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object:1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter



5. The Activation of Human Energy

I. HUMAN ENERGY

As Evolution becomes both self-conscious and (at least along
its central axis) self-operative in man, so it automatically
can foresee its future.

That is all that is required to bring to light the formidable
problem of the impetus of Evolution, in addition to and at a
higher level than questions of structure and process that
sufficed until now to cover the economy of nature. It is a
biological problem of a new type; it silently raises itself in
our hearts, and is well on the way to dominating in the near
future the other more general problem (itself becoming more
urgent on all sides), that of at last constructing an energetics
of man. (A.E. (Oeuvres VII), p. 348.)

By the energy of man I here mean the always increasing
portion of cosmic energy at present undergoing the recog-
nizable influence of the centres of human activity.

In the elementary state (that is to say considered within
and around an isolated human element) this 'hominized'
energy appears in three forms, at first sight diverse, which it is
interesting to distinguish, at least for convenience' sake: in-
corporated energy, controlled energy, spiritualized energy.

a. Incorporated energy is that which the slow biological
evolution of the earth has gradually accumulated and har-
monized in our organism of flesh and nerves: the astonish-
ing 'natural machine' of the human body.

b. Controlled energy is energy around him which man in-
geniously succeeds in dominating with physical power
originating from his limbs by means of 'artificial machines'.

57



Let Me Explain

c. Spiritualized energy, lastly, is localized in the immanent
zones of our free activity, and forms the stuff of our intel-
lectual processes, affections and volitions. This energy is
probably incapable of measurement, but is very real all the
same, since it gains a reflective and passionate mastery of
things and their relationships.

These three types of energy, as I said, seem at first sight
to form heterogeneous categories. In reality, it appears
difficult on reflection to find a sharp boundary between
them. . . .

By all appearances, in fact, every human individual seems
to represent a cosmic nucleus of a special nature, radiating
around it waves of organization and excitation within
matter. Just such a nucleus, with its halo of animation around
it, is the unit of human energy.

Let us now consider human energy as a whole.

This energy is created at every moment by the sum of all
the elementary energies accumulated on the earth's surface. 1
(H.E., pp. 115-16.)

Being in the forefront of the cosmic wave of advance, the
energy of man assumes an importance disproportionate to its
apparently small size. Compared with the magnitude of the
stars, the Noosphere is an almost insignificant film. In reality
this thin surface is nothing less than the most progressive form
under which it has been given to us to apprehend and con-
template the energy of the Universe. This tenuous envelope
holds the secret essence of the vastnesses that it fringes : the
highest note reached by the vibration of worlds.

The meaning of this is twofold:

First, that the direction of advance so far followed by the

1 The energy of the Noosphere.

58



Phenomenology

cosmos is indicated to us by the human spearhead. Conse-
quently, by analysing the conditions of our activity, we can
hope to discover the fundamental conditions which govern
the general functioning of the universe.

Second, that in magnitude we hold, concentrated in the
human mass, the most living, quintessential treasure and hope
of the world. (H.E., p. 121.)

II. THE COSMIC PROBLEM OF ACTION AND THE
PERSONAL OPTION

One of the most important aspects of hominization, from the
point of view of the history of life, is the accession of biolo-
gical realities (or values) to the domain of moral realities (or
values). From man onwards and in man, evolution has taken
reflective consciousness of itself. Henceforth it can to some
degree recognize its position in the world, choose its direc-
tion, and withhold its efforts. These new conditions open on
earth the immense question of duty and its modalities. Why
act - and how to act? ...

In the development of life up to man, the individual seems
always to have been definitely subordinated to the species.
Its principal value was that of an agent of transmission, a
point on the road. Life's task, it seems, was to achieve, by
means of increasingly organized elements, the establishment
on earth of a higher form of consciousness, a state of person-
ality. With man and in man, the perfected and centred ele-
ment, that is to say the person, is finally constituted. Will
not values find their centre of gravity shifted by this basic
event? Up to that point the unit existed for the mass. Hence-
forth will not the mass exist for the unit? Let the human

individual, newly arrived on the great waters of life, enjoy

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Let Me Explain

in his first moment of exaltation the intoxication of raising
himself to the highest point of the Universe. The temptation
is quite natural. But let him beware! Despite, or rather be-
cause of the autonomy he has attained, he is always domin-
ated by another, higher unity from which he cannot free
himself on pain of death. Precious though it is, the human
monad remains vitally subjected to the law that, before his
coming, obliged units to preserve and promote the whole in
preference to themselves. (H.E., pp. 29-31.)

The energy of man, as we have just recognized, comes to
our notice as the last factor of a vast process in which the
total mass of the Universe is engaged. . . . Around us and in
us the energy of man, itself sustained by the energy of the
Universe of which it is the crown, is still pursuing its
mysterious progress towards higher states of thought and
freedom. Willy-nilly, we are totally caught up in this
transformation. I repeat my question, therefore: 'What shall
we do? Resist the current?' This would be foolish and, more-
over, impossible. Let ourselves be passively carried along by
the wave? This would be cowardice. And anyhow, how can
we remain neutral, since our essence is to act? Only one way
remains open to us: to trust in the infallibility and finally
beatifying value of the action in which we are involved. In
us the world's evolution towards spirit has become conscious.
Our perfection, our interest, our salvation as elements
can depend therefore on nothing less than pushing this evolu-
tion forward with all our strength. We may not yet under-
stand exactly where it is taking us, but it is absurd for us
to doubt that it is leading us towards some end of supreme
value.

Hence it is that, for the first time since the awakening of life
on earth, the fundamental problem of action has finally

60



Phenomenology

emerged into our human consciousness in the twentieth cen-
tury. Up to now man has acted principally out of instinct,
from day to day, without much knowledge of why or for
whom he was working. Contemporaneously with the flow-
ing into him of fresh powers, a new limidess and immeasur-
able field of activity is opened for his ambitions and, in some
sense, for his worship. For anyone who has understood (and
everyone will inevitably do so soon) the position and sig-
nificance of the smallest portion of thought in nature, the
fundamental matter has become one of rationally assuring
the progress of the world of which we form part. No longer
only, as of old, for our little individuality, our little family,
our little country - no longer indeed only for the whole
earth - but for the salvation and success of the Universe it-
self, how should we modern men best organize the mainten-
ance, distribution and progress of the energy of man around
us?
Therein lies the whole question. (H.E., pp. 121-5.)



III. THE ACTIVATION OF HUMAN ENERGY:
OMEGA POINT

It is not enough, in fact, that man has at his disposal the re-
quisite power to become synthesized beyond himself. He
must also have the will to do so. And for that he must have the
taste for going further; that is to say, under the influence of a
sort of internal 'gravitation, he must be drawn upwards, from
within. Humanity, devoid of this taste, humanity not drawn
towards 'more being', would infallibly and rapidly become
extinct; even astronomical piles of calories placed in his
hands would not save him.

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Let Me Explain

Now what is necessary, if we are to agree not only joy-
fully but passionately to push on the increasingly heavy and
complicated work that cosmic synthesis requires of us? What
conditions must the Universe absolutely fulfil in order that
we may be drawn towards ever greater consciousness?

a. Irreversibility

This (according to all those who have tried to discover the
psychological mechanism of action) is the condition; that
we shall not imagine the movement that beckons us forward
to be condemned in advance to stop or draw back. We must
know that it is, by nature, irreversible. Promise man as many
million years as you will. Let him glimpse at the end of the
period as high (that is to say as superhuman) a summit as you
will. If it is known beforehand that, once that summit is
reached, we shall have to descend without any signs of our
ascent surviving in the Universe; then, I say plainly, we shall

not have the heart to advance, and we shall not advance

Man will never consent to labour like a Sisyphus. (V.P., pp.
230-1.)

With the germ of consciousness hatched upon its surface,
the Earth, our perishable earth threatened by the final, abso-
lute zero, has brought into the Universe a demand, hence-
forth irrepressible, not only that all things shall not die, but
that what is best in the world, that which has become most
complex, most highly centred, shall be saved. It is through
human consciousness, genetically linked to a heavenly body
whose days are ultimately numbered, that Evolution pro-
claims its challenge: either it must be irreversible, or it need
not go on at all! Man the individual consoles himself for his
passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which

62



Phenomenology

he leaves behind. But what will presently be left of man-
kind?

Thus every attempt to situate Man and the Earth in the
framework of the Universe comes inevitably upon the
serious problem of death, not of the individual but on the
planetary scale - a death which, if we seriously anticipate it,
must instantly, here and now, paralyse all the vital forces of
the Earth. (F.M., p. 121.)

In order to balance our conceptions of the Universe it is
not enough, therefore, to arrest the 'curve of moleculiza-
tion' at the formation even of a planetary consciousness. It
is, moreover, impossible to suppose that, like the lines of
space it will curve backwards by way of refraction. By virtue
of the new conditions imposed on it by the appearance and
demands of reflective thought, capable of criticizing its future
and refusing to progress, men must agree that its trajectory
will definitely leap forward in the direction of a supreme
place of personalizing centration and consolidation. (V.P., p.
231.)

b. Unanimity and Personality

The first essential is that the human units involved in the
process shall draw closer together, not merely under the
pressure of external forces, or solely by the performance of
material acts, but directly, centre to centre, through internal
attraction. Not through coercion, or enslavement to a com-
mon task, but through unanimity in a common spirit. The
construction of molecules ensues through atomic affinity.
Similarly, on a higher level, it is through sympathy, and this
alone, that the human elements in a personalized universe
may hope to rise to the level of a higher synthesis.

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Let Me Explain

It is a matter of common experience that within restricted
groups (the pair, the team) unity, far from diminishing the
individual, enhances, enriches and liberates him in terms of
himself. True union, the union of heart and spirit, does not
enslave, nor does it neutralize the individuals which it brings
together. It super-personalizes them. Let us try to picture the
phenomenon on a terrestrial scale. Imagine men awakening
at last, under the influence of the ever-tightening planetary
embrace, to a sense of universal solidarity based on their pro-
found community, evolutionary in its nature and purpose.
The nightmares of brutalization and mechanization which are
conjured up to terrify us and prevent our advance are at once
dispelled. It is not harshness or hatred, but a new kind of love,
not yet experienced by man, which we must learn to look
for as it is borne to us on the rising tide of planetization.

Reflecting, even briefly, on the state of affairs which might
evoke this new universal love in the human heart, a love so
often vainly dreamed of, but which now leaves the fields of
Utopia to reveal itself as both possible and necessary, we are
brought to the following conclusion: that for men upon
earth, all the earth, to learn to love one another, it is not
enough that they should know themselves to be members
of one and the same thing; in 'planetizing' themselves they
must acquire the consciousness, without losing themselves,
of becoming one and the same person. For there is no total
love that does not proceed from, and exist within, that which
is personal. (F.M., pp. 119-20.)

An (irreversible) centre of personal stuff totalizing in itself
the essence of our personalities; this comes to be the defini-
tion, as we gradually see it more clearly, of the universal
centre of attraction, recognized as necessary if the impetus of
the Noosphere is to be sustained. (H.E., p* 142.)

64



Phenomenology

Let us suppose that from this universal centre, the Omega
Point, there constantly emanate radiations hitherto only per-
ceptible to those persons whom we call 'mystics'. Let us
further imagine that, as the sensibility or response to mystic-
ism of the human race increases with planetization, the
awareness of Omega becomes so widespread as to warm the
earth psychically while physically it is growing cold, h it
not conceivable that mankind, at the end of its totalization,
its folding-in upon itself, may reach a critical point of ma-
turity where, leaving Earth and stars to lapse slowly back
into the dwindling mass of primordial energy, it will detach
itself from this planet and join the one true, irreversible es-
sence of things, the Omega Point? A phenomenon perhaps
outwardly akin to death; but in reality a simple metamorpho-
sis and arrival at the supreme synthesis. An escape from the
planet, not in space or outwardly, but spiritually and in-
wardly, such as the hyper-concentration of cosmic matter
upon itself allows.

This hypothesis of a final maturing and ecstasy of mankind,
the logical conclusion of the theory of complexity, may seem
even more far-fetched than the idea (of which it is die ex-
tension) of the planetization of Life. Yet it holds its ground
and grows stronger upon reflection. It is in harmony with
the growing importance which leading thinkers of all types
are beginning to attach to the phenomenon of mysticism. In
any event, of all the theories which we may evolve concern-
ing the end of the Earth, it is the only one which affords a
coherent prospect wherein, in the remote future, the deepest
and most powerful currents of human consciousness may
converge and culminate: intelligence and action, science and
religion. (F.M., pp. 122-3.)



65



Let Me Explain



IV. LOVE AS ENERGY



In us and around us, we have been able to conclude, the
world's units are continually and increasingly personalizing,
by approaching a goal of unification, itself personal; in such
a way that the world's essential energy radiates from this
goal and finally flows back towards it; having confusedly
set the cosmic mass in motion, it emerges from it to form the
Noosphere.

What name should we give to an influence of this sort?

Only one is possible: love.

Love is by definition the word we use for attractions of a
personal nature. Since once the Universe has become a think-
ing one everything in the last resort moves in and towards
personality, it is necessarily love, a kind of love, which forms
and will increasingly form, in its pure state, the material of
human energy. (H.E., pp. 145-6.)

Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the
most mysterious of the cosmic forces. ...

From the standpoint of spiritual evolution, which we here
assume, it seems that we can give a name and value to this
strange energy of love. Can we not say quite simply that in
its essence it is the attraction exercised on each unit of con-
sciousness by the centre of the Universe in course of taking
shape? It calls us to the great union, the realization of which is
the only process at present taking place in nature. By this
hypothesis, according to which (in agreement with the find-
ings of psychological analysis) love is the primal and uni-
versal psychic energy, does not everything become clear
around us, both for our minds and our actions? . . .

'Hominized' love is distinct from all other love, because
the 'spectrum' of its warm and penetrating light is marvel-

66



Phenomenology

lously enriched. No longer only a unique and periodic attrac-
tion for purposes of material fertility; but an unbounded and
continuous possibility of contact between minds rather than
bodies; the play of countless subtle antennae seeking one
another in the light and darkness of the soul; the pull to-
wards mutual sensibility and completion, in which preoccu-
pation with preserving the species gradually dissolves in the
greater intoxication of two people creating a world. It is
a fact, that through woman the universe advances towards
man. The whole question (the vital question for the earth)
is that they shall recognize one another.

If man fails to recognize the true nature, the true object,
of his love the confusion is vast and irremediable. Bent on
assuaging a passion intended for the All on an object too
small to satisfy it, he will strive to compensate a fundamental
imbalance by materialism or an ever-increasing multiplicity
of experiments. His efforts will be fruidess - and in the eyes
of one who can see the inestimable value of the 'spiritual
quantum' of man, a terrible waste. But let us put aside any
sentimental feelings or virtuous indignation. Let us look very
coolly as biologists or engineers, at the lurid atmosphere of
our great towns at evening. There, and everywhere else
as well, the earth is continually dissipating its most marvel-
lous power. This is pure loss. Earth is burning away, wasted
on the empty air. How much energy do you think the spirit
of the earth loses in a single night?

If only man would turn and see the reality of the Universe
shining in the spirit and through the flesh. He would then
discover the reason for what has hitherto deceived and per-
verted his powers of love. Woman stands before him as the
lure and symbol of the world. He cannot embrace her except
by himself growing, in his turn, to a world scale. And

67



Let Me Explain

because the world is always growing and always unfinished
attd always ahead of us, to achieve his love man is engaged in
a limitless conquest of the universe and himself. In this sense,
man can only attain woman by consummating a union with
the Universe. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like
the blood of spiritual evolution. (H.E., pp. 32-4.)

We have already several times stressed the capital truth
that 'union differentiates'. Love is only the concrete expres-
sion of this metaphysical principle. Let us imagine an earth
on which human beings were primarily (and even in a sense
exclusively) concerned with achieving global accession to a
passionately desired universal being, whom each one would
recognize as a living presence in the most incommunicable
features of his neighbour. In such a world, constraint would
become useless as a means of keeping individuals in the most
favourable condition for action, of guiding them in free
competition towards better social groupings, of making
them accept the restrictions and sacrifices imposed by a
certain human selection, of deciding them once and for all
not to waste their power of love but to raise it carefully and
husband it for the final union. Under these conditions life
would finally escape (supreme liberation) from the tyranny
of material coercions; and a personality of increasing free-
dom would grow up without opposition within the to-
tality. (H.E., pp. 152-3.)

Totalization of total human energy in a total love.

The ideal glimpsed in their dreams by the world techni-
cians.

This, psychologically, is what love can do if carried to a
universal degree.

But is this miracle really moving towards realization?
(H.E., p. 155.)

68



Phenomenology

Pere Teilhard answers this question in the affirmative, saying that
'some traces of this prodigious transformation must be percep-
tible in history*.

This will constitute one of his approaches to the Christian problem.
In his view, there can be no possible doubt: 'Christianity is precisely
a phylum of love in Nature/ The complete series of apologetical
arguments for Christianity will be given again in Part 2 (comparison of
religions).

Finally, Pere Teilhard adds this suggestion:

At two critical points human energy has already assumed
the form in which we know it today : first the appearance of
life, whence emerged the biosphere; then emergence of
thought which produced the Noosphere.

Cannot a further and final metamorphosis have been in
progress since the birth of love in Christianity: the coming
to consciousness of an 'Omega' in the heart of the Noos-
phere - the circles' motion towards their common centre:
the appearance of the ' Theosphere't

A dream and a fantasy, it will be said. But it fits singularly
well with the march of things (H.E., p. 160.)



V. SUMMARY

At the same time this convergent phenomenon is also in
virtue of its structure, irreversible in nature: in this sense,
that once Evolution has become reflective and free, in
Man, it can no longer continue its ascent towards com-
plexity-consciousness unless it realizes two things about
•vital involution 9 - that, looking ahead, it escapes anni-
hilation or total death, and, what is more, that it gathers
together all that can be permanently saved of the essence
of what life will have given birth to in the course of its
progress. This demand for irreversibility has a structural

69



Let Me Explain

implication, the existence, at the upper term of cosmic
convergence, of a transcendent centre of unification,
'Omega Point*. Unless this focus-point, which gathers
things together and ensures their irreversibility, does in
fact exist, the law of evolutionary recurrence cannot hold
good to the very end.



70



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