Teilhard de Chardin – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

EVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Dear Friends,

On September 7 the London Free Press published my article below under the title “Evolution leads to cosmic consciousness”

It is 689 words, so when you have 2 minutes, why not give it a quick read?

Blessings and peace,

Bruce Tallman

Spiritual Director

www.brucetallman.com

Mystics give us a bigger vision of where we are evolving

Sri Aurobindo was a Hindu mystic. Teilhard de Chardin was a Christian mystic. They never knew of the other’s work. Despite this, they both came to the same momentous conclusion. The direction of evolution is toward divinization. This means God is fully alive in every human being.

In books like The Future Evolution of Man (Aurobindo) and The Phenomenon of Man (Teilhard), they both outlined the earthly process. It moves from rocks and water (matter) to plants (sensitivity). Then it progresses to animals (feelings), leading to humans (thought). Finally, it reaches the spread of the great religions (spirit). The goal of evolution is greater and greater consciousness, from matter to spirit. We are heading towards God (Cosmic Consciousness) being all in all.

Of course, since we have free will, if we choose hate and war over love and peace, we could destroy ourselves. The planet might be destroyed with us. Divinization is not a guaranteed process.

In the past one hundred or so years new technologies such as radio, television, Internet, smartphones, and now artificial intelligence have been growing our consciousness at light-speed. These are all new stages of the world-wide evolution of humanity.

Mystics and scientists have come to the same conclusion: everything is interconnected and one. The pandemic also forced unitive thinking on us: we are all in this together. As well the climate crisis forces us to see our interconnectivity: our energy use affects everything else.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, has written about order, disorder, and re-order. For hundreds of years white males have dominated the planet, making decisions affecting everyone. The modern means of communication, particularly the Internet, have gradually dissolved this domination, allowing suppressed voices to speak: women, blacks, indigenous, and LGBTQ2SA+ people. All these new voices have also expanded our consciousness. Domination by white males is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Our consciousness is expanding. We are now aware of stages of faith. The group stage loves order and simply believes what others say. The personal stage loves asking questions and deconstructing everything, particularly religion. At this stage people often feel they are losing their religion and leave their church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. This stage however is in danger of getting stuck in disorder. And disorder is the case for many young people today – they have never experienced even the group stage of faith and so have no spiritual foundation to build their lives on.

The final stage of faith is mysticism where you accept that those previous stages had their role to play. As Rohr says, you need somewhere to discover that some things are holy, and church is a good place to start. But the mature person grows their consciousness beyond that and eventually realizes that everything is holy: every creature is a face of God. The local church still has a role to play however: starting people on the road to oneness, holiness, justice, and mysticism.

White male domination now senses that all these new voices are creating disorder and is trying to re-establish their authority and order, for example, “Make America Great Again,” or by arch-conservative bishops in the Catholic church trying to take the church back to the 1950s, before Vatican II (1962-65), which they perceive as disorder. But history always works as a spiral: two steps forward, one back, but ever onward (unless we destroy it).

The Spirit of God is moving us inexorably towards re-order – towards unity, mysticism, and justice for all voices. This is what people like Aurobindo, Teilhard, Thomas Merton (a Catholic monk), Rohr, Matthew Fox (an Anglican priest), Brian McLaren (a Protestant minister), and Ilia Delio (a Franciscan sister and expert on Teilhard), advocate in their many books.

Pope Francis also advocates this in his attempt to make the church “synodal,” that is, one where lay Catholics have a voice in church governance, not just priests and bishops. Despite this being opposed as disorder by some bishops, the church will likely continue on its road to inclusion, unity, and mysticism as this seems to be where God is leading it, and all of evolution.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and religious educator of adults. http://www.brucetallman.com

THE UNION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

“Heaven and earth will pass away”

as separate states.

Teilhard helps people

be in the world

to which they necessarily belong.

He overcame the Church’s contempt

for the world

when he said “Love is

the fundamental engine

of evolution.”

The litmus test for true vision:

to see the world as a Temple

and your enemies as sacred and beloved.

In the naked now

the best way to intimacy with God

is immediate, unmediated living

in the present, which is a present, a gift.

Living in non-defended, nondual presence

connects you to Real Presence.

The Quantum Theologian’s question is not

our love for God

but God’s Love for us.

How is it

that from total otherness

comes our ultimate meaning?

Eastern religion emphasized

the search for spiritual guides,

enlightenment, the True Self.

But western religion buried for centuries

spiritual searching under dogma,

obedience, and no questioning.

All the answers to questions you never asked

are in the Catechism – just read it!

Still, there were rays of pure light:

Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue

offered a systematic process

for knowing God

within you

beginning and ending

with humility.

If by God’s grace you have

Inner and Outer Authority

like Catherine

you avoid being both

rebel or conformist.

God and nirvana

are living realities

beyond all concepts

so Buddhists never talk about nirvana

they merely practice

mindfulness in all things

and so get intimate

with the Buddha.

This gives a new vision

for western religion:

include experience/practice/community

not just believing/behaving/belonging.

Heidegger’s Being and Time

was too individualistic. There is no community

but Being-Itself constantly overcomes non-being

within it

and unceasingly creates

new things:

In intimate communion with Christ

there is always a New Creation.

The Internet as a new creation

and a convergence of Teilhard’s noosphere

could be the servant of global communion

not the conveyor belt

of global fragmentation/anarchy.

What the world needs now is

Bonaventure’s vision

that predated Teilhard:

a dynamic universe

oriented towards union

with God and human

that finds fulfilment

in Christ.

3 Big Ideas for May 15, 2019

Teilhard de Chardin was a Christian mystic who believed that love and energy are the foundation of the cosmos. This “love-energy” is the source of the universe’s intelligibility and therefore the basis of knowledge. This leads philosophy out of the impasse of making matter the basis of all empirical knowledge. Philosophers have traditionally made love secondary to knowledge – you have to first know something before you can love it. But for lovers of God like Teilhard, love is the source and goal of all knowledge.
Christian martyrs were willing to die for their faith because they believed “all is one” – everything, including life and death, is under the care of God. Now we have arrived at a similar state by the reverse process: we no longer believe there is a God, all is passing away, and therefore all is meaningless. Without God, all is not one, it is zero. The martyr was willing to die for God, but would the secular non-believer be willing to die for zero? This is important when you are speaking truth to power and fighting injustice.
Almost everything wrong with the world has to do with the way the “It” of institutions can be misaligned, out of control, and disconnect with the “I” and the “We.” The personal is destroyed by the impersonal when corporations, governments, and religious institutions become out of touch with the people they are meant to serve, and only serve themselves. The result is exploitation of others for money or sex, and rape of the planet’s resources on which we all depend. Unitive thinking, the idea that all is one, keeps the “It” of hierarchies connected to the common good, the “We.”