I too was disappointed by the recent election results, and appropriately grieved. But not for long, not after practicing a daily devotional, part of which serves to differentiate the spiritual self from the natural self, and determining which is to centrally informs me. So differentiated, each “self” is indispensable in adapting to the domain and paradigm a person orients to, including a worldview that informs and wisely weighs and measures current events. In my particular faith, the former is more pragmatically oriented to “this world,” the other, to a more transcendent self of a higher order, referenced by its mentor as “My kingdom,” that of an Omega to come that Jesus and Teilhard envisioned as pertaining to now, but is mostly future-looking. Theren lies my experience, and ultimate hope, trust, and long view of history (deep-time). Let me explain.
One can know and be known intimately by their source in each domain, natural and spiritual. In the natural world of space-time, a “this world” created self (horizontally caused) develops via relationship to parents, family, intimates, and the non-human environment. Likewise with the spiritual self, a distinctive domain experienced via awakening to the spiritual plane (vertically causal), and those likewise awakened to same. Knowing and being known, caring and being cared about are essential to each domain, though divine relationship (and love) are different. Mind you, not in degree from the natural self, but in kind, primarily devoid of self-interest, fear, anxiety, desire, despair, and personal gain. Such is what makes it distinctly holy (whole), as opposed to more pedestrian as played out in personal relationships, systems, and in groupings like politics (or religion), each having its own “party spirit” or sectarian agenda that often lacks inclusivity, originates in unenlightened minds, and is therefore divisive.
In his teaching, Jesus makes reference to the spiritual self, gateway for a person (spirit-soul) accessing and knowing divinity as Source and being known by same intimately in the largest (cosmic) dome of meaning. That is, differentiating “my kingdom” from “this world” in human consciousness is as different as day and night. By this definition (quote below), many are in poverty, devoid of participating in the highest order of reality. In either instance of self, natural or spiritual, having neither intimacy or knowledge of one’s source is impoverishing, and therefore to one’s disadvantage in many ways, primarily in emotional security and deep-time perspective (seeing) as Teilhard underscored. Such is a buckler or firewall against the intrusion of all lower level “viruses” or impediments in thought, perception, and integral unity.
“But my kingdom is within and all around you. When you know yourselves, then shall you be known, and you shall know that you are the sons of the living Father (Source). But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty” (Thomas, saying 24).
In examining his life and teachings carefully, I’m convinced that Jesus came not to found a new religion, but rather to END all religions, particularly their forms, rituals, and ceremonies. Instead introducing a radical presence of Spirit within and all-around things. According to Teilhard, such embeds in matter organically (spirit-matter) transcending time, space, and place. More importantly, it’s spiritual realization is not horizontally evolved. Rather, its vertically implanted in each spirit-soul, freely accessible to activation in personal experience. “Vertically implanted” implies an organic component (incarnation) that inhabits space-time, Spirit as the highest part of matter. Like the two sides of a coin, said Teilhard, both are linked together into a spirit-matter dyad awaiting realization. Teilhard did so referencing the apostle Paul’s epistles, who defined Jesus as “he in whom all things consist and hold together” (Colossians 1:17), and “he fills all things everywhere with himself” (Ephesians. 1:23). Which means the Christ is both person and an unidentified energy spread upon the face of Earth and the cosmos. In order to name this elemental substance and cohering nature of said mystery substance, all that remains for those who follow Jesus, Teilhard, Thomas Berry, is for them to round out the juridical and moral components of the original message, and with the aid of modern science, identify the third or elemental nature of Jesus, which is also the third nature of ourselves, and the very substance of all created form (panentheism).
So I ask, assuming that the religio-scientific dots are already in place for a grand synthesis, and at present they seem to be, then why reinvent the synthesis wheel that Teilhard affirmed already includes he who claims to be their spiritual axis?
As for this mystery substance (Spirit) being “freely accessible”: Only systems and in-groups require conditional belonging via membership, dues, group-think, clerics, priestcraft, certificates of attainment, denominations, organizational sects, etc. Jesus said “member-ship” is located first in the dis-membered (disconnected) individual, and one must first look for, come to, activate, develop, and practice it there — out-picturing it in thought, comportment, and service. And I might add, in cosmology synthesis models. Furthermore, consider the following: Jesus and Teilhard might further ask wandering post-moderns in search of same (a cosmotheology) to ponder the following question, “Since in your own separate scientific and religious cosmologies, God and the cosmos are understood as one and undivided in origin and essence, how can ONE be divided into different disciplines and cosmologies?”
“I am he who exists from the undivided” (or unitive consciousness) — Jesus, Gospel of Thomas.
I underscore “freely accessible” because in the purest since, ultimate truth sets a person TOTALLY free, binding no one to itself once liberated; not to any organization, creed, cleric, priestcraft, ceremony, dues, sanctions, memberships, by-laws, charters, etc. Not that such things are negative in themselves, but often act as mediating, denaturing, and hindering agents and influences substituting for the free, direct, and immediate experience of same in the spirit-soul. Further, unvarnished Spirit gives of itself freely, asking nothing in return, which is why Jesus used the metaphors of sunshine, rain, and the air we breathe to illustrate the abundance and availability of same universally. God, after all, is everywhere. (It’s also where he downloaded his teachings and integrated parables from.) These natural elements act upon things ubiquitously, without discrimination, conditions, or qualification as to their recipients. By history, such teachings only became sectarian, distorted, even corrupt by the divisive conditioned consciousness of mankind, and the religions of the empire (politics), each looking to compete and elevate themselves over the others. In reality, Jesus, Paul, and Teilhard proposed an ORGANIC definition to creation itself in order to circumvent same, one that applies universally, and complements the moral and juridical components of Jesus’s teachings.
Said Jesus, in more modern speak, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy. Ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place” (Mark 7:6-13).
Thus, asked Teilhard, “Who shall give us the meta-Christianity we’re all looking for?” Some 75 years later, his salient question has yet to be answered in these post-modern times. Mainly because it won’t come by and through an organized religion, an intellectualized academia, or a left-brained scientism hardly representative of what Jesus taught as reflected in nature, or experienced in mystical awareness.
Consider this historical (deep-time) view of divine principles congealing in human consciousness since the first axial age, 800 BCE to 200 BCE: Spiritual notions of divine truth, freedom, liberty, justice, and equality have been infiltrating human consciousness ever since, as far back as ancient Greece. Ripening in the Christ and Buddha, it was reflected in England’s Magna Carta, on through the American, French, and South American Revolutions, and later the Industrial Revolution. All of them out-pictured a changed state of consciousness culminating in more and more freedom and equality for people, eventually liberating them from all kinds of limitations, those of the natural self (egoic), the environment, disease, poverty, transportation, and technology. All of it consonant with the ancient wisdom traditions of the Bible, the advent of the Christ in human consciousness, and Teilhard’s evolving notions of the noosphere, centration, and convergence of all knowledge along unitive lines, and the spiritual differentiation of self, onward toward Omega.
So yes, like many, I was troubled by the last election results. But not for long. With the above as backdrop and worldview, I became quickly free of same. And that, despite the prevalence of democratic freedom currently giving way to autocratic trending in our land, and worldwide. I get my freedom elsewhere, even if here placed in chains. There is something to be said for revisiting the ancient wisdom literature that offers more of a complete explanation on the origin of life, the nature of God, constituency of Spirit, of the spirit-soul and spirit-matter infiltrating awareness over deep-time, including historical themes and trends to the contrary, than all other religious traditions combined. That is, if it’s carefully and properly studied and understood in their original context, devoid of their degrading historical overlays.
At present, it seems that DTN lacks a coherent informing cosmotheology, one that combines a perennial theology and valid scientific principles. Why discard the teacher, teachings, and Spirit from whence Teilhard drew his ideas and inspirations?
Again, why reinvent the wheel whose axil (axis), or Alpha, has been in place at all scales, micro to macro, since the beginning of the Big Bang/Creation? Of a truth, the answer to the synthesis mystery, Omega (the end), is to be found in the beginning (Alpha). The Master said so.
“I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22: 13-15).
A contingent of DTN members listened to a portion of it firsthand last April, in Holmdel, NJ.
Joe Masterleo
[See the author’s DTN blog on the CMBR discovery of Penzias and Wilson of same for further synthesis details, posted last April]
