John Main: Awake to the Spirit that Embraces All

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Born to an Irish immigrant family in England, soldier in the Second World War, diplomat in Malaysia, disciple of the Hindu monk Swami Satyananda, university professor of Law, then Benedictine monk, founder of a new priory in Montreal, teacher of meditation, a profound and still unknown theologian, a spiritual master and perhaps the inspirer of new spiritual movements. John Main was all of these things. He saw himself in a way as a disciple of Abhishiktananda, and his tremendously practical character led him to search for the actual path that could lead to the point of convergence of the Christian, but of Abrahamic ones broadly speaking, and Dharmic religions, theologically, historically and spiritually in a very practical way.

He died prematurely, leaving us only talks, lectures and loose writings, some edited and some not, but certainly not a well- articulated synthetic vision. We believe, however, that he had such a vision in mind, and so we have tried to study it in order to present it here, as well as to extend his vision with our own research and reflections, which are intended to be along the same lines as his, and to develop what we believe to be his essential vision.

CARLOS MIRAMONTES SEIJAS holds a Doctorate in Moral Theology from the Lateran University in Rome and a Master's Degree in Fundamental Theology from the Pontifical University of Salamanca. He teaches at the Compostelan Theological Institute in Spain and at St. Pius X in Huancayo, Peru.

Throughout history, different civilisations, each one with its own concepts, have shown different interpretations of the reality of religion. Each term has a concept associated with it, which later even different authors of the same civilisation have interpreted unequally, showing their own conception or personal accentuation.

In Greek perhaps the most used or appropriate terms are εὐσέβεια (reverence for the gods, piety) and θρησκεία (religious worship, ritual), denoting already a series of characteristics of their conception of the religious fact. First of all, we should be able to avoid extrapolating current Western conceptions of the religious fact to other cultures distant in space or time. The religious fact in general in Antiquity was not understood as a necessarily logical system of truths that the believer should believe, with an associated moral system that the believer should live by, and with a set of worship practices that the believer should attend. There does not seem to be any term in ancient Greek that could translate such a conception, because it did not in fact exist. Instead, the terms to which we have alluded give us the idea that what was important for the ancient Greek man or woman was rather the religious cult itself, the ceremonies and rites, how to perform them. The invocation used of the god to whom the cult was addressed was very important, and even where it was held, or what was offered, according to the particular tastes of the god in question, in order to please him or her to a greater extent and to win his or her favour.