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BOOK REVIEWS 405 Journey to Gorakhpur. An Encounter with Christ Beyond Christianity. By JoHN MoFFITT. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ,1972. Pp. 304. $7.95. The author of this book, the poetry editor of America, joined the Hindu Ramakrishna Order under the tutelage of the popular Swami Nikhilananda after graduation from Princeton University. For twenty five years Moffitt, then known as Swami Atmaghananda, pursued the spiritual disciplines of Hinduism. In 1963 he returned to Christianity and became a Roman Catholic. This book does not concern his personal saga but may well be a result of it. His purpose is to " search for evidences of Christ's working beyond the bounds of organized Christianity," and " to see the truths of non-Christian religions in terms of Christian truth. " (p. xiii) The literary structure is flawless and evidences a sweep of poetic insight, language, and imagination. The journey to Gorakhpur is quite literally a trip taken by the author and four Indian companions from Banares, the holy city on the Ganges, to a less significant place a day's drive away. From the experiences on this brief trip into the heart of India Moffitt is able to distinguish four distinct sequences which divided themselves into the four classic types of Hindu spirituality: intuitive wisdom, devotionalism , mental discipline, and humane service. Within this fourfold complex he considers that reality within Hinduism which is most vital for presentation to Christians. These four aspects of the spiritual life are, according to Moffitt, the four " voices " whereby Christ also calls Christians to, himself. The path traditionally known as jnana yoga is here the " voice " of intuitive wisdom which is the knowledge of God as the foundation of personal existence. This experience bears witness to the nonduality of the godhead and the oneness of the divine nature. In Christianity it can be found in the scriptures, the mystics,, and ecstatic literature such as the fourteenth-century text, The Cloud of the Unknowing. Hinduism best symbolized the experience in the Atman-Brahman equation, an experience of liberation in this life expressed in the earliest Indian religious literature. Moffitt finds most suggestive the observation of Bede Griffiths, the Benedictine sannyasin, who has said that "Christ is the Atman." Devotional self-giving, traditionally known in Hinduism as bhakti yoya, is the second spiritual path, and this bears witness to the differentiation attributed within the one god, an experience of personal relationship between the human and divine orders. Jesus is the highest example of devotional self-giving, the supreme kenosis; Hinduism has its counterpart in these experiences articulated in the Bhagavad Gita, Puraxnas, and the Hindu epics, and directed toward Krishna, Rama, Siva, the popular deities of Vaishnavism and 406 BOOK REVIEWS Saivism. •It is devotionalism that the poet-saints of medieval India so exquisitely expressed and· firmly established within popular Hinduism. The third path of conscious discipline finds its witness in any religion which requires stern personal effort. This particularly embraces the meditational traditio~s. Following ·the classical writer on yoga, Patanjali, Moffitt views·non-discursive, vertical meditation, as necessary for high religious experience ; it alone attains a type of mental clarity whereby the mind is perfectly attentive, yet free from discursive thought. Within the Christian tradition, Pseudo-Dionysius in The Book of the Divine Names speaks of those who approach God " by the suppression of all intellectual operation;" "only through negations." (p. 165) Finally, Moffitt contrasts the path of humane service, karma yoga in Hinduism, and the social gospel. Here especially he finds little difference betw~en Hinduism and Christianity. In Hinduism service within the human community was a path of·spirituality enunciated from the ancient Laws of· Manu to the political and religious activism of Mahatma Gandhi in our century. It is at this point that the author observes: "How is it that a substantial part ofwhat Christians generally think of as central to Christian behavior is already so well understood by non-Christians? " (p. 186) The purpose of this book emerges with more precision only in the final chapters. Moffitt's concern is " not to affirm a Christ already known in experience, but to find a further Christ as yet not clearly known." (p. 9t87) To...

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