Abhishiktananda: no other to name it

In this annihilating experience one is no longer able to project in front of oneself anything whatsoever, to recognize any other “pole” to which to refer oneself and to give the name of God. Once one has reached that innermost center, one is so forcibly seized by the mystery that one can no longer utter a “Thou” or an “I.” Engulfed in the abyss, we disappear to our own eyes, to our own consciousness. The proximity of that mystery which the prophetic traditions name “God” burns us so completely that there is no longer any question of discovering it in the depths of oneself or oneself in the depths of it. In the very engulfing, the gulf has vanished. If a cry was still possible— at the moment perhaps of disappearing into the abyss—it would be paradoxically: “but there is no abyss, no gulf, no distance!” There is no face-to-face, for there is only That-Which-Is, and no other to name it.



Abhishiktananda [Fr Henri le Saux]