Spiritual Masters: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
One of the most fascinating stories of spiritual mentorship that we’ll be hearing about during Andrew Cohen’s March 26th broadcast, “Awakening to Your Hightest Self: Tales of Transformation from 25 Spiritual Luminaries,” is that of human potential pioneer Jean Houston. After a chance encounter with the great French Jesuit Priest and evolutionary mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Central Park in 1951 when she was only 14, Houston began a relationship with de Chardin that shaped the rest of her life.
To get a sense of Teilhard’s cosmic theology, here’s an excerpt from The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1965):
Where are the roots of our being? In the first place they plunge back and down into the unfathomable past. How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected. And however autonomous our soul, it is indebted to an inheritance worked upon from all sides—before ever it came into being—by the totality of the energies of the earth: it meets and rejoins life at a determined level. Then, hardly has it entered actively into the universe at that particular point than it feels, in its turn, besieged and penetrated by the flow of cosmic influences which have to be ordered and assimilated. Let us look around us: the waves come from all sides and from the farthest horizon. Through every cleft the world we perceive floods us with its riches—food for the body, nourishment for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fullness of the heart, unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures, all these stimuli, all these calls, coming to us from the four corners of the world, cross our consciousness at every moment. What is their role within us? What will their effect be, even if we welcome them passively or indistinctly, like bad workmen? They will merge into the most intimate life of our soul and either develop it or poison it. We only have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this, and either feel delight or anxiety. If even the most humble and most material of our foods is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual faculties, what can be said of the infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the music of tones, of notes, of words, of ideas? We have not, in us, a body which takes its nourishment independently of our soul. Everything that the body has admitted and has begun to transform must be transfigured by the soul in its turn. The soul does this, no doubt, in its own way and with its own dignity. But it cannot escape from this universal contact nor from that unremitting labour. And that is how the characteristic power of understanding and loving, which will form its immaterial individuality, is gradually perfected in it for its own good and at its own risk. We hardly know in what proportions and under what guise our natural faculties will pass over in the final act of the vision of God. But it can hardly be doubted that, with God’s help, it is here below that we give ourselves the eyes and the heart which a final transfiguration will make the organs of a power of adoration, and of a capacity for beatification, particular to each individual man and woman among us.
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Filed Under: Consciousness • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • Evolutionary Spirituality • Religion • Spirituality
How lucky was Jean Houston to ‘collide’ with Teillard De Chardin at the age of 14, two gallaxies and constellations meeting on a street in New York..
“converge”
Now this is the kind of synthesis that we need to be applying our noodles to. All talk about being and becoming, when we don’t even know WHAT we are, is really beside the point. Its critical failure lies in not looking for the larger patterns; and that’s why the being and becoming focus is androcentric, it is caught in a web of some imaginary “self” that does not exist–when it’s only in discerning the larger patterns that we can come to understand the intelligence and truth of existence. To suggest our role to be anything less is only to condone ignorance.
The concept of spirituality is simply a man-made notion that fails to take a proper account of reality–that is, self-absorbed, navel gazing will never add one jot to our understanding. But thanks for playing the video; I just wish you folks at Enlightennext would expand more in the direction of trying to understand the WHAT.
For example, all life has a mandate to thrive, i.e., to augment its vitality by increasing its health and strength, which includes establishing nurturing feedback relationships in its environment. This is basic stuff, but Enlightennext doesn’t even touch upon this most fundamental condition of our lives, not to mention the lives of all the living. If being and becoming doesn’t even relate to the simple facts of our existence, how does it relate to anything else? In my view, it provides an opportunity for people to discount their physical lives and neglect their responsibilities. But if there is anything “spiritual”, it would be the physicality of existence, not air-head notions of some disembodied “self”.
Thanks Jean, you go girl!
Caroline, firstly; It’s disingenuous to come on a “spirituality” website and claim knowledge about something that you haven’t directly witnessed or experienced yourself; that is the interior “only” discovery of the truly spiritual “realms” that are already enfolded as your-Self. Only because you “think” so, you allow yourself to speak in ways that attempt to invalidate the genuine mystical truths that are shared here, calling them “airy-fairy” “pie-in-the-sky” and “naval gazing.” It is seriously insensitive of you, being someone who claims some affiliation to “Spirit” at least in the ways it makes you feel comfortable. You try to make God in your image, instead of reaching for and becoming the image God has placed in you. Simply because you haven’t experienced anything that could be called spiritual, does not mean that it doesn’t exist, and your soul would be better off if you took a position of active and open questioning instead of the concretized theorizing you feel better represents an all-encompassing “wholeness.” Which it doesn’t. Your ideas are partial indeed, and that leads me to…
secondly: You should actually read Teilhard de Chardin, because the video was only a snapshot of some very meaningful moments between two people.”Mr. Teilhard” was a man of God, thru and thru, and his metaphor of the butterfly was just that, a metaphor for spiritual transformation. His theories explicitly maintain a position centered around an “innermost heart, transcendent,triune and divine centre,” otherwise known as the Divine Self. The Self is the God in you, Caroline, not disembodied, but fully embodied and simultaneously Infinitely Transcendent of All bodies. “Spiritual” doesn’t mean otherwordly,it means THIS WORLD; Spirit and Form are NOT-TWO!Investigate deeper,girl!LOL(;}
Nada,
Proceeding with the concept of “NOT TWO”–of which we both appear to give much credence–couldn’t the two of us find agreement that there really is no inner and no outer reality; that subject and object are ultimately One? If that is the case, why do you search so hard for the Divine within? The Divine is in all Things. The Divine is the Source as well as all Manifestation–there is no divide (as much as Andrew minces on this point.)
Develop knowledge of the OTHER (whatever you perceive as other to your “divine self”), and you will learn to see it like unto yourself. It is only when we lack knowledge of the other that we think our self to be something that exists in its own right; that has boundaries; and that needs protection.
PS. I was reading de Chardin over 20 years ago as well as Sri Aurobindo. It was at that time that I also started to read Ken Wilber with his Spectrum of Consciousness. Except for Boomeritis, I’ve since read all of Ken’s works. For years I was combing through libraries searching for anything that human culture might produce that made some kind of sense. It was also around that time that I found Erich Jantsch’s, The Self Organizing Universe, more relevant than any of the aforementioned. However, Steve Kaufman’s, Unified Reality Theory really takes the cake!
I wonder at the seeming dispute(for want of a better term) that you two seem to be having.
I see that there’s agreement more than difference and submit that when seen holistically, there is no inner and outer, only a unified oneness, the inner and outer combined.
When it can be perceived this way, there’s no beef, is there?
Ever the ref,Frank,thanks!,but let’s not be afraid to speak from the actual developmental places we are,in confidence and honesty,excluding fantasy and over-inflated ideas “about reality.”
The outer or exterior realm,generally identified with by the gross,waking body/mind,can’t!in and of itself, disclose the “Real,”because it is impermanent,finite,fleeting,transient.So measuring physical components,like “micro-entities”, and saying “consciousness arises from the body” is a fragmented and partial philosophy based in an identification with the gross, material world,which is only a fragment of the knowledge available.
On the other hand;The inner or interior realm,if explored to its depth and height,through the psychic,subtle,causal can/will disclose the “Real”, because compared to the outward reflection, the inward reflection discloses that the outward is INCLUDED IN IT, but NOT the other way around. Why? The inner EMBRACES MORE of Reality. You might “see” that nature is an interdependent wholeness or totality,but the inner discloses that nature is pierced through with subtle,immeasurable forces, and if one continues into this depth,they find ONLY the Empty Eternal,only Spirit. Eternal Spirit surrounds and permeates all things inseparably,only it is Cause. The Eternal holds the transient, but the transient cannot hold Eternity. Being “in the moment” is good, but it is fleeting; developing to realize the Eternal Moment is the “goal” of spiritual effort.And that is a radical difference!
So when someone wants to collapse The Eternal and proclaim it arises “because of the body,from the body” and says this is “nondual”,they are a reducing Spirit to a physical arising,and this is incorrect.There has to be an acceptance of the Hierarchy/Holarchy of Being.
Thx,LOL
Here’s the schism,Caroline(and Frank);What Andrew,Ramana,Eckhart,Shankara,Padmasambhava,Plotinus, Emerson,Lady Tysgol,Loa Tsu and I, etc,..are talking about is the ACTUAL EXPERIENTIAL DISCLOSURE of the REAL, not just a translation that soothes your aching mind and temporarily satisfies your need for an intellectual precipice in which to view the world,but actual transformative development that is a destruction of all translation,of the separate self, of the ego that thinks translation is enough.It’s not enough!It’s all good to say “the Divine is in all things,that we’re all One,” cool!great!no problems there,but if you read KW as you said,then you know that translation is horizontal development,transformation is vertical development;and that is an absolute, infinite difference!You resist acknowledging that “looking within” is necessary,but can every sage and mystic throughout history be wrong on that point? The way is IN,UNTIL it is disclosed that there is no inner and outer,and UNTIL it is a directly disclosed experientially,it is MERE translation,and as KW & AC and I know,this is precisely the BIG PROBLEM with post-modern spirituality,the belief that translation is enough.Comb all the libraries you want,it is a fruitles search UNTIL you become sick of the search outward,and turn within.I’ll say no more on the point.
Just so you know,the premise of the book I’m writing is that I was born with what Ramana called a “ripe soul.”Ripe means “evolved.”I became Nondually Realized after 40 years of silent and inexplicable transformation *without* a translation,no teacher or teaching,no “spiritual” books,no “outer searching.”I had an evolved capacity to contemplate All Forms arising FROM the Formless Causal Godhead,and ONLY AFTER UNITING WITH ALL FORMS,Enlightenment!(:}LOL
p.s. The “Light” you say everything is, EMERGES FROM the inconceivable,incomprehensible,omnipresent,all-pervasive DARK of the Godhead. All things are not “light”, Caroline, All Things are The Dark-Light of Spirit.
Good journey with your inward traverse…
Nada,
If manifest reality is Light and we can recognize it as such, why the need to go to the “inconceivable, incomprehensible, omnipresent, all-pervasive DARK of the Godhead.” (Your words). We already know that it’s the foundation of manifest reality. That suffices as far as I’m concerned. Life is meant to be lived and that is precisely what the Godhead is able to do through us. Otherwise, why manifest?
In Andrew’s recent virtual Being and Becoming retreat, he expressed the need for liberation. In effect his point was that if there wasn’t a total divide between the source and its manifestation; i.e., the timeless and that which exists in time, there’d be no means by which we could find liberation.
I disagree with his whole position. First, the unmanifest is integral to all manifest reality–it is, after all, the foundation (cleave a piece of wood and I am there, for example.) Secondly, what’s with this need for liberation? Life goes forward by moving through obstacles. This life that we have is energy, which evolution has been able to channel to build more life. The idea of liberating oneself from this process, to me, bespeaks a desire for separation.
Such “liberation” basically strikes me as a masculinist need to escape the natural (Yin) world, an attitude which is more the problem than the solution. In contrast, the integral attitude is more of what the World needs since the result of integration is more energy (think stars.)
Our brains will eventually build these structures into its functioning, to where the individual will become a part of a greater whole (the greater holarchy can only establish itself when the parts can identify with it.) This greater holarchy will be a higher level Being. Can we try to envision what that Being might look like?
Caroline,the wave of Integral Awareness is already in consciousness! and it has been for quite a long time! Aurobindo,Teilhard were integral thinkers!All the “Integral” theories were a *response* to the evolution of consciousnes.If “integral” wasn’t already in consciousness when they were experiencing/contemplating the nature of “reality,” they would have translated what they were discovering differently!Once again,you have it backwards! Consciousness doesn’t arise “from the brain,” the brain and body are formed by the structures in consciousness;it is “downward causation”,from the causal ground INTO manifestation, then how/when manifestation responds, this returns to the Self;it is reciprocal,but the Godhead is First Cause!It is the Eternal Holder of Wisdom..we are the temporary,evolving activity of that Wisdom!
You have repeatedly stated “why is there a need” to liberate, or seek within,etc..and as I’ve stated repeatedly, the gross reflecting activity of mind IS NOT ENOUGH! The effort and activity has to be deeper, because the subtle/soul is “where” evolution “happens.” It is the bridge to the Source,it is the memory of evolved forms within consciousness,and the reflection inward accesses these new subtle forms.The soul dwells on a continuum of subtle activity and gross activity;the rational mind is only the beginning development of the myriad of tools it has at it’s disposal.
You,who abhor laziness,want a neat and easily comprehendable package that merely accepts Spirit,just like all the other lazy,ego-identified people who don’t want to make the effort of transcendence.That’s fine, Caroline.Your soul will eventually be brought along on the spiritual winds of those who chose to directly investigate via their souls;work not meant for the faint of heart.
LOL(;}
Hi Nada, re: “It’s not enough!It’s all good to say “the Divine is in all things,that we’re all One”
I agree with your statement and point out the key word above is (say).
Believing is not enough if it fails to translate into behavior and a lifelong committment to acting on your spiritual beliefs which precludes any egoistism that doesn’t take into account the betterment of status quo or at least the maintenance of it for the benefit of a large part if not all of humanity, the larger the scope the less egoistic, IMO.
That’s right, Frank, and too many people just pop it out of their mouths like a slogan or catch-phrase. It’s become such a cultural trend, misused by advertising as a way to catch the consumer,too. I’m sorry; who needs a solid gold meditation bell? The most expensive yoga mat? Do I really need a designer to create “soulful” interiors? The “I’m hip because I’ve got a guru and I sleep with him”..palease!
The “Divine” has been thoroughly exploited by the personal self, and no doubt it will continue. No deference, no humility, towards the “Glorious Other” within…”why bother going there? I’m already it,” attitude is a self-created limitation, too, and from my perspective, one of the worst limitations to rid the separate self from. But translating “reality” into “I’m serving the world, I’m a good and concerned person, and that’s enough” – from the perspective of Spirit, of the Self, is not enough!
Every person has placed in them the blueprint and all the resources, but they build a floor and maybe a wall or two, and proclaim, “It’s done! This house is good enough!” From Spirit’s perspective, it’s not enough! Spirit needs the whole house to be realized!
We don’t have a transcendent drive in us to climb just half the mountain and announce it’s as good as the summit! What insanity is that, what arrogance! All the while, appeasing our separate selves with substitute theories about what the summit must be “like.”…”the Divine is in us; we’re all One” Ha!
Shut the mouth and close the eyes and enter the dark of the unconscious, then we’ll talk!
God Bless Japan!
God Bless the World!
Peace to You, Frank!
Hi again, Nada!
I’ve submitted before that I believe no living person, not even all these great illustrious teachers including the Dalai Lama can be deemed Enlightened (cap E) until their passing and a whole life and person can be seen as truly worthy to be called so.
Not to be disrespectful and there are many who are on the short list who will probably be seen as joining the list of those who have served humanity in a very productive way.
Hi Frank,Yes!Spring has sprung..the cherry trees & daffodils are blooming and the tulip’s green arms are embracing the light. It has been exceptionally rainy,though,so difficult to get out and tend to garden chores.How ’bout where you are?
It’s Ok to “believe” what you like about enlightenment,as long as you understand your beliefs are temporary,relative ideas that support conscious and/or unconscious identifications that you are,as yet, unwilling to transcend.Self-realization is Liberation from the limited, separate self; Enlightenment your “true nature.”It’s identifications with the limited self that want to put enlightenment “beyond” this lifetime,after the death of the body. We are all Spirit’s expression and,yes, Enlightened people are more Freely Spirit’s expression, because they’ve done away with their self-imposed limitations. But it also means the total surrender and humility it took to become that liberated expression is the cause and effect of one’s choices,as I’ve experienced, over many,many lifetimes. Put aside your ideas that only Perfection equals “true” Enlightenment.Spirit needs us to free ourselves in the ways we can in any single lifetime,and be that expression with clarity by choice.
Self-realization is the stable,adapted awareness *of and as* Spirit.No outside authority announces this;it is undefinable and unmistakable.Nor can anything remove or alter Spirit’s expression through the enlightened person;having realized their True Nature,they are “immoveable,”-the”One.”
Due to the complexity of the human being,though,there are many “lines of development” that do not necessarily all come along equally on the spiritual journey;it is up to ALL people to discern where they need to develop and commit to it from the Heart.This is Soul work.
LOL
Hi again, Nada!
Winter seems reluctant to let go of the grip it’s had this year with that recent big snow storm.
Here, we’ve been having more rain than usual which is a blessing as Hawaiians consider it but with attendant flash floods.
Can we say that the body is the house of the soul, would you accept that? No body, no soul.
The ongoing contretemps seems a bit like Big Ender/Little Ender disputing, IMO.
Hi Nada, some afterthoughts on your last comments:
Though some people may bandy the term Divine about as you mention, I think like Art or any other abstraction, that there may be a wide interpretation of the concepts.
Even in matters spiritual.
It will reveal the depth and authenticity of a person’s spirituality when it’s used so lightly, I think you’d quickly discern.
Spring sprung there yet for you?
Hi Caroline,
In making such comprehensive statements like “ALL talk about being and becoming, when we don’t even know WHAT we are, is really beside the point” you would be well to temper that conclusiveness since there are those who may have thought and are more knowledgeable about being and becoming, enough to disprove your statement to some extent.
Are you projecting that you can make such sweeping generalizations?
Theilhard immortal…
Is that a reply to my query?
Pls explicate, that’s a bit too oblique for my comprehending it.