AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF MYSTICISM: The Narratives of Abhishiktananda, A French Monk In India

This book attempts to understand the problem of personal experience in religion. It takes the biography of a French monk in India, called Henri La Saux to understand concepts such a friendship and dialogue across different religions. Henri Le Saux became known as Abhishiktananda and is best remembered for his love for Ramana Maharshi the cerebral saint of India.

This book tries to understand Abhishiktananda's love for Ramana expressed through his writings and personal journeys. In order to comprehend mysticism the author focuses on action and renunciation as two arms of the mystical journey. In this regard it compress Abhishiktananda with Simone Weil a great and heroic figure of our age, who dealt with fascism in Europe through personal intervention, liberating herself and others through the wisdom and grace of her encounter with god, and her courage in resisting Nazism.

Can sociology understand the mystic? This is the question that the author tries to answer.

About the Author:

He teaches Gender and Cultural Studies at the Centre for the study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University and at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Her first book The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual amongst the Yakobawas Published by OUP, Madras in 1993. Since then she has been engaged in dialogue theories, gender studies and a slowly unfolding study of the Fisherpeople in Kerala. Her chief interest remains historical method in sociology.

Susan Visvanathan has ben a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museun (1989-1992) and an Honorary Fellow at Indian Institute of Advanced Study on the Religion and Culture Project(1990-1995). She has co-edited two issues of the IIC Quarterly with Geeti Sen on Kerala (1995) and Women and the Family (1997). She was the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow to Queens university at Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1997.

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