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BjarniTyrdal [OP]

2003-09-06 03:59 | User Profile

Translated from Energon: Das verborgene Gemeinsame By Hans Hass TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Father Teilhard was not a seeker of the truth in its narrowest sense. He did not seek truth for itself, at least not a specific truth, whatever it might look like. He went on a kind of crusade for the Christian faith.

The "tepidity" of modern Christians depressed him. On his journeys to many parts of the world – he lived in China for a long period, for example – he experienced the spiritual "unrest in the hearts of the priests and the monks": There is something, he wrote, "which does not work out between God and humans anymore". He regarded the neglect of the findings of natural science by the church as a serious mistake – even as a disregard of God.

Since the world – in the sense of Christian faith – is a conscious and therefore deliberate good deed details of this creation cannot be inconsistent with the divine revelation. Therefore, he explained theology must no longer neglect the results of research, "theology must no longer neglect the least of the received truth".

Teilhard came to the obvious conclusion and moved without prejudices and consistently to the other camp: There has to be a bridge, a synthesis between the Christian faith – the Christian truth – and the results of research. Father Teilhard’s lifework consisted in looking for such a connection. He found one, which gave him personal satisfaction and he defended it until the day he died.

What kind of relation is this? Teilhard’s first concern was to restore the central meaning of the planet earth and its inhabitants. Since Copernicus and Galileo, it had been known that the universe does not rotate around the earth. The earth was only a speck of dust in the never-ending multitude of other celestial bodies. The human being itself was – since Lamarck and Darwin – not something unique, separated from nature, created by God for the purpose of some kind of test: the human being was a relative of the ape – a relative of the crayfishes, worms and bacteria. Teilhard developed two concepts which changed this very unhappy situation dramatically. First: in toto matter has consciousness- consciousness is "a universal attribute common to all particles". Secondly, it is not the dimensions ‘small’ and ‘large’ which turn the planet earth into a dust particle inside the universe which are decisive. Another one, a third dimension, is decisive: that of increasing complexity. With increased "density" of matter, there is a "rise of consciousness...." Teilhard called the human being the most "complex", the deepest "centred of all molecules".

The stars are – so to speak – "laboratories", where there is an evolution of matter. But here only rather simple atoms or combinations emerge. However, the planets are places, where – in the third dimension – a further development of the spiritual is possible. The "spiritual" aspect follows immediately. As soon as the atoms accumulate to become molecular structures of hundred thousands of stars and millions of atoms, "the physical corpuscles are given a soul and vitalised". Teilhard wrote: "Without the biological evolution, which built up the brain, there would not be a sacred soul".1 Eventually, the "supreme psyche" is reached in the human soul.

With that, Teilhard gives the dust particle "planet earth" and the dust particle "human being", which lives on it, their meanings back. This process, willed by God, could only and definitely happen on the earth.

Within human society, there is then a further "compression" of the spiritual-mental aspect. A process of "continuing becoming one" happens here. A "super-body" builds a new "storey in the building of life". As Teilhard says, here " a hyper-complex, hypercentred and hyperconscious super-molecule develops". At this point, after the phases of vitalisation (development of life), of "humanisation" (development of human life), there is a third phase: the "planetisation". With the act of united "universal love", there would be a process of complete becoming one – a "total reflection" of the consciousness. The thus developed, overall soul eventually removes itself from the planet earth – its place of birth – "it dematerialises"; the critical point of maturity is achieved and the psychological joins the "irreversible essence of things". At the "destination of assembling and totalisation in itself", the stars and the earth return to the "fading mass of initial energy", and the psychological enters into God – to the "point Omega", as Teilhard put it in terms of natural science. So eventually "all in all" there is just God. This phrase of St Paul was apparently the lodestar of the thoughts which Pater Teilhard represented, convinced and convincingly. Even on the last page of his diary, three days before his death, he mentioned it.

Father Teilhard, who probably thought more consequently in terms of natural science than any other priest before him, could hardly fail to note that the signs for a "uniting in love of the humanity" were poor. He spoke about a "planetary compression": The increasing "collectivisation" probably diminishes the individual, but it is an unalterable process: a "crisis of birth". Because he believed in a world willed by God, Teilhard even saw something positive in totalitarian states, in the excess of births over deaths, wars, even in the atom bomb. A "phase of freedom" would follow the present "phase of compulsion": The increasing compression of "humanity" favoured through all these means, though unpleasant to us, would not lead to an "absurd enslavement". It is rather the "sprouting of a bough", which one day will have "stronger members". Teilhard wrote: "Real union does not suffocate, it does not melt the elements: it super-differentiates them within unity."2

He thought, that this – from a rational point of view – rather implausible process was created by extraterrestrial influence. From point Omega –and therefore from God – rays are emitted which can only be recognised by "mystical persons". This influence will become stronger– "a mighty field of inner attraction would develop in this way, and would seize everybody from inside".

The question as to what extent this theory helps Christianity with its current problems, is not discussed here. However, Father Teilhard regarded evolution as a whole, as a development, which proceeds beyond human beings, which has its origin in the organic and leads with continuing compression and complexity to higher and higher unities – the bodies of life – and with that, to a higher and higher consciousness, to an "overall soul", which includes more and more layers. Teilhard spoke about a self-unfolding, "thinking layer" of the earth, of an "aureole" of earth embracing, "thinking energy". When Teilhard talks about the "spirit of the earth", this is not meant poetically, but in the sense of these values. He called the totality of matter vitalised by human beings the Noosphere, and saw in it a, "zoological layer".

Following this path, Teilhard came to conclusions similar to those presented in this book. He also came to the opinion, that the structures artificially created by human beings should not be regarded as something separate from the process of life. Our "artificial" actions are just a "transformed extension" of the natural actions of other living things. "On a higher level and with other means", the human being continues with the "interrupted work of evolution".3 The tool is "the equivalent of the differentiated organs in the animal kingdom It is – and here, Teilhard makes his point of view clear – "the real homologon and not a superficial imitation, which comes from a trite convergence".4 Teilhard writes: " One and the same individual is able to be a mole, a fish or a bird, alternately". Among all the animals, only "the human being has the ability to bring some change into his work, without finally becoming its slave". He can transform himself, "without tying himself somatically".

Teilhard also saw in every individual within the world of plants and animals, a "mediation organ"- a "placer of passage" in the development of life. The human being is dominated by "another, superior level".

Teilhard regarded this higher level as something different from the thoroughly aimless-causal process of the developing of energy in which the energon theory perceives the origin of all forms of life. Teilhard could hardly – because of his basic attitude –arrive at another point of view. Incidentally, he evaluated the human being similarly: as a mediation organ and a place of passage.

Comments:

1 “Die Zukunft des Menschen”, München 1963, p. 37 2 “Auswahl aus dem Werk”, Frankfurt 1967, p. 85. This book can be recommended specifically as an introduction to the thoughts of Teilhard. 3 “Auswahl aus dem Werk”, p. 40 4 Ibid., p. 53