Abstract: Panikkar saw the fragmentation of reality as the root cause of all the evil in the world. Through the three kairological moments he points out how, from a unified vision in the first stage, man moved to a fragmented vision in the second. The first stage, ecumenic moment marks an undifferentiated unity between the human being, nature and God. Human being considers himself as part of nature and is able to relate with God, nature and other human beings in the same way. What existed in this period was a cosmocentric vision of reality. Economic moment, the second stage, was characterized by the scientific mentality and a humanistic attitude. Here we meet ‘man above nature’ who exploits the earth for his own purpose. Man is estranged from nature as well as from God.  This crisis can be overcome only by means of a third stage, the catholic moment which maintains the distinctions of the second moment without forfeiting the unity of the first. The undifferentiated unity of the first stage became an impossibility with the development of human consciousness. However, in the third stage human being becomes conscious of a pervading presence of unity. According to Panikkar this is a differentiated but yet unbroken unity which he calls cosmotheandric vision.

1. Introduction

RaimonPanikkar was born in Barcelona, Spain on November 3, 1918. Although his father was a Hindu he grew up in a pious Catholic environment of his mother who being well educated and from the Catalan bourgeoisie brought up Panikkarin “strict orthodoxy” (Panikkar, Faith 222).  Due to this synthesis of the east and the west,Panikkar from an early age exhibited an openness towards other cultures and religions. His life as a Roman Catholic priest in the diocese of Varanasi enabled him to specialize himself in various Indian cultures and religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.  “I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be Christian,” he later wrote (Panikkar, Intrareligious 40). This synthesis that framed his mindset from early years also enabled him to realize that fragmentation of any reality into various segments is a threat to an integrated way of living.

2. Quest for an Integral Vision in Panikkar

Panikkar saw the fragmentation of reality as the root cause of all the evil in the world. He makes a mention of this conviction of his as early as in 1944 where he expresses his regret in the life of modern society. He points out the defects of the worldview of modern people, in which God, self, and the universe are generally considered in isolation from each other. He argued, the need of a contemporary synthesis of the three to solve the restlessness and anxiety of modern people (Panikkar, Vision 5-12). Over the decades he gradually developed this theme into the cosmotheandric insight which asserts that these three realities are constitutive of each other. In other words, these realities are interconnected: we cannot speak on one aspect of reality with the exclusion of the other two.

Though the modern period is witnessing fragmentation of reality and its impact in various forms such as ecological imbalance, human rights abuses, religious persecutions and so on, striving for an integrated life has always been a constitutive part of being human. “Nothing less than unity, nothing less than truth will satisfy man,” (Cosmotheandric 7) says Panikkar. However, the traditional worldviews presented by different strands of philosophy have provided us with a fragmented vision of reality. With such an outlook it is difficult to face the predicaments of today such as religious fanaticism, ecological problems, etc. A deeper look into the problem reveals that neither duality nor plurality as commonly understood can ever be the ultimate solution.

3. Cosmotheandric Vision as a Solution

Panikkar proposes the cosmotheandric vision as a solution. It revolves round three basic concepts i.e. God, human beings and cosmos. You cannot have one without the other two. Instead of proceeding from a metaphysical understanding of reality, he takes the phenomenological understanding and dives deep into the intrinsic union existing within its components.

In order to come to the open horizon that Panikkar visualizes, he first traces the three fundamental human attitudes in the unfolding of consciousness (Seshuraja 205). He calls them kairological and not chronological moments (Cosmotheandric 51) in order to stress their qualitative character. He says:

The three kairological moments we are going to describe are neither merely chronological epochs, nor exclusively evolutionary stages in a linear mode. Not only is each of these three moments present in the other two, but all three are compatible with more than one of the schemas proposed by scholars in the field. This does not deny that there may be a chronological sequence of the three moments within a single culture, or that there are living civilizations spatially coexisting and yet temporally diachronical. Nevertheless these moments may be called kairological because they present a markedly temporal character and even a certain historical sequence, although they do not follow the sequential pattern of linear and quantifiable time logically or even dialectically.

Here, while speaking on the development of human consciousness, he intends to provide three different stages that are qualitatively different yet can be intertwined. They should not be understood as three stages one following the other. Each of these moments is present in the other two. He says that it is possible for a civilization to coexist spatially but at the same time be in a different stage in the unfolding of consciousness viz,. temporally diachronical. He admits that these three moments are “qualitatively different, and yet intertwined, aspects of human awareness which certainly coexist in the unfolding of individual and (especially) collective life” (Panikkar, Invisible 135). The three moments ecumenic, economic, and catholic will summarize the evolution of human consciousness (Seshuraja, Cosmotheandric 205.

3.1 The Ecumenic Moment

This period marks an undifferentiated unity between the human being, nature and God. Here the human is a “Man of Nature” who considers himself as a part of nature (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 24). That is, in the ecumenic moment of consciousness, “Nature, Man and the Divine are still amorphously mixed and only vaguely differentiated.”(Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 54) Panikkar points out that for the primordial man nature was not only his habitat but also sacred, one with the divine ((Panikkar,Cosmotheandric24). He lives on and cultivates the earth. He does not have the sense of nature nor fees the need to contemplate it as he is a part of it. He is sacred as the entire universe is sacred and he belongs to it. Man sees himself as a part of the whole and communion with reality is coextensive here with the absence of a separating and reflective self-consciousness. Panikkar explains:

Certainly Man is conscious of Nature, just as he is aware of himself; he distinguishes himself more and more from Nature, but without separating himself from her, and this accounts for Man’s peculiar relationship with the natural world during this period: Nature inspires awe, elicits worship, needs to be propitiated; she is often considered to be the superior term of a personal relationship. Here personification and divinization generally go hand in hand. Man dwells in the midst of all the natural and divine forces of the universe. Nature engenders Gods, living beings, people and all sorts of things (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 25).

Nature inspires, evokes reverence, causes wonder and elicits worship; she is propitiated, personified and divinized. Panikkar perceives this moment as “the ecstatic moment of intelligence: Man knows”(Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience,54). He continues:

He knows the mountains and the rivers, he knows good and evil, pleasant and unpleasant. Male knows female and vice-versa. Man knows Nature and knows also his God and all the Gods. He stumbles, he errs, and he corrects his errors by allowing himself to be instructed by the things themselves. Man learns mainly by obedience, i.e., by listening to the rest of reality, which speaks to him, addresses him, teaches him (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 48).

Man in this stage is able to relate with nature, man and gods in much the same manner (Doss 165). There is also no essential difference between his relationship with Nature and his fellow beings. In this stage of consciousness, “the Divine is subdued in Nature, which is not merely ‘natural’ but sacred, and ultimately one with the Divine” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 24). At the same time Man does not see himself separate from Nature. He being the natural product of Nature is sacred for the whole universe is sacred (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 24). This awareness helps Man to see himself as a part of the whole, as mentioned earlier.

In the first moment, Panikkar highlights, what existed was the cosmocentric vision of reality. He says, “The Earth is the centre of the universe, and human religiousness is fundamentally chthonic” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 25). He opines that the tendency to interpret this cosmocentric consciousness as primitive or animisticis not necessary. He points out that “most sophisticated civilizations have also entertained the same cosmic feeling” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 25).

Modern Man tends to forget this unified vision, a vision of the entire universe as a living reality (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 28). It is sad that the scientific development “dismissed all this as primitive animism or as mere remnants of an obsolete worldview. Instead of growth as continuity, the mathematicalization of the world fostered a rupture, whose consequences we are only now beginning to see and to pay” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 32). However, in the non-urbanized areas Man is not estranged from Nature. It is only a quantitative world view that developed as a result of the ‘natural’ sciences. This estrangement has become a commonplace of contemporary experience (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 32).

3.2 The Economic Moment

While reality was centered around nature in the ecumenic moment, economic moment is anthropocentricism. ‘Man is the measure of all things,’ the Protagorian maxim, depicts the characteristic attitude of this moment. Everything gets its significance and value with reference to Man, who is “at the centre of everything” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 32-33).

As the first kairological moment could be called that of primordial mentality, the second period is characterized on the one hand by the scientific mentality and on the other, by the humanistic attitude. What is scientific or humanistic is considered as a thing of value (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 32). Here we meet ‘Man above Nature’ in contrast to ‘Man of Nature’ in the first kairological moment. “If in the first period Nature is more than natural, here Man is more than human, and also more powerful than any single individual” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 33).

The divine has emerged within man whether confessed or not confessed. Here the Aristotelian definition of Man as an animal endowed with the gift of logos or speech or a living being transited by this mysterious-divine-power called logos, is solely interpreted so as to leave out his animality and reduce his divinity. In this period his logos is reduced to mere reason (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 33). In Panikkar’s words:

This logos has the astonishing faculty not only of “seeing” things, of knowing objectively, but of seeing that it sees, of knowing knowledge. It is more than mere reflection. Man in his moral conscience has always had the power of reflection and a sense of responsibility. Here we are concerned with reflection raised to the third power, as it were: reflection not on things (I know that I am knowing things), not on the I who thinks (I know that it is my I who knows things), but on reflection itself (I know that I know in and through my knowing power). Here Man not only knows that he is a knowing being, but turns this very knowledge into the object of his reflection. Here Man is caught in the very act of examining his power to know. The question thus generates not only philosophy but critical Philosophy: res cogitans (literally means ‘thinking thing.) is what matters here, what makes Man Man, and ultimately also divine. Reason is enthroned as the ultimate and positive criterion of truth. This logos has the astonishing faculty not only of “seeing” things, of knowing objectively, but of seeing that it sees, of knowing knowledge. It is more than mere reflection. Man in his moral conscience has always had the power of reflection and a sense of responsibility. Here we are concerned with reflection raised to the third power, as it were: reflection not on things (I know that I am knowing things), not on the I who thinks (I know that it is my I who knows things), but on reflection itself (I know that I know in and through my knowing power). Here Man not only knows that he is a knowing being, but turns this very knowledge into the object of his reflection. Here Man is caught in the very act of examining his power to know. The question thus generates not only philosophy but critical Philosophy: res cogitansis what matters here, what makes Man Man, and ultimately also divine. Reason is enthroned as the ultimate and positive criterion of truth (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 33-34).

Ever since man discovered that his awareness could also be reflective awareness reason has been considered a negative criterion. It had a kind of veto power: what reason finds contradictory could not be the case. But the negative and passive power of reason now became positive and active as the second kairological moment emerged (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 34).

In the west Descartes brought about this radical change. Though it is commonly accepted that what is contradictory cannot be true, truth is not the result of mere non-contradiction. But he, in his effort to attain a positive criterion for truth concluded that what is true is only what can be seen as clear and distinct. This led to the conclusion that truth is only that which can be seen by human mind with clarity and distinction. From that moment on truth was the prisoner of human mind (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 34).

Reason soon became Spirit and Spirit the supreme reality, God. Hegel later said commenting on Descartes that consciousness is an essential moment of truth. Idealism became popular and the dignity of Man was thought to be dependent on sharing this very moment of the Spirit. However, half of the reality, matter, was poorly represented: matter was present in the working of the Spirit in attenuated form (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 35).

Something that is obviously clear and distinct in this period is Man’s increasing estrangement from Nature, not only through the ascendency of his reason but also through his feelings and his history. In this period his home is no longer the earth, which he now exploits for his own purpose but the ideal world of his mind and disincarnated Spirit (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 35).

This does not call us to ignore the value of scientific discoveries and the advantages brought about which Panikkar calls “indisputable blessings of modern civilization.” What is needed is not to revert to a pre-scientific worldview or to a primitive lifestyle. “The economic moment is not only a fact but also an irreversible one. Our task is not to abolish it, but to overcome its absolute grip on modern Man” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 36).

Panikkar calls the economic moment as “the enstatic moment of human intelligence. Man knows that he knows. He knows that he is a knowing being” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 48). He wants to know more and know everything and consequently loses his patience. Man becomes aware of the risk of this reflective knowledge as well as the limits of this thinking and of his own limitations (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 49).

There is an ecological interlude annexed to the economic moment (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 48). During this interlude, although the desire to know and master everything is still present, an awareness of interconnectedness of all things begins to emerge. Ecological sensitivity “arises when Man gains to discover that Nature is not just infinite passivity and that this planet is a limited vessel” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 43). Man begins to be conscious that the destruction of the planet threatens his very existence. This knowledge brings about a tactical change in his attitude that the exploitation of the earth has to be milder and reasonable so as to reap their fruits beyond the present. In fact, the ecological awareness of this time of interlude is but the outcome of humanity’s own interest for survival (Doss 167).

3.3 The Catholic Moment

The first kairological moment was cosmocentric and the second, anthropocentric. In the third moment Man becomes increasingly aware that the center is neither a merely transcendent Godhead, nor the cosmos, nor himself (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 46).  Panikkar calls this moment catholic to emphasize the universal virtues essential for this kairological moment. Here man becomes aware of his limitations and is critical of his thinking pattern to discover its shortcomings (Doss 167). The catholic moment of human consciousness “maintains the distinctions of the second moment without forfeiting the unity of the first” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 54). It is at a higher turn of the spiral, where humanity does not regress to the first moment, but reawakens to the awareness of the pervading presence of unity. Panikkar calls this integral experience as the cosmotheandric vision (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 47).

This moment does not mean a mere recovery of lost innocence. He says that innocence is innocent precisely because once spoiled it cannot be recovered. “The third moment is a conquest, the difficult and painful conquest of a new innocence” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 50). This does not take us back nor urge us to forge ahead indefinitely and indiscriminately. Panikkar says:

We cannot go back, i.e., pretend that we do not know when in point of fact we know. And knowing that we are knowing beings makes pure knowledge impossible – unless or until we become the absolute Knower, which by knowing itself knows all beings and all knowing. But no one can say anything about such a Knower without destroying it, both as knower (it would become the known) and as absolute (it would be related to our knowledge). The first innocence is lost forever (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 50-51).

The awareness of man that he knows, makes the first innocence impossible. In the first kairological moment there was no distinction between cosmos, theos and anthropos. This undifferentiated unity became impossibility as self-consciousness developed in man. Man learned to say that he knows something and he is aware of his knowing. This led him to another realization that he is not what he knows. This can be put in three simple statements: ‘I know this pen’; ‘I know that I know this pen’ and ‘I know that I am not this pen.’

We cannot but accept that we have no sure and valid knowledge of anything when we know that we do not know the foundations on which that first knowledge rests. Since we do not know the foundations of what we know we cannot pretend to know and stop at this, as if it were absolute knowledge. He elaborates:

If we really know that we do not know the foundations on which our knowledge is based, it means that we do not know the truth of what we know; for we know that the truth of what we know depends on an unknown variable. We know our ignorance of the foundation of our knowledge. But this knowledge of our ignorance is neither ignorance nor knowledge. It is not ignorance for it knows. It is not knowledge, for it has no object; it knows nothing. We cannot know ignorance as such; we cannot know the unknown. If we could, it would cease to be ignorance. If we could know the unknown, it would become known. This knowledge of our ignorance is a knowledge that knows that our knowing does not exhaust knowledge – not because we know ignorance, but because we know that others have knowledge different from ours and they have sometimes convinced us they were right (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 51).

The new innocence is brought out by an awareness of our limitations of knowledge. This awareness is not a direct knowledge but the result of conflict of knowledge, a conflict which we cannot resolve. In a way, “we are forced to overcome knowledge by non-knowledge, by a leap of … faith, confidence, feeling, intuition.” This is to say that “the new innocence resides in overcoming the intellectual despair that ensues when we discover that we cannot break out of the vicious circle either by an act of the intellect or by sheer willpower.” The will is too infected by the intellect to maintain such autonomy. Panikkar points out that even when we consciously try to overcome this autonomy it is still the intellect that directs and inspires us (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 51). In this period Man recognizes that “thinking not only reveals and conceals, but also destroys when carried to the extreme. Thinking has a corrosive power” (Panikkar, Cosmotheandric 52). Therefore the new innocence does not put absolute trust in intellect nor does it envisage returning to the primitive stage.

The catholic moment relies on the insights of the ecumenic and economic moments. Panikkar refers to this moment as “mystical awareness.” Humanity at this moment becomes deeply conscious of the pervading presence of unity. In this moment humanity reawakens to the insightful awareness of the pervading presence of unity without regressing to the ecumenic moment. Unity and particularity are unified in the catholic moment. Panikkar calls this understanding of reality as “the cosmotheandric intuition” (Doss 177-178).

4. Conclusion

Panikkar advocated a holistic attitude to reality. We need to mend the brokenness of creation, to overcome the fragmentation of humanity and heal the rift between nature, humanity and God. The three kairological moments, developed by Panikkar, highlight the three different stages in the development of human consciousness that are qualitatively different yet can be intertwined. Each of these three stages corresponds to a period of the development of human time-consciousness. While the ecumenic moment witnessed cosmocentrism in which Nature occupied the central position, Man took priority in the second period, economic moment. Man with the use and misuse of reason began to exploit Nature.

The catholic moment, the third stage is a solution to the problems that obstructed a genuine and authentic life in the second stage. The integral vision of life achieved in this period gives rise to the cosmotheandric vision. It is the view that reality cannot be fragmented into various levels. There is a radical relativity among all that exists. It is shown in the integral union that exists between God, Man and Nature. The cosmotheandric vision is a call to attain a new innocence which would be possible only if one decides to overcome the predicaments of the second stage by undergoing an attitudinal change which will make the acceptance and appreciation of the need for an integrated vision of reality possible.

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