*3.2. Beyond the Confessional*

Heschel's thoughts on depth theology come close to Gandhi's thoughts on "religion underlying all religions" (Gandhi 2009, p. 41). Just as Heschel's depth theology united people, Gandhi's belief in the divine presence in everybody made it possible to look to what unites more than to what separates. The "religion underlying all religions" was the pursuit of Truth: it was present in all religions, transcended them, and allowed to see the equality of all. The religious truths were relative; they were different sides of the Truth (Majmudar 2005, pp. 106–7). For Gandhi, the Truth was God. It was the praxis and social action that made the manifestation of Brahman in everybody and everything visible. For Heschel, God's Name was at stake in the struggle for the equality of all.

Heschel and Gandhi did not accept Christian exclusivity. Yet, they had many Christian friends. The English priest Charles Freer Andrews was Gandhi's close friend, who appreciated, but also criticized, the Mahatma, as real friends do. Gandhi visited the Trappists at Mariann Hill, where he met monks who were vegetarians, living in silence and chastity, performing manual labor like carpentering, shoemaking, and printing. King and Merton were amongst Heschel's friends. In his endeavor to change the Christian attitude towards

Jews, Heschel was in contact with Cardinal Augustin Bea and even went to Rome to talk with the Pope for the sake of the Jewish people.

#### *3.3. Prayer, Prophecy, and Activism*

For Gandhi and Heschel, prayer and activism went hand in hand. Their religiosity was intimately linked to justice, compassion, and reconciliation. Heschel perceived prayer as turning oneself to God and making God immanent. In prayer, one becomes aware of the divine presence and realizes that one is the object of God's concern. To pray was "to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the Divine margin in all attainments" (Heschel 1954, p. 5). Before the divine face, the usual becomes unusual, and daily life becomes wondrous. In the "spiritual ecstasy" of prayer, one does not leave the world but sees it in a different light (Heschel 1954, p. 17). Self-consciousness is replaced by self-surrender, which is not a mystical negation of the ego but rather a state where God becomes the center and where one perceives the world in the mirror of the holy (Heschel 1954, p. 7). Heschel wanted to become a *shivitti*, a living reminder of having God's face permanently before oneself.<sup>11</sup>

In an interview with Carl Stern, conducted on 4 February 1973, Heschel stated that his work on *The Prophets*, published in 1962, prepared him for his social action. He became involved in the plight of the Vietnamese people, precisely because of his spiritual discipline, which made him sensitive for the suffering of others, dismissed by many American citizens. His religious inwardness expressed itself in reverence of the human being, who was a divine image: God was present in the human being. In Heschel's theology of pathos, the prophets were spiritual radicals, who identified with God's care for humankind and who became socially and politically involved. The human being was "a disclosure of the divine, and all men are one in God's care for man. Many things on earth are precious, some are holy, humanity is holy of holies" (Heschel 1991, pp. 7–8). Heschel criticized routine prayer without *kavvana* (intention). Prayer without an ethical life was a lie: "Prayer and prejudice cannot dwell in the same heart. Worship without compassion is worse than self-deception, it is an abomination" (Heschel 1967, p. 87). The spiritual discipline of prayer educated the human being to live a life in the face of God.
