The unifying force of the multiple cannot be composed of the multiple – Teilhard de Chardin

Developing a New Universe Story and all-inclusive cosmogenesis paradigm involves reconciling all fields of knowledge, particularly those of science and spirituality. The completion of same would fulfill Teilhard’s vision of a spirit-science synthesis, yet to be fully developed by any synthesis group. A requisite for same is the kind of vision that sees the parts in organic relationship to the whole from the whole’s point of view, a point outside the field of space-time. That is, in spiritually awakened consciousness. The whole itself derives from a universal common denominator (energy and information field) that manifests and holds all things to itself and to themselves in the material order, the visible aspect of which is seen from a point within the field of space-time by more ordinary empirical/rational modes of awareness. Doing so is indeed a magical experience, but its attainment is far from magic. It does involve having a foot in both worlds, rational and transrational, seeing how the whole reconciles the parts in awareness, allowing the observer to behold how the visible world (the material/classic physics) and invisible world (the mental-spiritual/quantum physics) work together to create and produce a variety of images, sounds, representations, and a host of heart-felt and sense-bound human experiences known as qualia. 

Qualia are the subjective and qualitative aspects of our experiences, the “what’s it like” to experience sensations like the taste of chocolate, the smell of perfume, the ripe colors of a sunset, or the feeling of being loved. Qualia are the subjective, felt-sense aspects of our mental and spiritual states, beyond the quantified empirical ones.

As is, scientism and all empirical studies are incomplete because they haven’t acknowledged the inner world (metaphysical) as valid in bridging the gap between qualia and science, subject and object, meaning and data, observer and observed, and things that can only be known subjectively from personal experience. The invisible inner and visible outer worlds are One and undivided, comprising what science now calls the “pan-psychic energy and information field” that is vertically caused and gives rise to the multiple and diverse forms in the material world, the world perceived and limited by sense-bound knowing. To his masterful credit Teilhard was conscious of the state of mystical oneness undergirding all things, his quote at the beginning of this column attesting to unitive consciousness at its integral best. Though eloquent, Teilhard didn’t mince words. Today, he would recognize this “universal generative energy and info field” as Spirit, what he termed “the highest part of matter,” an irreducible, omnipresent cosmic substance in which all things seamlessly embed, live, move, and have their being. This field (Spirit) is what gives life to each cell, and is lost or absent when a cell dies, even though all its parts remain. As for detailing Teilhard’s vision, we must trace his footsteps toward fulfilling his vision of the all-inclusive whole, identifying the nature and substance of this pan-psychic energy field (Spirit) in keeping with the findings of modern science, and as far as possible, with spiritual wisdom traditions.

But first, an illustration on how doctrines and words in wisdom traditions develop and devolve. Borrowing from Teilhard’s wisdom tradition, the Master who he credits with inspiring his synthesis vision was identified as The Light of the World. And perhaps this teacher who claimed to come from God was simply that, quite literally. It was recorded that this was demonstrated in his healing work which included performing miracles. In particular, this light being in human form became manifest upon appearing before three of his disciples, upon the latter glimpsing their teacher’s glorified body revealed (“flashed”) to them on Mt. Tabor. Here was a local figure who became a momentary transparency to the non-local transcendent, not just in consciousness, but physically transfigured by a cosmic light more dazzling in intensity than the sun, whose ebullience all but blinded his disciples.

The word cosmic means “universal, general, or comprehensive,” by which the word catholic (small ‘c’) was enlisted by his early followers to connote the cosmic nature of same. The word catholic, small case c comes from the combination of two Greek words, kata (concerning) and holos (whole), together meaning “regarding the whole” in its totality. The word catholic was appropriated to describe the mystical union of all those awakened in and by the universal One, the whole that Jesus referred to as his “Father” who he claimed to be a representation of in space-time, as manifested in his teaching and preaching, and demonstrated in his healing and miracles. “One” because there is only one God, and only one organic energy and information field in the universe expressing in a number of created forms, and from which approximately ten million species have emerged.

In pure, non-material form it appears this was the enfleshed “heart of matter” whose Spirit-energy inspired Teilhard’s vision and scientific pursuits in efforts to understand their oneness in a unified field. In essence, trying to “make sense,” according to the record, from an energy (light) that seemed to reside outside and yet within sense-bound knowing at the same time. Historical accretions aside, Jesus was purported to be the local embodiment of this universal pan-psychic energy and information field called Cristos on which the entire universe converges and centrates at all scales, innermost and outermost — physically, mentally, spiritually, and via a self-proclaimed authority who claimed to be the “head of all principality and power” in the universe. And which in humans, according to Teilhard, evolves via Cosmogenesis in a Christogenic arc toward Omega. Withal, derived from One cosmic power with many apps that Cristos demonstrated mastery over in all three of those spheres.

All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18).

Unfortunately, over time a powerful body of local believers under the edicts of a Roman emperor tried to hijack and institutionalize this cosmic energy, ascribing it tribal and sectarian properties, making it their exclusive domain and themselves an exclusive authority over its local ecclesial bottling, marketing, distribution, and enforcement. Thus began a provincial distinction between Catholic with a capital C and catholic with a small c, a distinction unheard of among Jesus’ early followers, the church’s early description of itself so designated in both the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed with a small case c. In so doing this presumptive takeover undermined the universal cornerstone upon which its founder’s teachings were to grow and develop along religious AND scientific lines, officially done in by the Vatican appointed Council of Trent (1543) whose edicts put an end to their synthesis in the western world under penalty of death, torture, or imprisonment by the Inquisition.  By such ecclesial censoring Copernicus was condemned, Galileo imprisoned, Joan of Arc incinerated, and later Teilhard’s works were declared heretical, remaining unpublished until after his death in 1955. All of which is ironic, as in the post-modern world the tables have now turned, with the censoring authority presently hindering synthesis being science and Scientism, the Empirical Vatican controlling the agenda and worldview in our post-modern times.

However, there were some who refused to embrace the religion of the empire, and its diluted renderings of the original message. The truly catholic, small c view of Scripture was kept by a few Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria who preserved its original meaning and curated it far from the ecclesial mainstream of the last five hundred years. Such wisdom mysteries were later understood by Francis of Assisi, and continued with John Duns Scotus, who put it in philosophical form. This cloistered group kept the more inclusive understanding of Jesus of Galilee who became what in our times has been referred to as the Cosmic or Universal Christ, and by the author as the Ambient Christ, the union of spirit and matter, fully human and fully divine, a visible blueprint immersed in an invisible cosmic substrate of light energy that undergirds all things everywhere. In addition, they saw in, through, and beyond him as if peering through a lens. That Jesus-lens, depicted in the image of a fish, almond, or womb-shaped mandorla, offered a glimpse and experience of the universal matrix (Latin, mater = mother) from which the entire created order generates, exists, and coheres in ongoing fashion from an eternal beginning.

In this original tradition, The Cosmic Christ is not limited to a single, historically localized personage or deity, nor is Christ Jesus’ last name. A study of Scripture, tradition, and the experience of mystics, of which Teilhard is one, reveal a much broader, transhistorical, trans-religious meaning to the Christ “who sustains all things” and “in whom all things consist and hold together,” an organic definition of the universal pan-psychic energy and information field confirmed by modern science in quantum studies, rounding out the juridical aspects of the gospel message (sin and judgement). Such names the shape and generative substance of the universe from the outset in the Big Bang event before the name of the individual who typified that shape over 13 billion years later. Looking into that same lens by viewing the interior space between the visible and invisible worlds lies a liminal reality not even the $10 billion Webb telescope will ever glimpse, the unmistakable outline of what Teilhard could only dimly perceive seventy years ago coming into clearer focus. According to the author, such promises to be the spirit-science nexus and cornerstone of the New Universe Story, the Big Story the world has been waiting for, and the synthesis solution to the classical physics/quantum physics enigma.

Continuing from our historical digression, the interior life which science traditionally discounts and minimizes as “subjective” is in fact the spiritual summit, the space between the two separate appearing inner realities of spirit and soul (or psyche), spirit and matter, space-time and the eternal. Teilhard coupled those terms as spirit-soul, and rightly so, as they’re the sacred locus or trysting place of the rational, transrational, and intuitive, the interior hinterland of the visible and invisible worlds.

The word “soul” is the ancient religious term for “psyche” from which are derived the words psychology and psychiatry, the subject of which deals with the developmental building blocks and irregularities of individual personhood whose origin in the eternal precedes human birth and survives physical death. I say “separate appearing” because as created by Source, spirit and soul, wave and particle, quantum and classic physics entities have always existed as a unit, the latter discerns space-time via the senses and intellect, the former discerns the higher vibrational fields from inside the transrational and intuitive wheelhouse of Spirit. Actually, they are one reality seamlessly annexed in an intimate union co-present to each other like hand and glove, the two sides of a coin, or as presented in sacred texts, a bride asking her lover to draw her to himself, with the understanding that not only she, but her companions will also be drawn to pursue him .  .  .

Draw me after you, let us make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers (Song of Songs 1:4).

This sacred union is in keeping with the religious terms panentheism or hypostatic union where nature is seen as in God, and God in nature in a seamlessly co-present manner at all scales oriented to a Center of Centers, harmonizing their various vibratory frequencies (energy) and amplitudes (strengths). I say “trysting place” because it’s the only place in consciousness where all apparent opposites meet, merge, and reconcile in the excluded middle — left and right brain, science and religion, inner worlds/outer worlds, physics and metaphysics, spirit and matter, whole and part, wave and particle, the hard and soft sciences, coming together as one. And the author proposes, being subjective (qualia) it’s the only space/place in space-time they can be experienced and reconciled, giving pride of place to their origins in the highest vibrational stratum or field as Source. In this Oneness there is no split between subject and object, observer and observed, Creator and created, spirit and soul, or spirit and matter. Therefore, the Source of the hard sciences, including classical physics and mathematics, must lie outside the hard sciences themselves, nor can they be fully understood by hard science’s methods alone, the latter being tributary (effects) to the former as causal. One cannot know more with less, the higher by the lower, or the greater by the lesser. The greater must precede and include the lesser, and the higher the lower by an order of magnitude, as parents precede their offspring and subsequent generations.

Therefore the so called “hard problem of consciousness” is not a problem at all for unitive consciousness because consciousness is inherently subjective. Each person’s experiences are private and cannot be directly accessed or measured by others or standardized methods for studying them. Being already all-inclusive in the pan-psychic field as a whole, unitive consciousness sees them as the field sees them, as One and undivided, holding the tension of their apparent opposites without conflict or contradiction. Consciousness is only a “hard problem” for the hard sciences and scientists who cannot see in wholes, and who subsequently require the outer world to be forced into separate categories where they don’t belong, do not exist, nor ever have existed, save in the half-truth Kingdom of Scientism.

Therefore, quantum and classical physics are one in nature and substance and can only be visualized as united in this way, joining inner and outer worlds as they always have existed, seen only in unitive spiritual consciousness, not in the intellect, given to perceiving the field as segmented, not whole, and thinking of them as such via separation consciousness. This is why Teilhard emphasized seeing as requisite to fulfilling his “Ultra-synthesis” vision seeing no separation between science and religion, or physics and metaphysics.

In his synthesis paradigm the author proposes that consciousness, Spirit, God, the “unified energy and information field,” and electromagnetism (light energy) are one and the same phenomenon, manifestations of the same spectrum that merges with the invisible, immeasurable order of Spirit. Such is customarily known by different names owing to the binary thinking mind that separates, fractions, and silos an otherwise unified field, a distortion in perception and thought perpetuated by traditional academic and scientific educational curricula. Such is the equivalent of looking into a mirror whose reflections fragment and splinter a single image into many disconnected parts like jig-saw puzzle pieces, rendering the integral whole a jumble of unrecognizable shards.

Cosmology deals with the way humans locate themselves in relation to the cosmos, seen as the totality of everything. The scope of religious cosmology is more inclusive than a strictly scientific cosmology (physical cosmology) in that religious cosmology is not limited to empirical observation, data points, testing of hypotheses, and proposals of theories. Today we are living in a “golden age” of cosmology and cosmological physics, given advances in astrophysics, particle physics, string theory, and the enhancement of various means and methods of conducting research into the macro- and micro- realms of the universe.  Currently there is a strong and growing interest in the intersection of theology and cosmology, an investigative atmosphere conducive to developing a grand synthesis joining inner and outer worlds, correlating objective truth (science) with subjective inner experience (psychology and religion).

The evidence points to a singularity that is common to both, a generative energy and information field out of which all existence, knowledge, and experience flow and return, as in a circuit. And this reality exists irrespective of the names that different cultures, religions, and science may ascribe to its interbeing envelope of cosmic energy. Known by a multitude of names, Yahweh, Christ, Allah, the unified field, the One, the Great Spirit, the Oversoul, the singularity, etc., it is of the same nature and substance universally. Like the sea, it touches every continent and everywhere it is wet and its taste salty.

Today’s fragmented world has no overarching story that unites and instills hope or offers a glimpse of what the future holds. The postmodern age of religious, scientific, and cultural pluralism has mainly given rise to multiple, disconnected mini narratives lacking a unified cosmology that holds them all together. Modernity past valued objective logical thinking with an emphasis on absolute truth and a consensus on morality, ethics, and law. By contrast the post-modern milieu inclines toward seeing all knowledge as relative, derived from a self that interprets reality according to its own subjective whimsy, without a shared ethos or big story, instead retreating into small stories born of private individualism. Such leaves little room for a coherent universal worldview that allows for the healthy integration of difference, diversity, and absolute truth. Only within a bigger field and wider frame will science, spirituality, and education approach teaching the most comprehensive story in the universe, and our human roles in it.

How can we find meaningful ways to retell a New Story in a society and world filled with competing stories? First, the answer must begin with the natural world, as the divine communicates to us primarily through it, our first primer and wisdom oracle. Not to experience the natural world as revealing perennial secrets is to miss the first principle in telling the New Story. Second, in order to perceive the natural world as the transparency that it is, one must begin with the wonder and curiosity of a child, for children are naturally given to see things integrally, unencumbered by traditional educational methods. Third, a quest for the answer must also begin with the author’s proposed unifying premise that spirit and matter (spirit-matter) are paired in a seamless electro-magnetized synthesis, the ultimate substantial and evolving mystery whose final stage is resurrection, energy returning to the Source from whence it came.

Along with hyphenating the term spirit-soul, Teilhard linked spirit and matter as spirit-matter. The author proposes that the spirit-soul, and the spirit aspect of matter are vertically caused properties of the field as Source, not horizontally evolved from a primordial soup. That is, they exist in the pan-psychic energy field of space-time but aren’t actually of it, say, the way a sunbeam can shine through a window onto the floor of a room. The beam of light is in the room, however temporary, but is not of its constituent parts or furnishings. Further, the field or Spirit or Consciousness (all are the same) creates and manifests as everything material and mental (physical and metaphysical) in the field of time vibrating at different frequencies, giving rise to all things on the visible physical, and invisible mental and spiritual planes accordingly. The Field (or The Force) is a universal electro-magnetic holarchy (energy and info field) that spirals forth manifesting as multiple bio-electrographic entities that pop in and out of space-time from the Infinite Invisible at all scales, micro to macro. Consciousness (or Spirit) can inhabit and penetrate any and all scales, fluidly in but not of them as a witness or beholder. This is how the spirit-soul can behold the body it separates from upon physical “death” during near death (NDE) experiences, because it exists in a parallel dimension in liminal space, perched on the threshold (inside-edge) of material reality in space-time. It looks out into space-time as a child looks out through a keyhole, watching passersby. It also may account for the experience of people as they age who increasingly “can’t account for where the time has gone.” Perhaps it’s because the spirit-soul embodied in the material space-time field is eternal, so time doesn’t register there. Rather, time and its ravages register only in the brain, intellect, and on the calendar and clock as reminders of the time-bound material world it only temporarily inhabits.

In the spiritual disciplines the state of consciousness that resides between the physical and metaphysical planes is known as liminal space, the space that occupies a place on a boundary between two apparent opposites, in this case the celestial and terrestrial, whereby an excluded middle (unitive consciousness) exists on their threshold that can see and experience both simultaneously — the telestial, a hybrid of the two. Seeing thusly is comparable to how both eyes work together in the brain to produce stereoscopic vision, the ability to perceive depth and three-dimensional structure by combining slightly different images received from each eye. Only the sixth sense, wisdom, allows one to see in four dimensions. As a hybrid, the telestial is to the celestial and terrestrial what the shore or wetlands are to land and water, an ecological stratum that is the product of both, complete with flora and fauna unique to that stratum. In the Christian tradition Jesus referred to this kind of seeing as “single eye” vision, enabling one to see, by convergence, what he termed the “kingdom of heaven” on earth which he stated humanity is constitutionally blind to. Such vision restored is referred to in other spiritual traditions as the “third eye,” “Ajna,” or the “Eye of Horus

[For the depiction of liminal space as a “trysting place” in consciousness, see the above image at the top of the column taken lakeside at the author’s summer cottage. The image is of a space/place set for two on a pinnacle (point) at water’s edge. An yellow monarch butterfly ornament in their midst emerges from a potted plant, depicting opposite pairs rising to a higher polarity between them at the summit as one; two “halves” paired, left and right brain, left and right butterfly wing or as in the case here, two prospective souls enjoying each other’s presence, each attuned to the other “antennae” at the ready to receive and input one another. The images pictured were arranged without forethought several years ago prior to the photo, the inner meaning of same as it relates to this column coming sometime thereafter in a moment of reflection (qualia) by the author.]

Developing the ability to see in wholes is not only key to telling the New Universe Story combining physics and metaphysics (inner and outer worlds). Said synthesis is also imperative in whole-making endeavors in self-care and the healing arts, complementing medical and mental healing in evaluating and treating the whole person comprehensively.

Unitive consciousness is requisite to seeing in wholes because it is the only level of consciousness that can see the universal constant (field of light) that all things embed that renders them irreducibly One and undivided — pure consciousness (Spirit) devoid of thought and emotion, the gateway to experiencing the mystery of the unified field. And that according to the combined measures of science and religion. Said “measures” are really one measure joined by a single universal element from which, according to science, evolve “fundamental forces and elementary particles emerging from a cosmic energy and information field.” Such is the self-same energy and info field that global mythologies and religion have named “God” or “Spirit” for millennia. By said measure, and no other, have all things been deemed sacred and equal by those traditions.

The significance of same is that it is now possible to merge both science and religion into one cosmology, instead of two divided by separation consciousness (binary, either/or thinking) that commonly silos apparent contraries, in lieu of looking for their common denominator. (For the physicists among you, says here a possible explanation for wave function “collapse” is that said collapse itself is a mirage, a perceptual illusion created by the binary tendencies of the observing mind that shifts the entire perceptual field to the sense-perception-only mode for purposes of adaptation and survival. That is, ordinary perception sees only the particle(s) or object(s) pragmatically in terms of their adaptational utility not their wave (spiritual) component in the field from which they emerge, and from which they are seamlessly inseparable, save in the mind’s binary inclined eye that of practical necessity selectively attends to one and inattends to the other). And why it is also time, finally, to create a New Universe Story and cosmogenesis model based on the facts of science and tested insights of wisdom traditions. The “new physics” and New Universe Story must lend themselves to joining inner and outer worlds following the arc of evolving human integral perception and thought that is reaching critical mass. Such was Teilhard’s vision, and the mandate of Thomas Berry in the transition from the Cenozoic to the unfolding Ecozoic era. For those on the cutting edge prepared to see and grasp this synthesis, the time for doing so is now.

Wisdom is often personified as a woman, particularly in the Book of Proverbs, part of the wisdom literature of the oracles of God. Being associated with the feminine, perhaps it is because women are given to being more bilateral than men, historically more successful integrating left and right brain in perception and thought, mind and heart. Notwithstanding, unitive consciousness by its very nature and definition transcends gender, and all apparent distinctives because its Source is not of this world, freely available to all without prejudice.

This association with femininity isn’t just a poetic device, but is rooted in the Hebrew word for wisdom, “hokmah,” which grammatically is feminine. There wisdom is portrayed as situating herself in high places, like the “heights of a city” where she cries out to all.

[The mystery Spirit or God or the unified energy field as Source works indelibly from the inside-out of things primarily via changes in their DNA and/or shift in levels of consciousness, not so much from the outside-in. Evidence for same is demonstrated scientifically in a field of a different kind with scientists taking ample measurements that provide empirical proof of same. Click on to the blue Resource Tab top of the page for a fascinating video short on the subject.]

In keeping with our theme of unitive consciousness, the heights are symbolic for the power to see clearly from a higher level of evolved (non-dual) consciousness, a much sought after gift of wisdom and counsel the heart of which sees things as God sees them (a.k.a. the pan-psychic energy and information field), one and undivided. Seeing clearly is religion, prophecy, poetry, and music all in one. All else is so much theological, philosophical, and psychological prose, or worse yet scientism, different definitional planes that are once or twice removed mental derivatives of same in unenlightened human awareness. And that includes Einstein’s classical physics field equations that were unreconcilable with the quantum world (and beyond) as causal, for want of an awakened unitive consciousness. Such would have enabled him to best reconcile classical and quantum physics, inner and outer worlds world that join by a seamless energy and information field that awakened consciousness is capable of penetrating at every scale. The reconciled third between science and spirituality provides the clarity of vision that sees all the parts as connecting to the whole at all scales, innermost and outermost. This oneness manifests in a variety of directions taking manifold forms in the universe, from a tiny atom to a galaxy. And it images them the way x-ray and sound waves in medical tomography capture “slices” of the object or organ being scanned from different angles or planes.

As the next best thing to spiritual awareness, poetry has it over science, prose, philosophy, theology, and every other form of communication or meaning system that may use the right words (lyrics) in the right order but fall short of using the best words in the best order, with “melodious” accompaniment.

For a clearer vision of the whole field, classical and quantum, Spirit and matter, or Spirit and soul, consider practicing the art of abiding in their trysting place, the excluded middle, the enchanted kingdom in whose energy field all things are One and undivided.

There’s a place in the soul that is liminal. / Entering-in is the way to a pinnacle. / The experience is rare, because wisdom is there, / and her truths are always veridical.

(author’s rhyme)

About the Author

Joseph C. Masterleo, LCSW-DCSW, is a clinical social worker in private practice in Syracuse NY, and Rockledge FL. His half-century of service in the mental health care field includes faith-based counseling, with an emphasis on psycho-spiritual integration. His subspecialty involves developing a novel paradigm for the synthesis of science, religion, and psychology, identifying the energy and geometric patterns that connect the quantum world with space-time. His model explains how spirit and matter can co-exist as two facets of one reality in a unified field, dissolving the walls of partition between previously siloed disciplines. Inspired by the writings of Thomas Merton (ecumenism), Teilhard de Chardin (synthesis), Thomas Berry (ecotheology), Nikola Telsa (electromagnetism), and others, his objective is to tell a new, future-looking story for the Ecozic Age, one that forms a connecting bridge between the biblical story of creation, modern science, and ancient cosmologies. His columns on these and related subjects have appeared on websites such as The Center for Christogenesis, Progressive Christianity, and in newsprint via The Goodnews Paper, the Syracuse Post Standard, and the Syracuse Sports Magazine, where he comments on sports as reflecting the best and worst of American character and culture. Further information about Joe and his Spirit-Science model can be found in his book, The Ambient Christ, the Untold Story of God in Science, Scripture, and Spirituality, listed on Amazon Books, Barnes & Noble, and on his website www.joeknowsgod.com