| Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios is for
me a great soul, an intimate friend, a cultural wonder and global wanderer
with a head and heart full of spiritual ware and moral corals. I had known him for long and what brought me closer to him is the crimson spirituality whereby socialism meets with humanism and both blend with the Supreme Light. To me life is a pilgrimage and death a passage to another dimension of existence on shedding the mortal coils. Thus life and death are a continuum. Therefore, life after death, if we may put it that way, is not a hallucination but reality. I have often discussed with Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios this abstruse subject, celestially subtle but actually a challenge to everyone who is concerned with the pursuit of an answer to the perennial interrogation: "Who am I?" In this search or rather Odyssey I have derived much light from my venerable friend Mar Gregorios. Indeed, he rejects superstition and proceeds on scientific lines so that his assertions are not obdurate obscurantism but the realism of an insistant searcher for Truth which is God. I have had happy discussions with him and have loved to meet him for more light since he has investigated issues which are ordinarily by-passed by other eminent persons as inconvenient. Moreover, Mar Gregorios is a world traveller who confronts ideologies and challenging changes in the West and the East. The World Council of Churches and the Indian Schools of philosophical thought are his resources. So much so, he has a vision of the dynamic and dialectical aspects of the rapid gush of modern social values. His guidance is of great importance not merely to Christians or Indians but to all the world. If I may say so, the glimpses of Dr. Mar Gregorios I have had are abiding. Life becomes meaningful with such companionship. I must conclude with the hope that Mar Gregorios will continue to inspire friends and foes, behind the former iron curtain countries and the rest of the world. I long to meet him as often as I may because such occasions are illuminating and therefore precious. (28-9-1995) |