain of Arunachala, of which this account can be found in his book The Secret of Arunachala (published posthumously in 1975).See ref. 4. During these visits he experienced lengthy stays in the mountain's caves, dedicating most of his time to contemplation. In 1953 he met a well known teacher of advaita, Sri H.W.L. Poonja (also known later as "Papaji"), who had a deep impact on his spiritual quest. In 1955 in Tirukoilur, his first meeting with the contemporary sage Swami Sri Gnanananda Giri took place: "I could not resist making the great prostration of our Hindu tradition, and to whom I believe I might give myself over completely ... I now know what India means by the term guru...".Letter to Joseph Lemarié (December 24, 1955), in Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000, p. 87. Further on Sri Gnanananda became Swamiji's guru and his teachings are eloquently described in Swami Abhishiktananda's publication Guru and Disciple (1970).Abhishiktananda, Swami, Gnânânanda. Un maître spirituel du pays tamoul, Chambéry (Présence), 1970 (in French); Abhishiktananda, Swami, Guru and Disciple: an Encounter with Sri Gnanananda, a Contemporary Spiritual Master, new and enlarged edit.by Swami Atmananda Udasin, pref. by Swami Nityananda Giri, Chennai (Samata Books), 2012 (in English). Sri Gnanananda's message was focused on the practice of dhyana (meditation):
Abhishiktananda's deep devotion to the guru is clearly seen in his letters of that period: "Here for a fortnight with my Guru. I have been totally "caught" ... If that man were to ask me tomorrow to set out on the roads naked and silent like Sadasiva Brahmendra, I would be unable to refuse ... In him I have felt the truth of advaita..."Letter to Joseph Lemarié (March 14, 1956), in Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, Delhi (ISPCK), 2000, p. 89-90.
Later in the 1960s, Abhishiktananda commenced regular pilgrimages to Northern India and in 1968 he left Shantivanam forever having passed it to Bede Griffiths OSB Cam (1906–1993) for the ongoing development of the ashram.
In 1950 Henri Le Saux visited Srirangam temple. Despite the temple barring non-Hindus from entry, he ventured into it. James Stuart, who accompanied him at the time noted that he diverted his eyes from the sign stating such, and continued into the temple premises. Once inside the temple he refused to take part in Hindu rituals, as he stated in a letter:
Final years and awakening (1968–1973)
In October 1968, Abhishiktananda settled in a small kutiya at Gyansu (a kilometre away from Uttarkashi), where he would spend six to eight months in solitude during the years 1969 to 1971. His main purpose was to lead a contemplative life, of which he wrote to a close friend, Odette Baumer-Despeigne: "...To be living here as a rule is going to be a new experience. I can scarcely hope to be that acosmic being of whom I wrote in Gangotri, but at least I might be able to be something of that sort..."Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.205. During this period he was also participating in a series of interreligious meetings, conferences and study sessions, including participation in the All-India Seminar in Bangalore (15 May–20 June 1969), etc.
However, one of the main events of his final years was the meeting with a young Frenchman who later became his one true and prominent disciple, Marc Chaduc. Their correspondence commenced in the late 1960s. In one of his first letters Abhishiktananda, replying to Marc's questions regarding the possibility of a permanent stay in India, states: "...The essential thing is to penetrate the interior mystery to which India bears witness so intensely.... Without a contemplative sense, to come to India is absolutely useless..."Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.219. Chaduc arrived in India on 29 September 1971 at the age of twenty-seven and met Abhishiktananda a few weeks later in Delhi on 21 October. The first ten days spent together in Delhi led to an unparalleled guru-disciple relationship between the two which brought about a revolutionary change in Abhishiktananda's life: "I have found in him (Chaduc) a truly total disciple. With him and two young Hindus I experience from the other end what the guru is. It is really the chela (disciple) who makes the guru, and you have to have lived it, in order to grasp this relationship "beyond words..."Letter to Odette Baumer-Despeigne (January 7, 1972), Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.258. Abhishiktananda subsequently sent Chaduc on a pilgrimage, including to Sri Ramana's Ashram and Arunachala, where Abhishiktananda had previously encountered a profound spiritual experience: "There is no question that Arunachala is a powerful magnet. How I should like to lead you round from cave to cave..."Letter to Marc Chaduc (January 14, 1972), Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.261. During the last twenty months of his life Abhishiktananda's advaitic experience deepened and he realizes the truth of the Upanishads with utter clarity: "The mantra Om Tat Sat sings all day long ... That madhu (honey) which everything is to everything else, that constant take-off into the Beyond, the golden Purusha full of glory – you know it so well..."Letters to Marc Chaduc (January 1973), Stuart, James, Swami Abhishiktananda: His Life Told through his Letters, p.283.