God-Experience

Abstract

Not only spiritual contemplatives like Bede Griffiths hut even secular writers, acknowledge that the period of scientific materialism has given place to a resurgence of religious forces. In India the reli- gious and the secular have never been dichotomized. Christianity in the West, the rationalism of the modern period, tended to develop a theology that was too 'rational' and less 'spiritual'. This may be the reason why the Christian West, in recent years, has shown a renewed interest in all that pertains to spiritual experience, especially that of Hinduism and Buddhism. This search for the 'experiential' has given rise in India to the ashram movement. All over the world Christian bookshops now display a wide variety of books on sadhana, Zen medi- tation and other Oriental spiritual traditions, most often integrated with the Christian approach to faith and religion. The book under review is another search for a synthesis of Christian and Hindu spiri- tual endeavour. In it an attempt is made from different viewpoints to answer the question: How can the fallible. finite man realizes the infallible, infinite God?