#30 Awakening Consciousness
The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole by Ilia Delio, OSF
Précis by Helene O’Sullivan, MM
The Last Part of Chapter 12 CONCLUSION TEILHARD DE CHARDIN: THE PROPHET
Teilhard was a mystic, prophet, and professional scientist whose theological insights complemented those of Jung. His broad, cosmic vision focused not on the human person as uniquely created by God but on the human person as a fact of nature. He looked for repeating patterns in nature in order to discern the direction of evolution. The pattern that Teilhard perceived was the rise of consciousness accompanying the rise of biological complexity. There is a tendency in matter to complexify as it evolves into multiple relationships whereby consciousness is increased. Like David Bohm and Carl Jung, Teilhard thought that matter and mind form an integral whole. He rejected Thomistic metaphysics and spoke of love as the core energy of the universe.
Unlike Jung, Teilhard held to an explicit role for religion as the depth dimension of evolution. Religion and evolution belong together and are “destined to become one single, continuous organism in which their lives … complete one another.” He confessed that he found the Absolute in that which changes ~ matter ~ and he found matter to be blessed and holy ~ enduring ~ because of God; God is entangled with matter. Like Jung, Teilhard said that the transcendent dimension of matter is God, and the immanence of God is matter.
= 2 =
Just as matter grows and changes, so too, God grows and changes. God, therefore, is neither immutable nor perfect; rather, God is self-surpassing perfection in evolution. God’s perfection is up ahead, as God is completed through ongoing life in evolution. Teilhard spoke of matter as two-fold, having withinness and withoutness, on every level of physical life. The withinness of matter (radial energy) is consciousness, and the withoutness of matter (tangential energy) is attraction. The human journey, within the flow of evolution, is focus on raising consciousness in order to unite more fully through the energies of love. Contemplation is the act of harnessing the mind to create and discover, to form new truths, not only awakening to divine light but also seeing the light in new ways. Contemplation is like scientific discovery, searching, seeking out the depths of matter until it reveals the divine mystery in a new way. The contemplative, like the scientist, is the artisan of the future. Teilhard’s quaternity is suggested by his ideas on the New Person, the Christic, whereby the Trinity, enfolded in matter through evolution, emerges as a new complex union of God and human. The Christic is the “ultrahuman,” the newness of God and the newness of the human person, creatively united in higher levels of consciousness. Teilhard recognized the dynamic life of God Omega as the power of evolution. Omega is the entangled God open to completion up ahead. Since God and matter are entwined, God is becoming whole in us, as we are becoming whole in God. Whereas the ancients thought that God is the most simple and immutable, Teilhard posited that God is complexifying in evolution and hence changing as a result of attraction and union.
= 3 =
Teilhard anticipated a full flowering of conscious life up ahead, not only earthly life but all intelligent life throughout the galaxies and perhaps other universes. The Pleroma far exceeds the limits of terrestrial life. All conscious matter has the potential for Christic life. ESSENTIAL POINTS Danah Zohaar provides a set of values that can be helpful in shaping the New Person: Self-Awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me. Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment. Being Vision and Value-led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs and living accordingly. Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging. Compassion: Having the quality of “feelingwith” and deep empathy. Celebration of Diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them. Field Independence: Standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions. Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world. Ability to Reframe: Standing back from a situation/problem and seeing the bigger picture; seeing problems in a wider context. Positive Use of Adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering. Sense of Vocation: Listening to the inner call to serve. To know that each person has a special role in the formation of the world
. = 4 =
LIVING INTO TOMORROW The Christian story of a perfect God in heaven—a God unaffected by earth’s dysfunction—and a fallen human race in need of a savior has fractured the earth like a heavy hammer on a piece of glass. It is time to tell a new story, the myth of the relational whole, the story of a living God in relationship with a living earth. God is incomplete, not-yet, and we are incomplete, not-yet. We are only really alive if we fall in love with matter over and over. Otherwise, the illusion of an other-worldly God and a mundane world leads us to pulverize ourselves into fragments of disconnected individuals. Jesus of Nazareth laid out a path to unitive God consciousness, the way to wholeness, the truth of reality. Clinging to our isolated, fearful selves, temperamental and easily wounded, leaves us cut off from one another and from earth life. Our consumer habits, honed by our addiction to technology, is blindly causing the death of the whole. The rise of mysticism and contemplative practices in our own time, along with the surge of computer technology, are all telling us something. The human mind is desperate to find the whole with which it is connected. Jung and Teilhard were hopeful realists. Something new and wonderful is in our midst—it is potentially alive but must be awakened and made actual.
= 5 =
The light of divine love is shining through all matter. This light seeks to be reflected in the human person. God is longing to be born from within. To give birth to God is to be fully alive. The God-life we are to give birth to begins with coming home to ourselves. We are to give birth to our fully integrated selves—to become Christic, New Persons co-creating a transpersonal cosmos. We can do so because the divine energy of love is already within, calling us to unite. To give birth to God is to give birth to the freedom of our identity, a birth that takes a lifetime and endures eternally. We are God in the flesh, and to the extent that we enact Godly lives, we will live resurrected lives. If I live in love, then I am always investing myself in the future of another. While I am alive, the other is me—my many selves that I am becoming; after I am dead, that other is you with whom I am entangled. My growing never ceases. Death is the sum of our loves, and we live on to the extent that we love. The process of my becoming continues on in the many loves I enact. All that I am is all that you are and together we will always be part and parcel of all that is to come.
= 6 =
It is important to grasp the present moment as the revelation of God, the reason to be and what we are here for. Mary, the mother of Jesus, said “Yes,” as she beheld the light within her. We, too, must see what we are and what we are created for, mothers of the divine mystery. We are the mystery of God! This is the End of the Precis by Helene O’Sullivan, MM, of the profound book, by Ilia Delio, OSF, “The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole.”