Mother Teresa: An East-West Mysticism

The present work studies the person of Mother Teresa for the first time not from the point of view of her works, but from the perspective of her thought. It emerges from the critical analysis of her teachings, always expressed orally, that her great works of charity are not to be considered, as has been done so far, as being within the most traditional catholic teaching. They spring forth instead from an extraordinary power of spiritual intuition and thought. In fact, the fundamental characteristic of the spiritual journey of Mother Teresa is explained by her contact with the Hindu thought which she had personally experienced, living in India right from the age of 18, during the entire period of the Indian freedom movement guided by the Gandhian principle of non-violence. The extraordinary vitality and fruitfulness of the Mother’s Christian faith is born exactly from this contact with advaitic spirituality. This book is the first one that places Mother Teresa among the great personalities of both Western and Eastern mysticism. The spiritual mystical aspect of Mother Teresa was confirmed by the preserved documents that came to light in the process of her beautification. This work goes deeper into these aspects not only through a comparison with the Hindu Philosophies and the ethical-religious views of Mahatma Gandhi but also through the meeting points with Eckhart, the master of Western mysticism.