Mysticism and Spirituality: Opera Omnia (Volume 1): Mysticism, Fullness of Life (Part One)

This first volume of Opera Omnia is partly autobiographical, dealing as it does with the most important theme of Raimon Panikkar's life. It has been a distinct inspiration for all his writings, to the extent that it has become their indispensable hermeneutical key. Mysticism represents the third dimension that brings all the pages that follow into relief and into life. The reduction of existence to the senses or to reason limits Man to the status of a mere species among the various life forms : that of the rational animal. As we shall repeatedly see, human life (zoe) is not just its biological existence (bios). Man is not only in the likeness of God, the Source, the Beginning, the Wellspring, the Cause (all homeomorphic equivalents) but also in the image of Reality, a mikrokosmos as the Ancients used to say (up until Paracelsus and the followers of the philosophia adepta) that mirrors the whole makrokosmos. The distinction between image and likeness is more theological than lexical. Although for practical reasons this volume has been divided into two parts, it should be clarified from the outset that the two themes, mysticism and spirituality, may be distinguished but not separated. Few topics have had a worse reputation in some circles than mysticism, on which, to tell the truth, too much has been written, and badly; if we add the theme of spirituality as well, that the situation is even worse.