Dear Friends,

Raimon Panikkar, who died on August 26 at the age of 91, was one of the great philosophers and religious thinkers of our time. I am proud to say he was also one of our esteemed authors.

The son of a Roman Catholic mother from Barcelona and a Hindu Indian father, Panikkar spent a lifetime trying to reconcile the spiritual wisdom of the East and West, and demonstrating the possibility of a multi-religious identity. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest, but was equally conversant in the religious worldviews of Buddhism and Hinduism, having mastered all the classics in their original languages. He was also fully comfortable in the world of science (with a doctorate in chemistry as well as doctorates in philosophy and theology).

Among his sixty books were seven Orbis titles, including The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha, and Christophany: The Fullness of Man.

And just this spring we were able to publish his masterwork, The Rhythm of Being, based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures he delivered twenty years ago under the title "Trinity and Atheism: The Dwelling of the Divine in the Contemporary World." That is how long this book was under contract. Panikkar continued to work on it book for all these years, running through a succession of assistants and editors, apparently conscious that this work would sum up the totality of what he had been striving for throughout his life. We wondered whether it would ever appear in his lifetime.

How happy we are that he was able to hold the finished book in his hands.

The basic theme of the The Rhythm of Being is the triadic or Trinitarian structure of Reality, comprising the Divine, the Human, and the Cosmic in thoroughgoing relationship—what he otherwise liked to call the "cosmotheandric experience." He believed this perspective offered a point of unity between Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

In the end, however, he acknowledged the limitations in reaching any grand synthesis. Panikkar had intended a final chapter that would address the final eschatological consummation of all reality. Perhaps it was this chapter, more than anything else, that delayed the publication of his book for two decades. In the end he chose to omit the chapter altogether. Instead, he inserted a moving one-page epilogue in which he noted:

“I must admit that all ultimate questions cannot have final answers, but that we can at least be aware of the problem we have presented. I have touched the limits of my understanding and must stop here. The Tree of Knowledge again and again tempts one at the cost of neglecting the more important tree, the Tree of Life. How can human thinking grasp the destiny of life itself, when we are not its owners? This is my humble conclusion to much presumptuous research. It has taken me twenty years to admit this, and I apologize.”

Now he knows the destiny of life, no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face.

Blessings,

Robert Ellsberg
Publisher