Paper short abstract:

This paper reinvestigates the writings of Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) through the lens of postcolonial scholarship. Using his notions of "mysticism" and "religious experience", the paper will show that the French monk was influenced both by orientalist thinking and by his own Indian experience.

Paper long abstract:

Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) has been often studied from a "traditional" perspective. Yet the notion of mysticism, central to his thought, has not been seriously questioned. What does it mean to be a "mystic" for Abhishiktananda? How did he use the word, in which context, and for what reasons? The notion of "experience" is also tremendously important in his thoughts. Not necessarily linked to mysticism, but closely related, "experience" seems to be more in tune with what he *lived* rather than what he *thought* about India.

The exploration of these notions of "mysticism" and "religious experience" will be twofold. First, the paper examines how his vision of a "mystical India" can/should be reviewed through Richard King's critique of conceptions of the "mystical East". To what extent, for instance, has Abhishiktananda been an inheritor of the orientalist trend in his thinking? The second part will focus on how experience played a central role in Abhishiktananda's understanding of this "mystical India", that is, how some of his preconceptions or representations about Hinduism were progressively turned upside down by his own experience.

I argue that for Abhishiktananda, experience is the locus of a unique encounter between some form of Hinduism and Christianity. Because his portrait remains complex - with clear influences from a romanticized "mystical India" but with some adventurous steps toward a tradition he did not really "know" beforehand that transformed his own understanding of himself and of Hinduism - Abhishiktananda remains an important figure for exploring what deep intercultural/interreligious encounter may imply.