551[1]

50 Ambrose Ih-Ren Mong
On this depends the union of East and West and the future of
humanity. We must try to see the values in each of these revelations,
to distinguish their differences and to discover their harmony, going
beyond the differences in an experience of ‘non-duality’, of transcendence
of all dualities. 13
While acknowledging that in each religious tradition there is an
experience of the transcendent reality, Griffiths also respects their diverse
interpretations or expressions of that reality.
It is important to note that Griffiths does not say that all religious
experiences are experiences of the same thing, but that they converge
in the transcendent mystery. At the same time, he believes in the presence
of a vision of non-duality occurring at some point in these various
religious experiences. This means that the universal mystical experience
in all authentic faiths possesses this one advaitic insight.
Complementarity
After many years of study, reflection and meditation at the Shantivanam
Ashram in India, Griffiths began to realise that the cosmic revelation
found in eastern religions is not a mere preparation for the gospel but
actually complements Christian revelation. In Vedanta and Christian Faith,
he writes:
The divine Mystery, the eternal Truth, has been revealing itself to all
men from the beginning of history. Every people has received some
insight into this divine mystery—which is the beginning of human
existence—and every religion, from the most primitive to the most
advanced, has its own unique insight into the one Truth. These
insights, in-so-far as they reflect the one Reality, are in principle
complementary. 14
It was Griffiths’s understanding of advaitic mystical experience that
eventually led him to understand the complementarity of religions. He
believed that,
… to share in the vision of God means … to pass beyond all concepts
of the rational mind and all images derived from the sense. We must
pass into that world of non-dual, in which our present mode of
13 Griffiths, Marriage of East and West, 177.
14 Bede Griffiths, Vedanta and Christian Faith (Clearlake: Dawn Horse, 1973), vii–viii.