TEILHARD'S MYSTICAL -COSMIC STAGES

The Noosphere & Globalization

he relationship of religion and spirituality to science and Nature has been an important question facing

Christianity in the past few centuries. A leading figure in defining the Nature of this relationship has been

the French Jesuit scientist and mystic, Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).

A prominent figure in the science of paleontology, Teilhard spent much of his life doing research in China. He

wrote many scientific articles about evolution. His most significant scientific study was The Phenomenon of Man

which sought to show that the direction of evolution had within it a mental dimension which led to what he

called the Omega Point.i The Omega Point is a "place" of convergence for material and spiritual energies, found

latent within the whole of the created Universe but gradually unfolding over the history of the Universe.

This mental-spiritual dimension of the evolutionary process is now focused, according to Teilhard, on the level

of planetary consciousness, the "Noosphere," which is the level at which the material and mental energies

become focused into a planetary force that takes evolution beyond the purely physical plane into that of a

spiritual consciousness of the whole.

Most of Teilhard's spiritual writings were not published until after his death in 1955, because of their

controversial Nature and the Vatican's opposition to some of his views – for example, his understanding of

Original Sin and the evolutionary Nature of Christian faith. He believed that the material and spiritual energies

found in Nature were interconnected and interdependent – an insight in tune with Buddhism.

Teilhard has taught us a holistic understanding of Earth and its role as "mother" or matrix ii of all living beings.

At the end of the industrial civilization, he called us to discover the Divine imprint within Nature and our own

human consciousness.iii We need both the Divine within Nature (oriental mysticism) and the Divine beyond

Nature (the Abrahamic tradition). The growth of nature-mysticism found in creation spirituality may help the

Abrahamic tradition recognize the Divine presence in all of creation.iv

By objectifying Nature, Western culture has largely lost the mythic foundation of a living Mother Nature from

which life and consciousness arose. Teilhard's vision of the Noosphere focused on the growing globalization of

the world through communication systems, which are uniting humanity into an integrated network of

opportunities for peaceful ways to grow in unity and solidarity.v

For Teilhard, "all that rises in consciousness needs to converge," meaning that a small number of people can be

agents of future possibilities for humanity since a "phylum of love" can be the creative impulse acting as the

leading edge for human evolution. He believed that physical evolution had now largely come to an end with

the development of the human brain, which he viewed as the pinnacle of physical evolution in the Universe.

With the brain and consciousness as the key instruments of human evolution, we have reached a critical mass

of consciousness to make a transformational leap into the next stage of consciousness which will unite

T

humanity beyond the sectarian, ethnic and national divides that now act as hindrances to human growth and

development.

Teilhard foresaw the positive roles that technologies could play in this process; he did not suspect the threats to

human survival posed by global climate change nor the negative effects of capitalism. His optimism about the

eventual success of the human project leading to an Omega point of human/Divine union needs to be tempered

by the drag of retrograde forces such as greed and selfishness. So as to deal with retrograde forces, in Part III,

we will explore ethical transformative strategies. Every advance in human-spiritual evolution seems to call

forth reactions from those who resist the call of the future,vi since it may disrupt their own patterns of control

and comfort with the present order which benefits them but not the whole of humanity.vii

For some, Teilhard's vision seems to blur the distinction between the natural and supernatural realms; this is

what led Church officials to oppose the publication of his books during his lifetime, though more recently

Church officials have praised his work. Today, the American Teilhard de Chardin Association continues his

work through conferences and publications and by promoting the book and video titled Journey of the Universe

(by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker), and books like Dream of Earth by Thomas Berry.

One of the leading authorities on Teilhard's influence on Catholic theology is John F. Haught, senior research

professor of religion and science at Georgetown University. Haught has shown that Teilhard's writings

influenced the famous document of Vatican Council II, "Gaudium et Spes," the Pastoral Constitution on the Church

in Contemporary World (1965). Many of the leading theologians of Vatican II such as Karl Rahner and Henri de

Lubac were familiar with Teilhard's writings and incorporated many of his insights into that Constitution.

Teilhard's writings helped move theological reflection away from a static concept of Nature and Universe into

a dynamic and evolutionary framework – with Nature and the Universe seen as a work in progress.

The relatively recent migration of our consciousness from a static to a dynamic and evolutionary sense of

reality requires that fresh efforts of analysis and synthesis be made by Catholic theologians, by the teaching

Church, and by the faithful. Teilhard insisted that our still evolving Universe is an unfinished creation – a

claim that is theologically and ethically momentous. It means that the world is still coming into being; our

Cosmos remains open to the future of ongoing creation, as "St. Paul had proposed."viii

The late Thomas Berry (1914-2009), another major Teilhard interpreter, explained how the modern

technological world lost the intimate connection with the spirituality of the natural world. Earlier civilizations

had experienced a communion with the cosmic order that was the source of much of their highest spiritual

development. Formerly, the continuity of the natural and the human worlds

… was taken for granted, (but) these have now been torn apart, their harmony is shattered by the plundering

economy of a scientific, technological, secularist age completely devoid of the ancient mystical feeling.ix

Berry was not totally pessimistic about our contemporary situation. He wrote that "Men who journey into

outer space seem to renew the ancient spiritual journey into inner space."x As did Kierkegaard, he felt that a

pressing modern concern is that of living authentically.

Teilhard's work redefines the nature of evolution which had impacted so much of the scientific world since the

middle of the nineteenth century and had led to Social Darwinism. The latter suited the capitalistic economy

that dominated western civilization.

In Teilhard's letters to his cousin Marguerite, we find the seeds of what would become one of the most

important spiritual discoveries of the twentieth century. These letters (written while he served as a stretcher

bearer during World War I) describe trench warfare's daily horrors. Like Kierkegaard, he was appalled by the

absurdities of modern warfare. Yet,

At no time was he ever lost in or crushed by the events in which he took part. He had the gift of sharing an

experience and at the same time remaining detached from it. When one notes the time and places of his writing,

one can better appreciate the serenity of mind prompted by Teilhard's vision of an all-embracing unity in the

Universe.xi

Teilhard and Marguerite had a close relationship over most of their lives. She took the pen name Claude

Aragonnes and won several awards for her writings.

Part of Teilhard's gift was his sensitivity to the “Eternal Feminine.” Marguerite was his major friend and

confidante throughout the war years, and for many years thereafter. Only she really understood his ideas at

this time.

To her he could open himself completely. His creative essays resonated with her own work, so that they could act

as mutual critics of each other's writings. She was the first to read all the essays Teilhard wrote during the war.xii

Teilhard had another important female confidante later in his life, Lucille Swan. During his years in China,

Teilhard developed a close working and personal relationship with Lucille, a gifted sculptor and spiritual

seeker. She helped him develop many of his key ideas both for his scientific research that would become part of

The Phenomenon of Man, and his other more spiritual writings during his sojourn in China. Lucille was able to

challenge his ideas as no one else could.

She gave Teilhard more than a partner provides. She discussed, read, and translated his essays, got them typed,

printed, and sent out to his numerous friends, shared his walks and talks, and provided a place of intimacy and

warmth in her home.xiii

Teilhard remained celibate all of his life but he drew much of his inspiration and sense of intimacy with the

whole Cosmos from his relationships with women like Marguerite and Lucille Swan. He understood, much as

did Carl Jung, that the source of spiritual truth needed both the masculine and feminine dimensions of human

existence (animus and anima) to attain wholeness. During his years as a stretcher bearer in WWI, he developed

his mystical vision of the Universe which he eventually published in his book, The Divine Milieu (1926).

After returning to China in the 1920's, in The Divine Milieu he began to revise his ideas about spirituality and

Earth in a way that "would bring together all the discoveries made in science and integrate them with what he

knew about God, especially what God was trying to accomplish in the world."xiv He knew that the spiritualities

of his day had not properly integrated the emerging scientific discoveries that had provided a new

understanding of the Cosmos based on the findings of physics and evolutionary biology.

He believed that the understanding of Jesus of Nazareth and the Jewish prophets had to be contextualized

anew. For Teilhard, Christ today is not just the Jesus of Nazareth. Rather he is a huge, continually evolving

Being as big as the Universe.

In this colossal, almost unimaginable Being, each of us lives and develops in consciousness like living cells in a

huge organism … Theologians have described this great Being as the Total Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Whole

Christ.xv

One recalls the “Mystical Body of Christ."

Much of traditional spirituality had separated the life of the spirit from life in the world; it had viewed the

"world" as part of the trinity of the "world, the flesh and the devil." By contrast, Teilhard embraced the

evolving Universe as pregnant with the Divine spirit and moving forward toward what he called the Omega

Point.

For him, the growth in consciousness exhibited by the transformation from the biosphere to the Noosphere (the

thought envelope now tangible on the Internet) was moving to a new spiritual level that would bring about a

convergence of consciousness and unite humanity across the chasm of diverse cultures and religions. Even

though Teilhard was not alone in the discovery of the Noosphere, he gave it a particularly dynamic character

by showing that the trajectory of the Noosphere was a twin process of cerebralization and divinization of

Homo sapiens.xvi

This growth of consciousness – originally expressed in the Axial Age when many of the world's major religions

developed their ethical teachings – has now reached a new stage of development which is often called the

globalization of thought and culture.

Teilhard's mystical views of the Universe appear throughout his writings but most explicitly in The Divine

Milieu and Hymn of the Universe. He found the Divine imprint in Nature which he felt it reflected an

evolutionary, spiritual process leading to the Omega point, a teleological process of convergence of the

material and spiritual realms united in and through the Cosmic Christ.

He expressed his mystical union with the forces of Nature through the symbolism of the rising sun and his self-

offering of the depths of his soul. The rising sun on the fringe of the eastern sky led him to speak of a moving

sheet of fire; the living surface of Earth

… wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail ... My paten and chalice are the depths of a soul

laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of Earth and converge upon

the Spirit.xvii

He invokes the “mystic presence” of all whom the light is now awakening to the new day.

Historical Interlude on Losing & Retrieving

Inclusive Spirit-Science Links

For centuries, Catholic leaders disregarded Jesus' injunction on peacemaking. In the face of the Reformation

and the Enlightenment, the Vatican felt that the faith was endangered. At the beginning of the eighteenth

century, the reign of Pope Clement XI saw a drastic reduction in papal influence.xviii In a 1704 edict, this pope

condemned the Chinese rites which Jesuit missionaries had successfully used to win over Chinese converts –

allowing them to practice the Confucian Rites.

The Franciscans in China had opposed this practice and had appealed to the pope, resulting in the edict.

Neither the Franciscans nor the pope realized that the Rites meant respecting one's ancestors (not

"worshipping" them). Clement's action led to a persecution that ended the promising start of evangelization in

China; a nascent globalization had caught the pope off guard.

Let us use this historical example to reflect on the two centuries separating Clement XI and Teilhard, the priest,

scientist, mystic. In Teilhard's time, Christian missionaries in China were quite active winning some converts

despite Clement XI's cultural-undiplomatic disaster. Their success was partly due to the colonial powers'

activities in this troubled Chinese period.

Such events reflect some of the external realities influencing Teilhard's life in China. We are interested in the

internal realities motivating his life. As we gathered from his relationship of trust with his cousin Marguerite,

he had a profound mystical-poetic side. His mystical and poetic writings found in The Divine Milieu and Hymn

of the Universe (the seeds of which date back to his life in World War I) echo many of the themes found in the

poetry of his fellow Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). The following lines from Hopkins' "God's

Grandeur" are a form of nature-mysticism:

The World is charged with God's Grandeur:

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil…;

All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, Nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.xix

Teilhard in his love of evolutionary science would seem to have embraced Hopkins’ vision. His and Hopkins'

writings hearken back to the nature-mysticism of Francis of Assisi who revolutionized spirituality in the 13th

century--much like Rumi (a Sufi) had also done. The renewal of a nature-mysticism in Christianity during the

past century has led to what has become known as Creation Spirituality, a leading exponent of which is

Matthew Fox. Fox, like Teilhard and Thomas Berry, claims that Christianity has lost much of the nature-

oriented mystical spirituality that was part of earlier periods of Christian history. For Fox, Saint Augustine's

influence in the history of western Christianity led to ignoring the Cosmic spirituality that has characterized

much of Eastern Christian spirituality.

"Creation spirituality is also found in the Greek fathers of the church, especially in the role that the Cosmic

Christ plays in their theology.”xx Teilhard spoke of Cosmic spirituality as his Cosmic Sense; he felt that such an

experience of connection and interdependence with the evolving Universe was the anvil on which his

individual autonomy would be transformed into a new reality.

One mystical experience with the Cosmos led him to speak of a newly emerging, transformed self, united with

the Cosmos. In recounting the experience, Teilhard “would tell of passing beyond himself to become part of a

vast, all-encompassing unity; the perception itself had acted 'to break up' his individual autonomy.” xxi Teilhard

argued that one can know the world today only by being co-extensive with it, by becoming to some degree one

body with it. This may be why Teilhard could not understand why the new science of psychology ignored the

Cosmic Sense as something basic to human cognition.

If Teilhard's insight is correct, it provides the basis for a truly universal and evolutionary spirituality accessible

to any human. How has psychology been able so consistently to

… ignore this fundamental vibration whose ring can be heard by every practiced ear as the basis, or rather of the

summit, of every great emotion? Resonance to the All – the keynote of pure poetry and pure religion.xxii

Teilhard did realize that not everyone has access to the Cosmic Sense, but he felt that everyone is enveloped by

it since we are all part of an evolutionary process. The Cosmic Sense is similar to an aesthetic awareness of the

quality of beauty found in music, painting or dance; a sense of the Cosmos helps 'cosmicize' the soul.xxiii His life

exemplifies a spirit-science connection: the inner influences the outer.

The Science of Astronomy &

our Growing Understanding of the Universe

Astronomy has broadened our understanding of the expanding Universe. The Universe began with the Big

Bang over fourteen billion years ago, bringing about the birth of the stars and galaxies (lithosphere); this was

eventually followed by the birth of the biosphere and its myriad forms of life.

In Matthew Fox’s Creation Spirituality, the final step in the process led to the Noosphere, (the realm of thought

and human creation) of which we are the present custodians. Fox connects the outer events of the Cosmos with

the inner events of the soul; he draws upon a schema developed by Meister Eckhart.xxiv Eckhart refers to the

sense of ecstatic unity with the Cosmos. This sense becomes one of Creation Spirituality's four paths to union

with the Divine. Fox writes that everything which God first created millions of years ago, God is still creating

“in the innermost and deepest realms of the soul.” xxv In everything past, present or future, God creates within

our souls’ innermost realms.

Creation spirituality has a natural affinity with the indigenous religions of the world, such as the native

religions of North and South America. The central point of convergence for indigenous Andean spiritualities is

Pachamama (Mother Earth, aka Teilhard's Terra Mater).

The loss of the intimate connections with Mother Earth has led to its being abused. This may explain the

prevalence of violence against women throughout the world. Teilhard calls us to again revere our Earthly

mother – what has been lost or etherealized in Catholicism's devotions to the Virgin Mary.

Why, indeed, should I not worship it (Mother Earth) the stable, the rich, the mother, the Divine? Is it not matter

whose absence our imagination refuses to conceive, whether to the furthest limit of space or in the endless

recesses of time? xxvi

He sees Mother Earth as carrying within her the seeds of all life and the sustenance of all joy.

It is difficult to attain "interior silence" or a Cosmic Sense if we are constantly subject to the stresses and strains

of everyday life. Western societies are preoccupied with the material dimensions of life, but they lack the

interior awareness that only comes with entering into the depths of the soul. Our addiction to the 24/7 presence

of communication technology such as so-called smart phones and now even wearable technology may be the

latest obstacle to an interior life of the Spirit.

Mystics speak of the "dark night of the soul." Carl Jung went through a similar voyage which he documents in

his Red Book. The art of listening to all of oneself and to others is a key to any universal spirituality. We learn

how to listen to others when we take time for our own solitude and allow for the birth of the Unconscious

realm deep in our inner self.

The Dark Night of the Soul allows us to confront such aspects of our inner self that remain unhealed and may

be obstacles to our spiritual growth. If Jung’s view of the Unconscious is correct, it is the repository of both the

material and spiritual realms of existence which often only reveal themselves in our dreams. This "hidden"

quality of the spiritual life needs to be understood; it helps re-mythologize the spiritual journey. With the

growing advances in the life sciences, many in these fields mistakenly feel that we will unlock all the secrets of

human life through scientific investigation rather than any kind spiritual process.xxvii

Teilhard's insights may need to be matched with those of depth psychology and with consciousness studies to

help us better understand the spiritual nature of human existence and human consciousness in an evolutionary

world. Descartes' separation of mind and body left us in a mechanistic Universe governed by allegedly

impersonal laws (aka Deism). The foundation of Descartes' philosophy was his cogito ergo sum, "I think,

therefore, I am."

Matthew Fox counters with what could be the fundamental principle of Creation Spirituality: "Creation begets

and we are."xxviii For Fox, a second principle of Descartes is the separation of mind and body, spirit and matter.

Like Augustine, to whom he was philosophically indebted, Descartes was a dualist.

He saw matter and spirit as antagonistic and irreconcilable ... Matter in the creation tradition is not an enemy to

spirit, but is a home for spirit, a place of spiritual power, magic and elan.xxix

Teilhard & Mediating an Interreligious Mysticism

Teilhard's spirituality is fully consonant with the unification of matter and Spirit that we find developing in the

Creation Spirituality movement of the past century. Teilhard was ahead of his time. He was a pioneer in

rejecting Cartesian Dualism in favor of a “panentheism”.xxx Fox sees theism as teaching a kind of 'trickle-down'

theology of grace; panentheism “teaches that God is in all things and all things are in God. God works from the

base, from the bottom up, from the inside out.”xxxi The Spirit comes from within things. It may be that depth

psychology and the growing interest in Buddhist meditation are tools that we can use to plumb the depths of

our interior selves and to find the Divine within these depths. Paradoxically, one's interior exploration of

emptiness can be a path to fullness of Spirit and deeper insights into Buddhism.

Buddhist psychology has developed methods for attaining wholeness that seem to be inaccessible to Western

medical science. The practice of Insight Meditationxxxii has grown dramatically in the past several decades as

has the spiritual reputation of the Dalai Lama. The Buddhist concept of emptiness fits in well with the western

mystic tradition of the Dark Night of the Soul. In order to function effectively in the world we need a profound

sense of compassion for the suffering that goes on every day within our own life and those around us. Karen

Armstrong's Charter of Compassion is an example of a unifying movement that can bring humanity together

across all of our historical, cultural and religious divisions.

The ability to feel compassion for all living beings as called for in Buddhism is in tune with Teilhard’s Cosmic

Sense and his Christic evolutionary mysticism. The latter presumes the transformation of the ego into the

universal Self united with the Divine. In analogical fashion, the Sufi tradition within Islam led Sufi mystics to

identify their own self-consciousness with that of the Divine reality, Allah.

The so-called "sober" Sufis held that the loss of the individual ego-self did not destroy our natural character

and capabilities but rather enhanced them. One of the early "sober" Sufis within Islam was Al-Junayd of

Baghdad (910 CE) who developed many of the Sufis' main principles. "He taught that 'fana' (annihilation)

needs to be succeeded by 'baqa' (revival), a return to an enhanced self.”xxxiii Thus, union with God fulfills our

natural abilities rather than destroying them. For al-Junayd, the whole Sufi quest is a return to man's

primordial state on the day of creation--what Greek Christians called “deification”, a return to man’s

primordial state. He saw Sufis as returning to the ideal humanity that God had intended."xxxiv In this sense, we

can see that Sufi mysticism is also rooted in a type of Creation Spirituality. It is the return of the soul to its

primordial form of knowledge and being at the first moment of creation.

Implications of an Interreligious Creation Spirituality

The third path of Fox's Creation Spirituality is the Via Creativa. Those involved in the creative arts are

practicing this form of spirituality; but we also can be creative in our own way whether in our life's work, our

home or our community. When we create new communities across existing divides we are exercising a creative

spirituality, we are expressing God’s Spirit active in the world. For Fox, the basic spiritual tradition in the

creation tradition is decidedly not asceticism, but the development of the aesthetic Beauty, and our role in co-

creating it. William Blake (who, as we saw, reversed the roles of child and poet) represents the Tradition of

Beauty mysticism. His mystical vision is well expressed in the following poem which is another form of nature-

mysticism.

To see the world in a grain of sand

And to see heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.xxxv

Blake is one the greatest poets in the English language. Like Wordsworth, he lived in a world of spiritual vision

which was for him the only real world. At the age of four, he saw God looking in at the window, and from that

time until he welcomed the approach of death by singing songs of joy which made the rafters ring, he lived in

an atmosphere of "Divine illumination."xxxvi

Not everything in our view of Beauty can be defined as beautiful in the traditional sense. For Fox, creativity is

not about painting a picture or producing an object. (He does grant that a painting such as Edward Munch’s

“Scream” can be an art object). Rather, creativity is also

… about wrestling with demons and angels in the depths of our psyches and daring to name them, to put them

where they can breathe and have space and we can look at them.xxxvii

The fourth stage of Fox’s Creation Spirituality culminates in Compassion and Celebration. All three of the

Abrahamic religions emphasize God’s mercy and compassion. The prophetic side of these three traditions

views the roots of creation as being that of interconnectedness; it embraces those who lie outside the normal

boundaries of our daily lives whether in our own lands or on the other side of the world. Spiritual maturity

leads us to embrace the Other who is different from us whether in gender, race, religion or culture. Spirituality

without good deeds lacks the energy that Teilhard felt activated the evolution process to move forward.

Teilhard encompassed all four stages of spirituality within his own life and his writings. In effect, he created a

new mythology about creation which can help us reposition ourselves as homo sapiens within the New

Cosmology. Every great civilization has had a dominant myth to help its people understand, celebrate and

ritualize their place in the Universe as they understood it at that moment in time. Teilhard has taken the

original Christian myth of the Cosmic Christ found in St. Paul and later celebrated in eastern Christianity as the

Pantocrater (Christ blessing the Universe) and transformed it into the Christ of the Omega – the Divine point of

convergence for all of the material and spiritual energies developed from the beginning of time until the end of

time. This convergence of energies became for Teilhard the "primordial stuff of all phenomena."xxxviii

Teilhard transforms the original conception of the Prime Mover which Aristotle had placed at the beginning of

a series of causal events but which could not have an infinite regress. He places the Prime Mover (God or

Spirit) ahead of us. God impels forward into the future of Omega – the union of all energies and consciousness

in the Universe at its hyper personal level.

"Once again … as for a second time, we ascend the thread of the Universe (henceforth seen as Impelled forward)

we are introduced to God at the summit -- this time more profoundly:

Not simply, in the first place, as a pole of consistence, but as a prime mover ahead;

Not simply, secondly, as a physical or biological prime mover, but as a psychic prime mover, addressing himself

in us men (and women), to what is most human in us—to our intelligence, that is, to our heart and to our power

of free choice.xxxix

As we have stressed, the mysticism of the mind needs to be connected with a mysticism of the heart. Teilhard

understood this mysterious connection very well; he lived it passionately. He spoke about the role of the

contemplative vocation as still being of ultimate importance for human evolution. He argued that as we move

forward into the Noosphere, "Humanity will become more contemplative; it will feel less need for Earthly

nourishment, and contemplation will gain mastery over anxious human work."xl

The contemplative's role is to orient the energies of the world toward their proper goal through prayer and

interior silence. This may seem very passive but is, in fact, intensely active. The suffering of the world is taken

into the contemplative's prayerful meditation: "The contemplatives are passive and perhaps enduring a great

suffering . . ., but in them the ascending force of the world is concealed in a very intense form."xli It is for them

to orient this force, to give it direction, to "stretch up to the Divine more purely than the rest."xlii Teilhard is for

us a beacon lighting the way into the future of humanity in a way that few have done so well in the past

century.

Teilhard has given us many signposts to follow in our own search for a truly global spirituality. Still, he and

most of his "fellow travelers" in the Creation Spirituality tradition did not have a profound knowledge of

Islamic or Buddhist spiritualities.

For such reasons, our book explores how experts in these traditions can help our efforts to develop an ethical

global spirituality--one that may speak to alienated minds sometimes lost in the beliefs of a dogmatic, secular

atheism. All too often, a dogmatic atheism alienates minds that have not experienced nor understood the

depths of their own souls or that of spiritually-oriented persons. Spiritually oriented Buddhists, Christians and

Sufis who meditate are sufficient evidence that one should not reject religion or spirituality in apodictic

ways.xliii

An important dimension of our book’s effort is that we believe that ethics and spirituality are intimately linked.

For those who cannot or have not grasped ethical-spiritual links, there remains the imperative need to ground

the foundations of a viable global ethics. Our effort is based on the actual operations of human performance in

transcultural contexts.

In the next chapter, we turn to explore how the Sufis’ personal experiences (their actual operations) over the

centuries can help us lay a basis for transcultural, interreligious, ethical bridges in our conflicted, globalized

world.

i Not all share an evolutionary enthusiasm; we focus on the creative minority who can share a spiritual-evolutionary understanding across the divides of culture, politics and economics.

ii Matrices are used by thinkers such as Teilhard, Jung (communal unconscious) and Wilber to study processes within which things originate. This facilitates the study of problems in which the relation between elements is fundamental. We relate cognition to life’s realities--including God's love. In engineering, control theory deals with the behavior of dynamic systems over time; it seeks to control a desired output of a system. Rather than manipulating systems’ inputs, we study how persons develop. If every matrix in mathematics satisfies its characteristic equation, we study how ideals help us connect thought forms with psychology and evolution. Climatologists model interactions between climatic systems and ecosystems including how humans pollute. We need policies to address impending ecological crises we have caused for Nature’s mother-matrix.

iii The discovery of the human genome has yielded insights into the intricate mix of spontaneity and order in the evolutionary process: we are agents of our own evolutionary history. With the ascent of eastern cultures, we are moving toward a more balanced understanding of Nature found in Taoism. The Tao represents a somewhat invisible force that flows through Nature rather than something that we can capture at the molecular or submolecular level.

iv The Jeffersonian project coming out of the enlightenment did bring about the human rights revolution that was largely lacking in the western tradition until the seventeenth century. Secularization, however, became part and parcel of the enlightenment and with it the division of western life into the private sphere of the sacred and the public sphere of the secular. Academia adopted much of the enlightenment project but lacked a holistic perspective on Nature.

v The Noosphere is not one unified whole at this point in history; rather it represents the interaction of many stages of evolution from mythic consciousness among indigenous cultures to those cultures rooted in the enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

vi The World Parliament of Religions website notes that transformative leadership demands that we listen to the stories of those hurt by violence. In 1993, it had already noted that the world religions can provide a moral foundation for a global ethic to facilitate a better global order. We need a fundamental consensus, not a global ideology not a single religion beyond all existing religions nor the domination of any religion. There are examples of the growing power of citizen-led groups such as the one formed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut after the 2012 tragedy. Parents proved to be an instance of conscious spiritual evolution moving humanity forward. Another positive sign is the Arab Spring (although endangered by new totalitarian impulses coming from the religious right).

vii This book embraces responsible notions of personal responsibility within a web of world interrelatedness. The Universe and God are not equivalent but somehow the Universe exists within God who transcends it. Islam insists on both Allah's transcendence and his mercy. While there are profound discussions on such themes, we do not ignore the deeper issues of how God and humans interrelate as debated by theologians and philosophers.

viii See John Haught, Commonweal, June 1, 2009.

ix Thomas Berry, Riverdale Papers (Riverdale Center for Religious Research), IV. 1, 18. Berry was torn between his sense of faith in evolution and his realization that humans are destroying Earth: see Phipps, 308.

x Ibid

xi Alice Teilhard-Chambon (The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest: 1914-1919, (R. Hague), 10. Teilhard dedicated his fourth war essay, "The Struggle Against the Multitude" to Marguerite with the words, “An affectionate token of union in thought and Christ, Pierre, 25 March, 1917.” See Ursula King, Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin, (New York: Orbis, 1996), 49-50. In the introduction to The Making of a Mind, Alice Teilhard-Chambon comments on Teilhard and Marguerite. “There seems to be some mysterious law in our Nature which almost invariably ordains that by the side of a great man there. . . stands, in the shadows, the figure of a great woman. Once again this law is demonstrated in Teilhard and Marguerite.” (Teilhard-Chambon, Making of a Mind, 21).

xii Ursula King, Spirit of Fire, 50.

xiii Ursula King, Spirit of Fire, 153.

xiv Louis M. Savary Teilhard de Chardin's The Divine Milieu Explained. (Paulist, 2007), 8.

xv Savary, ibid, xiv.

xvi Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) influenced Teilhard's notion of the Noosphere. Both described the Universe’s gradual development from subatomic particles to humanity. Vernadsky wrote more purely from a scientific perspective. Three classic levels are described. Cosmogenesis (Teilhard) or the formation of inanimate matter culminating in the Lithosphere, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, etc. (Teilhard), or collectively the Geosphere (Vernadsky). Here, progress is ruled by structure and mechanical laws. This is followed by Biogenesis (Teilhard) and the origin of life or the Biosphere, where there is a greater degree of complexity and consciousness (both men). Just as the Biosphere transformed the Geosphere, so the Noosphere (human intervention) transformed

the Biosphere (Vernadsky). Here the evolution of human society (socialization) is ruled by psychological, economic, informational and communicative processes. Teilhard adds the stage of spiritual evolution.

xvii Teilhard, Hymn of the Universe, HarperCollins, 1969, 12-13.

xviii Wishing to keep Italy from being embroiled in war, Clement XI backed Philip V, founder of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, to succeed Charles II the last Habsburg ruler in that country. This led to the invasion of Italy by the Habsburgs and the Bourbons – another sign of the times. In our view, a life like Teilhard's exemplifies the converted oxherd whose awakened faith guides his way.

xix Gerard Manley Hopkins, Major Works, Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.

xx Basil of Caesarea says, “The Word of God pervades the Creation,” and Gregory of Nazianzus says that Christ “exists in all things that are.” Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality, (New York: Harper Collins), 15.

xxi Thomas King, Teilhard’s Mysticism of Knowing, (Seabury Press, 1991), 5.

xxii Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, 266; also Teilhard’s Mysticism of Knowing, 6. Teilhard's work was not considered credible by most of the Religion and Science "experts". Stephen Jay Gould splits religion and science into two non-commensurable foundations--with little or no connection between them. Ian Barbour, co-founder of the Center for Religion and Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, discusses the various paradigms for understanding the relationship of religion and science in Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. Barbour's father George had worked with Teilhard in China. Teilhard falls more into the Integration model. His Phenomenon of Man is often considered to be a valid scientific method – but not by Gould. In our view, Teilhard’s is one of the best attempts at relating evolutionary science with Christian theology. Bede Griffith has noted that all of theology and spirituality have mythic elements within them. All human attempts to define the "Spirit" are shrouded in myth.

xxiii Ursula King, Teilhard’s Mysticism of Knowing, 7.

xxiv For Eckhart, real knowledge can only arise in the pure and empty recess of a totally receptive heart that allows no presupposition to impose on the purity of revelation. One responds to it completely as it comes and as it is and according to how ITS pleasure and intention intends. In other words, where the heart conforms completely to and is defined by the revelation itself.

See http://www.beshara.org/principles/talks-and-articles/lectures-and-talks/meister-eckhart.html

xxv Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 8-9.

xxvi Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings, edited by Ursula King. (Orbis Books, 1999), 47.

xxvii Many in the field of consciousness-brain studies want to understand the basis of our consciousness. For Michael Lerner (Spirit Matters, 34), the Spirit is "the ultimate consciousness of the Universe that pervades, sustains and includes all Being and yet cannot be reduced to any part of it" We are part of this ultimate consciousness in the way a theory or orientation might be 'part' of our minds. Each of us is a particular part of spiritual consciousness and a part of evolution through which Spirit becomes self-consciousness. For Lerner, the central problem is globalization of selfishness. The only alternative to that unhappy state is globalizing spiritual consciousness by developing an 'Emancipatory Spirituality.' We should better understand the Spirit's role in the Universe and in our lives. “The world and other people are not here to be used and manipulated by us for our own narrow purposes, but to be responded to with awe. . . and radical amazement. The world is permeated with love and goodness; the meaning of our lives is to embody that love and goodness” (ibid).

xxviii Fox, Creation Spirituality, 103.

xxix Ibid.

xxx The German philosopher Karl Christian Krause (1781–1832) coined "panentheism" in 1828. Panentheism is an umbrella term underpinning elements of Buddhist and Christian philosophies. For Christian panentheists, "all is in God". Christian belief in a monotheistic God or Buddhist belief in an eternal cosmic animating force are compatible. Panentheism was popularized in our day in Charles Hartshorne's Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1941): "panentheism contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations", 348. God is a being who could become "more perfect": He has absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection in categories for which perfection cannot be precisely determined. In Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers-- From Plato to the Present, (Oxford, 2006) John Cooper notes how Moltmann's panentheism differs from the ontological panentheism of process theologians in that it is not a result of a Divine inner necessity. Christians have speculated about inner Trinitarian processions as in Perichoresis or Circuminsession. In the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra, Nature and humans interpenetrate one another. Hasidic Judaism merges the ideal of abnegation to a paradoxical transcendent Divine panentheism through kabalistic allegoric articulations of inner dimensions and good deeds.

xxxi Fox, Creation Spirituality, 104.

xxxii Mysticism and meditation help us take seriously the mysterious aspects of life and conversion. Part II studies how Teilhard's lifelong approach to science has drawn analogous implications; it is a matter of heart-centered transformation and discerning transcultural values.

xxxiii Armstrong, A History of God, 227.

xxxiv Armstrong, A History of God, 227.

xxxv See http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_blake.html

xxxvi Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, Mysticism in English Literature (1913). We are back at the spirit of a "holy folly", of a language of the heart calling for conversion in dealing with life's realities.

xxxvii Fox, Creation Spirituality, 21.

xxxviii King, Teilhard’s Mysticism of Knowing, 28.

xxxix Teilhard de Chardin, Activation of Energy, 146-47. For Teilhard the mystic, the heart does matter.

xl King, Teilhard’s Mysticism of Knowing, 136.

xli Ibid

xlii Ibid

xliii One might refer, e. g. to Paul Claudel’s conversion in Notre Dame in Paris.

CHAPTER 8