THE PHENOMENON OF MAN: Background for The Christ Principle as Intelligent Progression.

If you have not done so, I recommend reading (and reflecting) on the late Teilhard de Chardin’s book, The Phenomenon of Man. I do so because it is at the heart of my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) meditations about The Christ Principle.

My thoughts go through a process of intelligent progression, reflecting what is happening in the physical and mental universes and the spiritual universe. These three are one reality. All of this culminates in one grand design of reality, The Christ Principle, similar to a mustard seed in real terms, contains all that was is and will be, much like the opposite of The Big Bang (as far as I understand it).

My first awareness (quite late in life) was that there is a strain of corruption and incorruption that flows through and intermixes with all that is real. This realization or hypothesis was followed by the additional discovery of another such strain, that of intelligent progression that also flows through all of reality. It does not contain matter, nor energy, as our limited physics has yet to integrate into the fullness of what is real. Intelligent progression dues This is the mathematics and physics of being, and not just any being, but pure energy. This all sounds like fantasy, and perhaps it is. My point is that all matter, all thought, and all spirituality are influenced by intelligent progression. The physical universe (evolution), the mental universe (knowledge is cumulative and progressive), and spirituality (The Christ Principle is different with each day that I am alive and face whatever comes my way, yet it is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow). This is movement in all three universes. The Phenomenon of Man helps put all of this in more focus (not clear yet) as cosmic growth from a point (Alpha) to another point (Point Omega, according to Teilhard de Chardin).

Another realization (again, relatively late in life) has been that I am the only one who can access these ideas (or any ideas) about the purpose of life. I do so not with scientific thinking, not solely human reasoning, but with thinking that encompasses all three universes of one reality, faith informed by reason. I am the only me living in my eighty-two years’ shoes. Each person can say the same thing. The accumulation of our choices makes me who I am, and thus I look on intelligent progression with the totality of who I am. My notion of God, as with each human, comes from the totality of what they place at their center. If I place being a wealthy and successful lawyer as my one center, that informs who I am. That is great; if I only live in two universes (physical and mental), I live, then I learn what the purpose of life is by my choices, then I die. When my perspective is three universes (physical base, mental progression, and my free choice to expand my humanity to what nature intended), then I have dual citizenship, one of this world and one that begins at Baptism and ends as being the fulfillment of my adoption by God as his son (daughter) and heir to the next level of intelligent progression, the kingdom of heaven, forever. Some can look at all this and say, “How can you see all this in your contemplation?” When I look at being in the presence of The Christ Principle and waiting for me to calm down enough to see what my humanity cannot see by itself, I say, “How is it you cannot?”

Here are a few quotes followed by the book in its entirety.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Above all trust in the slow work of God. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit, you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Love is the most powerful and still most unknown energy in the world.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“The age of nations has passed. Now, unless we wish to perish, we must shake off our old prejudices and build the Earth. The more scientifically I regard the world, the less can I see any possible biological future for it except in the active consciousness of its unity.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Reach beyond your grasp. Your goals should be grand enough to get the best of you.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Everything that rises must converge.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Your creatures can come into being only, like a shoot from the stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

https://www.azquotes.com/author/2738-Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin?p=4

https://archive.org/stream/ThePhenomenonOfMan/phenomenon-of-man-pierre-teilhard-de-chardin_djvu.txt.

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