Hegel, Whitehead, & Chardin: Trailblazers of a New Cosmology

Copyright 1993 by John R. Mabry

Introduction

We aren't accustomed to think in terms of the whole in the West. The starting point for our cosmology (historically) has been the atom, and more recently, the elusive parts of the atom. It is a perspective that has, in general, served us well. But then a hammer may serve us well until we attempt to open a bottle of wine with it, for then we wind up with a god-awful mess. Intuitively we would know that we need a different sort of tool.

It was Hegel who first divined the need for this tool, and began to see the whole, rather than the part, as the starting point for our cosmology. On his heels, Whitehead takes us into the presence of God as part and parcel of that whole, and finally, Teilhard, who worships it. In the following pages one will find an examination of key concepts in the philosophies of these three men, respectively, as well as discussions on the ramifications of such philosophies in terms of God, humankind, and in reference to one another.

George Wilhelm Frederich Hegel (1770-1831)

"Never tell a person that what they propose to do is impossible until they have done it." A line this author has heard from some unremembered source, and one that would certainly apply to Hegel. The "impossible" here is the synthesis of Western wisdom up to his time, the wrestling of such data into a single cohesive system which would partake eclectically from Spinoza, Schelling, Aristotle, Kant, and many others.1 From these materials he sought to conciliate flesh and spirit, reason and passion, God and humankind through a system which conceives the universe as the revelation of the divine nature in time, where the many parts (in this case, human beings) become conscious of their true identity as part of a greater whole, the supreme Self. Richard Tarnas describes it as "an immense drama in which the universe reveals itself to itself and achieves its freedom. All struggle and evolution are resolved in the realization of the world's telos, its goal and purpose.2

For Hegel, God (or the Absolute) was far from theoretical, for Hegel sought the Absolute in the immediate. The Absolute was a tangible reality for Hegel, for, as Meister Eckhart puts it, "God created all things in such a way that they are not outside himself."3 Every thing that is, then, is in God. From such a Gestalt perspective, then, nothing that exists in the phenomenological world may be considered in and of itself, but only as it relates to the Whole, the Absolute. That the part is a separate entity is an illusion, only the Whole is real.4 Hegel himself sums it up, "Philosophy is concerned with the true and the true is the whole."5

Furthermore, Hegel speaks of the absolute in terms of a living organism, when he writes "This resolution of the essence into individual forms is just the aspect of the separate action and the separate self of all the several individuals; it is the moving soul of the ethical substance, the resultant universal spiritual being. Just because this substance is a being resolved in the self, it is not a lifeless essence, but real and alive."6 The separation perceived by human beings is in Hegel's theory, a conscious, volitional act of the Absolute, in that

"All the previous modes of consciousness are abstractions from it: they are constituted by the fact that spirit analyzes itself, distinguishes its moments, and halts at each individual mode in turn... Taken in isolation they appear as if they existed as they stand. But their advance and return upon their real ground and essential being showed that they are merely moments or vanishing quantities; and this essential being is precisely this movement and resolution of these moments."7

What distinguishes the Absolute as an organism from other organisms is that, unlike the particulars, the Absolute is immortal and infinite. We should not get the idea that the phenomenological world is, as some Hindu sects believe, maya, or illusion, however. Physical things are real enough, but it is their separateness that is the illusion. The Absolute is the unity of all such particulars, and all particulars are member's of its being, which it unites from within.8 It is, in Hegel's words, "[the] universal spirit which contains within itself all that is ultimate and essential and all that is concrete and actual."9

Taking the cue from Descarte, when we recognize that "I think therefore I am," the Absolute is, because it thinks. And what does it think about? Itself--what else is there? In Hegel's own words, it is "self-consciousness at home with itself,"10 or "the Idea which thinks itself."11

The mechanics of this philosophy is Hegel's dialectical process. Traditionally in Western thought, opposites were seen as contradictory and mutually exclusive, but Hegel's breakthrough was in seeing contraries as part of a larger schema. This leap in logic makes it possible to hold contradictory data as equally true, since the acceptance of the paradox leads the thinker onward, through the paradox into the larger reality of which the paradox is only a part. "For Hegel," writes Copleston, "it is precisely the impossibility of being satisfied with a sheer contradiction which forces the mind onwards to a synthesis in which the contradiction is overcome."13

This insight is profound indeed, since it turns Kant on his ear. For Kant, the mind of man is shackled to his experience, and cannot perceive or even deduce the Absolute because of the obstacle of contradiction. But Kant lived in a particularized universe, whereas for Hegel, the mind of humankind is subsumed in the mind of God, which knows all things and through which all paradoxes could be transcended by means of synthesis, to a higher truth. This truth also will be presented with a contradiction, which will result in the synthesis of a higher truth, and so on, infinitely--as infinitely as God. By means of this triangular logical process, Hegel ingeniously works through some of the most baffling logical questions found in Nature and History. The impossible was achieved. The veil of the philosophical temple had been rent, and Hegel perceived the unity of the human and Divine minds.

The implications of this are worthy of awe. For, of all known creation, only humankind is self-reflexive; aware that it is aware. Spirit may know itself as spirit, but humankind is the only element of Creation that is conscious of its own consciousness, and so as the part of the physical manifestation of God, it is through humankind alone in what Hegel calls the "real" or "actual," i.e., the corporeal universe in which the Absolute is conscious of itself. Hegel writes, "As we now know that spirit in its own world is the same as spirit conscious of itself as spirit... it, as spirit conscious of itself, becomes actual to itself, and real object of its own consciousness...where it will behold itself as it is."13 Copleston summarizes it thusly: "It is man's knowledge of the Absolute which is the Absolute's knowledge of itself."14

We cannot forget, of course that the divine Mind is not identical with the mind of humankind. The mind of humankind is still limited. So why would Reason, the Logos want to bother with humankind with all our limitations? Because although it is the transcendent Mind which directs the unfolding of the material universe, it lacks something within itself. Hegel explains:

Even at the plane of consciousness, when it is mere intellect, there is a consciousness of the supersensuous, of the inner aspect of objective existence. But ...the eternal...is devoid of selfhood. It is merely, to begin with, something universal, which is still a long way from being spirit knowing itself as spirit.

Then there was self-consciousness, which came to its final shape in the "unhappy consciousness;" that was merely the pain and sorrow of spirit wrestling to become objectified once more, but not succeeding.

Here, where spirit, the reflection of these moments into itself, has become established, our reflection may briefly recall them [as] consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason. Spirit is thus Consciousness in general, which contains sense-experience, perception, and understanding, so far as in analyzing its own self it holds fast by the moment of being as reality objective to itself, and by abstraction eliminates the fact that this reality is its own self-objectifies, its own self-existence. When again it holds fast by the other abstract moment produced by analysis, the fact that its object is its own self become objective to itself, is its self-existence, and thus is Self-consciousness.15

It lacks object, and desires self-knowledge that only objectified reality (i.e., humankind) can relate. Thus, in humankind coming to a knowledge of its own consciousness--being part and parcel the Absolute's consciousness--it is through the human spirit that Reality comes to know Itself.16 And this knowledge also alleviates the "unhappy consciousness" of humankind mentioned by Hegel above, and gives meaning to the pain and sorrow of the human spirit. As Tarnas writes, "God is not beyond the Creation, but is the creative process itself. Man is not the passive spectator of reality, but its active co-creator, his history the matrix of its fulfillment."17 We are, it seems, essential to the Absolute's knowledge of itself. And in discovering that, we discover who we are as well.

Now it is possible to see that what Kant considered philosophical principles that were "set in stone," are revealed to be nothing more than the stepping-stones which human consciousness needed to use on its way to Self-knowledge. This process is, of course, dialectical: "Knowledge as a whole has its triadic movement," writes Russell, "It begins as sense-perception, in which there is only awareness of the object. Then, through sceptical criticism of the senses, it becomes purely subjective. At last, it reaches the stage of self-knowledge, in which subject and object are no longer distinct."18 This, then is the completion of the primal myth: The One becomes many, and then the many return into the One. This return is our destiny. Lao Tzu says that returning is the way of the Tao. It is what we were made for. Hegel outlines the stepping stones to this round trip thusly:

While, therefore, religion is the completion of the life of spirit, its final and complete expression, into which, as being tier ground, its individual phases, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, return and have returned, they, at the same time, together constitute the objectively existing realization of spirit in its totality; as such spirit is real only as the moving process of these aspects which it possesses, a process of distinguishing them and returning back into itself.19

It is only at the end of this process (or nearer to the end) that we are able to see the design, to discern the path that we have for untold centuries trodden and speculated about. For Hegel, our journey has an end, and that is in the Absolute. The Absolute is the end-point, the telos toward which we are being drawn by that same Absolute which is immanent in our own process.20 The Absolute is "the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its wend as its purpose and has its end as its beginning. It becomes concrete or actual only by its development and through its end."21

The process is hardly complete, but for Hegel this revelation was another important step for humankind. It was another example of the human race lifting itself to the next level, after centuries of striving. For finally, we have allowed God to know Godself, to be recognized by his or her creation. This is the essence of religion. Hegel found much to relate to in his own religion, Christianity, which he considered superior to any other. As Copleston says, "in the absolute religion, Christianity, absolute Spirit is recognized for what it is, namely Spirit; Nature is seen as a divine creation, the expression of the Word; and the Holy Spirit is seen as immanent in and uniting together finite selves."22

One cannot help but think that Hegel had some trouble in being humble; after all, it was through himself and his revelations that humankind ascended to the next and nearer plateau of spiritual maturity. The latest prophet of the Absolute had spoken.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Whitehead also bespoke a conception of the Universe as a single organism, as the Whole of which the many are constituent parts. "The oneness of the universe," he writes, "and the oneness of each element in the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature."23 This uncharacteristically poetic statement is indicative of Whitehead's Organism of organisms, a vision of the universe as an ongoing expression of interrelatedness and integration.

Whitehead's innovation over Hegel is his insistence on the importance of the fourth dimension, time. Whitehead speaks of objects exclusively as they appear in time. Temporality is the canvass on which he paints his portrait of the Universe. Seen in three dimensions, a man looks as we would expect, a head, two hands, two legs, etc. But when the fourth dimension is added, man, visually, resembles nothing so much as a worm, since his temporal existence is continuous, and as he moves from place to place he appears to occupy, if we could see the whole of the his temporal existence at once, all the space through which he has moved. This example is a way to begin to see reality in terms of temporal existence, rather than in terms of the static, individuated moment which we are used to thinking in. It is important to Whitehead that a subject is "here," and it is also important that it has gone "there." But equally important (and perhaps, even more important) is its existence between the two, and the process of getting from one place to the other.

In his view, there are no static moments, all is moving in four dimensions at all times; all is in flux; all is in the process of changing from one state to another; all is in the process of "becoming" other than it is. There is no choice: time marches relentlessly onward, and any illusions of permanence or security is just that, illusion. All of reality is in a constant state of "becoming," in process toward the fulfillments of its potentialities.

One wishes Whitehead were as poetic as his "cracks of doom" statement above throughout his writings. Unfortunately, his writing is what makes "Process" thought so daunting. Unless one takes time to learn Whitehead's peculiar vocabulary, one is not likely to get very far with his or her patience intact (written from experience). Whitehead's specialized vocabulary is essential to grasping the nuances of his thought, containing not only his own phrasal novelties but also the redefinition of certain terms which the reader may take for granted he or she knows. Let us examine a few of these phrases.

Unlike the atom of our experience, the building blocks of Whitehead's reality are "actual occasions," or "actual entities." These are the basic units, the "drops of experience," the "final real things of which the world is made, and there is no going behind them to find anything more real."24 Everything that is is an actual occasion, from an amoeba to God himself. Everything that can be experienced is an ongoing string of experiences unto itself, and it itself is an occasion, a moment that actually exists within a certain span of time. Only things that can be measured in time have any existence. Apart from temporal existence, there is nothing. Thus, an "occasion" is a thing that exists within time, be it a rock or the Horsehead Nebula. "Occasions" and "entities" are used by him interchangeably, and do not refer to whether the subject is the possessor of any consciousness. As Robert B. Mellert describes it, for Whitehead, "everything experiences: the balloon experiences relative air pressures; the rock experiences the earth upon which it rests. Experience is basic to all real things. It is the reason why reality is interrelated as well as processive in character."25

Also important in Whitehead's understanding is the impossibility of independent existence. Everything experiences another, everything comes with a history of experience, and everything is in process towards what it will become. This is the interrelation so important to process thought. No actual entity is an island; not even an island is an island--for even it is always in the process of changing due to its interaction with wind, tide, and the slow march of erosion.

Also important to understanding Whitehead is the concept of "prehension." Prehensions refer to an entity's interactions, interelations in time with its environment. "Prehension" sounds like the word "apprehension," yet, as William S. Sahakian describes it, "subjects are the [actual] occasions... their objects are the data; [from its environment]; and prehension provides the relationship between them." Prehension is "incognitive apprehension; it involves more than mere perception but lacks the cognitive element."26 A subject "prehends" an object by its experience with the object. If the object changes the subject in some way, it is called a "positive prehension;" if the subject remains unchanged (except for the addition of the encounter) it is called a "negative prehension." Thus, positive prehensions effect what the subject is to become. 27

"Concrescence" is another term of import. It is kind of analogous to the Buddhist concept of "dependant co-arising," in that a multiplicity of subjects interrelate in such a way that a more complex unity results. Actual entities "concresce" into larger entities. Whitehead writes, "Each instance of concrescense is itself the novel individual 'thing' in question. There are not 'the concrescence' and the 'novel thing' when we analyse the novel thing we find nothing but the conscrecence. 'Actuality' means nothing else than this ultimate entry into the concrete, in abstraction from which there is mere nonentity."28 (Emphasis his.)

Therefore, an entity is the result of the allurement of its precedents. If two entities are attracted to one another, and form a novel entity, the new entity owes its existence to the decision of its forbearing entities. "An actual entity arises from decisions for it," says Whitehead, "and by its very existence provides decisions for other actual entities which supersede it."29 Everything, then, is dependant on another. All things "arise" from and are dependant on such "occasions" as were present before it.

There are two sorts of "things" in existence. One is physical and temporal and includes all we have so far discussed. These are "occasions." The other sort of "thing" is conceptual and exists perpetually. These are known as "eternal objects," and can be thought of as eternal archetypes that are true apart from material existence (such as mathematics). Whitehead writes,

"The things which are temporal [actual occasions] arise by their participation in the things which are eternal [eternal objects]. The two sets are mediated by a thing which combines the actuality of what is temporal with the timelessness of what is potential. This final entity is the divine element in the world, by which the barren inefficient disjunction of abstract potentialities obtains primordially the efficient conjunction of ideal realization."30

If the reader is shaking his or her head, and saying something analogous of "what?" one is not to be blamed. What Whitehead is proposing is that actual occasions are determined by what is, they exist in the now. But in the realm of the eternal objects lies the infinite potential of what might be.

Eternal objects have their existence in the mind of God, and because s/he, having absolute union with the material plane, is integral in every occasion of concrescence, "each eternal object has a definite, effective relevance to each concrescent process," Whitehead writes, "Apart from such orderings, there would be a complete disjunction of eternal objects unrealized in the temporal world."31 God, then, is the mediator, the interface between the conceptual potentiality and the material reality.

In light of the rest of Whitehead's theory, the idea of eternal objects seems uncomfortably incongruent. It is the only element that seems unjustifiably contrived. Whitehead even seems a little defensive, when, in Process and Reality, he argues for the necessity of this part of his theory:

It is a contradiction in terms to assume that some explanatory fact can float into the actual world out of nonentity. Nonentity is nothingness. Every explanatory fact refers to the decision and to the efficacy of an actual thing. Accordingly the general potentiality of the universe must be somewhere; since it retains its proximate relevance to actual entities for which it is unrealized. This "somewhere" is the non-temporal actual entity.32

Thus, prehensions can be of two varieties: physical, encountered in the actual occasions' environment, and conceptual, which are encountered via the mediation of God.33

The concept of the "nexus" is also important, for it is nexus(spelled the same in singular or plural) that we actually experience in our daily lives. Nexus are the "communities" of actual occasions. Since prehensions are evident even on a microscopic, atomic level, single actual occasions are rarely visible to us. What we experience are much larger occasions of perhaps millions of occasions that have concresced into a form we actually interact with. For instance, an atom existing in time that we might find in, say, a rubber molecule, which is a combination of such atoms (occasions) which has concresced into a larger occasion, a lump of rubber. Once this occasion has positively prehended and concresced with some other complex concrescences that we might recognize as cloth and metal (with the help of an occasion that happens to work in an occasion known as a factory), we have an actual occasion of a tennis shoe that might have a life of many years. We ourselves are enormous, and enormously complex nexus of occasions. We must remember, as Mellert reminds us, that "at every level of Whiteheadian thought we are dealing with unities of pluralities in dynamic inter-relation."34

An actual entity has three key characteristics: (1) it has a past, an objective reality from which it concresced and that forms its environment; (2) it experiences both attraction repulsion to some other occasions, and has some sort of need for satisfaction instilled by God and already present in the mind of God as a potentiality (Whitehead calls this "subjective aim"); and (3) its own satisfaction is an expression of God's satisfaction as well, and it is that drive for God's satisfaction that steers the Universe.35

Whitehead's God is unique, and in many ways differs from our culturally received notions in the West. First, God is him/herself an actual occasion (granted, a BIG one). S/he prehends just as we do, with both physical and conceptual varieties of prehensions. S/he has a subjective aim and is seeking satisfaction. S/he is also in and through all things and is inseparable from the ongoing process of the Universe. Mellert points out that "although he is not perfect or ultimate in any absolute sense, he has a perfection and an ultimacy relative to all other things."36

So, is Whitehead's God trapped temporally as we are? Yes and no. For Whitehead, God has two natures, and is the only actual occasion to possess them. This "dipolar" nature is how Whitehead reconciles God's transcendence with his/her immanence. The transcendent nature, he refers to as "primordial," which Sanakan describes as being "eternal, conceptual, infinite, free, complete (though incomplete if we disregard God's other nature--the actual entities), unconscious (devoid of feeling), and including all universals as eternal objects." He describes Gods immanent nature as his/her "consequent" nature, which is "one of feeling (consciousness), and is identical with predetermined, incomplete, everlasting goodness."37

God, then, in his primordial nature, is how we are taught by most religions in the West to think of him/her. As beyond, omnipotent, untouchable. Whitehead says we must think of God not as "before all creation," but rather "with all creation,"38 as possessing the totality of possibilities from which every actual occasion is born. But s/he is also that to which all things return. Since God possesses the totality of the universe in his/her own being, each actual occasion is experienced by him/her in his/her consequent nature, and this experience is never forgotten. Mellert calls this function of the consequent nature analogous to the "Kingdom of Heaven," since "as every actual occasion perishes, it is preserved everlastingly in the consequent nature of God and it is immortalized as part of the kingdom. For God loses nothing that is to be saved."39 This is possible because God is unique to all other actual occasions in that S/he alone is eternal. This is not to say that s/he is non-temporal, just everlasting within this sphere of temporality, and therefore experiences as part of him/herself each prehension and each occasion, every nexus and every disintegration within his/her own being. This permanence that all occasions enjoy in the mind of God is called by Whitehead "objective immortality."

The implications of this are staggering. Since all of the universe is in flux, and since all of the universe is in God, God is in constant process, continually changing. God is, in fact, changed by the universe. What we do and how we change directly impacts how God changes and what s/he becomes! Whitehead's God is not unaffected by time, nor beyond it, nor does s/he have absolute control over cosmic events. S/he can only suggest by the mediation of eternal objects and the installation of subjective aim. Ultimately, the choice of what an occasion is to prehend is determined entirely by the occasion, not by God. This is a drastic, cosmic view of free will that includes not only the rational being of humankind, but all actual occasions everywhere. God, then, is directly dependent on the material universe for his/her own growth and process. Whitehead, therefore, claims that "it is as true to say that God creates the world as that the world creates God."40

Because God radically experiences all events in the universe, s/he is necessarily caught up subjectively in these experiences. God desires satisfaction, and part of such satisfaction is his/her desire and concern for the universe, and his/her desire to steer and lure each occasion on to greater concrescense and a nobler future. Whitehead describe God as "the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty and goodness."41 In fact, so intrinsic is God in the process that Whitehead believes that "apart from the intervention of God, there could be nothing new in the world, and no order in the world."42 Without God, then, the universe would be chaos, void of direction or purpose. "The novel feelings derived from God," says Whitehead, "are the foundations of progress... [he is] the goad towards novelty."43 Each individual occasion, furthermore, reacts in ways it itself chooses. If it tends to prehend from the physical world, it will most likely fall into a repeating pattern of experience. But the more it prehends from the conceptual world, the more novelty is introduced. Each occasion has access to either course.44 Thus, as Whitehead commentator Donald Shurburne writes, "Every concrescence...faces the question of what sort of entity it will make itself. The subjective aim, derived from God, is a lure...toward that way of becoming which is most in line with God's own aim of creating intensity of harmonious feeling in the world.45 Thus, the question of evil and the traditional God's refusal to banish it is solved.

God, then, is not the omnipotent ruler of the universe, as Western religious traditions view him/her. In fact, s/he is at the mercy of every occasion's every decision. "You can lead a horse to water" applies here to God's ability to lead and the individual occasion's freedom to do as it chooses (whether this is a conscious process or not is not important).46 "For, in this sense," Mellert writes, "he is not different from every other actual entity. He knows more, because he envisages more. He suffers more, because he knows more." He is, says Whitehead, "the great companion--the fellow sufferer who understands."47

God, then, for the process thinker is both like and unlike traditional models of either theism or pantheism. S/he transcends pantheism by having an individual "personality," and being distinct from the world; yet s/he differs from theistic notions by his/her immanence. "Immanence and transcendence are the characteristics of an object," says Whitehead, "as a realized determinant it is immanent; as a capacity for determination it is transcendent; in both roles it is relevant to something not itself."48 "This," writes Mallert, "is the middle way of pan-en-thism."49 For Whitehead, "the kingdom includes more than merely rational beings. Each moment of creation finds its place in the divine reality, because each occasion manifests a conceptual as well as a physical aspect. Salvation is for all reality, because all reality has value for God and is saved by God. Everything ultimately contributes its own realty to the reality that is God."50

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

If Hegel and Whitehead be philosophers, Teilard de Chardin is something else entirely. He does not possess the detachment necessary to philosophical work; his heart is too much into it. He is most certainly a priest, yet he is also a scientist. And somehow, in his own inimitable fashion, Chardin synthesizes all three of these strains into a very personal vision wherein the the subject with which he deals "is no less than everything that exists, has existed, and may yet exist, or rather, is the entire, unbroken, but developing existence of every thing in a singe time-space continuum."51

Chardin's thinking followed what he considered to be the indisputable truth of the theory of evolution, and in his effort to reconcile his considerable faith with his comparable belief in science, produced an evolutionary theory that dealt not with the material reality only, but included and promoted the spiritual. For Chardin, science and religion were far from exclusive fields, that each without the other is partial and distorted.

Thomas Corbishly writes that for Chardin "God's creative action is not something that should be thought of as having occurred, once and for all, at the beginning of time; rather must we see it as the all pervading energizing of God in and through the whole process of cosmic activity."52 This was, for him, far more reasonable than the traditional mythology given by his religious tradition. He himself writes, "Catholicism, at first appearance, disappointed me by its narrow picture of the world, and by its incomprehension of the role of matter."53 Chardin found a way through his theological obstacle course, but his work was suppressed throughout the whole of his life. None of his books relevant to his theories was published until after his death.

"Evolution" is the basis for Chardin's entire cosmology. Not, as Darwinian evolution would have it, however, a random product, or the "survival of the fittest," but an evolution planned and guided by divine agency. "The magic word 'evolution' which haunted my thoughts like a tune," he writes, "was to me like unsatisfied hunger, like a promise held out to me, like a summons to be answered."54 Chardin's universe is one of continuous and interwoven evolutionary threads, incorporating plants, animals, the planet, the cosmos and, most peculiar to him, not merely the physical and mental evolution of humankind, but our spiritual ascent as well. Michael Murray writes,

Man [is] at the growing tip of the evolutionary axis--man, the most complex and conscious entity so far produced by the universe as a whole. Physically small, but psychically the superlative result of all the synthetic labors of the stars, man is the spiritual, if not the spatial summit of the cosmos, the hope and instrument of its future consummation. Thus in Teilhard's hands the theory of evolution, far from diminishing man by relating him to the apes, as so many churchmen used to fear, actually re-establishes him at the moving apex of time-space, well above the fixed central position which he lost in the Copernican revolution.55

The evolutionary ascent of human beings occurs, according to Chardin's theory, in two stages of what he calls "planetization." The first stage is the "Go forth and multiply" stage, in which humanity expanded, in both quantity (in the very number of persons), and in quality (psychological and spiritual development). As Blanch Gallagher explains,

During the long period of expansion, physical and cultural differences isolated the peoples of the Earth from each other as they spread to fill the Earth. At the beginning of our present century, with most of the habitable surface of the Earth occupied, the races began to converge. Through technology, tangential energy becomes evident in the response of the people across the Earth to each other; people are sharing their wars, their coronations, their concerns. Thus the law of complexity-consciousness develops.56

We have reached the end of the expanding, or "diversity" stage, and, are now entering the contracting, or "unifying" stage. At this point, Chardin's theory runs completely counter to Darwin's, in that the success of humanity's evolution in the second stage will not be determined by "survival of the fittest," but by our own capacity to converge and unify.57 The most important initial evolutionary leap of the convergence stage is the formation of what Chardin termed "the Noosphere." It's formation, as Michael Murray explains, begins with

a global network of trade, communications, accumulation and exchange of knowledge, cooperative research, imixture of populations and production of energy--all go into the weaving of the material support for a sphere of collective thought. In the field of science alone, no individual knows more than a tiny fraction of the sum of scientific knowledge, and each scientist is dependent not only for his education but for all his subsequent work on the traditions and resources which are the collective possession of an entire international society composed of the living and the dead. Just as Earth once covered itself with a film of interdependent living organisms which we call the biosphere, so mankind's combined achievements are forming a global network of collective mind.58

"The idea," writes Chardin, "is that of the Earth not only covered by myriads of grains of thought, but enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection."59 One hesitates to invoke the terms "group-mind" or "hive mentality," but they are perhaps, leaps made by far less developed creatures than we that presage our own ascent. We know that such a thing can, and does exist in a variety of species, especially ants, migratory birds, and others. We also know the evidence regarding the "hundredth monkey" (once a learned behavior is taught to a significant portion of a population--in this famous example, of monkeys--the behavior becomes instinctual even for those completely isolated from the community which acquired the behavior). And C.G. Jung has certainly argued persuasively for the existence of an already operative "collective unconscious." Chardin, then, speaks of the "collective conscious."

Chardin waxes poetic (as he often does) when he describes it: "Noosphere...the living membrane which is stretched like a film over the lustrous surface of the star which holds us. An ultimate envelope taking on its own individuality and gradually detaching itself like a luminous aura. This envelope was not only conscious, but thinking...the Very Soul of the Earth."60 This profound insight reminds us that we are made up of nothing but the material stuff of this planet, that, physically, we are this planet. But Chardin goes further: not only are our bodies the stuff of the Earth's body, but our minds are the consciousness of this being, the Earth. We have supposed that we are individuals, yet we "are dust, and to dust ye shall return." We have supposed our minds are our own; but perhaps, as Jung and Chardin suggest, we are mistaken. Chardin, in fact, argues that it must be so, that "what we are aware of is only the nucleus which is ourselves. The interaction of souls would be incomprehensible if some 'aura' did not extend from one to the other, something proper to each one and common to all."61 Chardin believes, too, that this consciousness is not only psychological, but of the greatest spiritual importance, as well. "Nothing is precious," he says, "Except that part of you which is in other people, and that part of others which is in you. Up there, on high, everything is one."62

Chardin believes that the world is "fundamentally and initially living," that the whole of cosmic history is one vast operation of evolution, culminating an a "slow but progressive concentration of a diffuse consciousness."63 It is especially important to note that, once we are aware of what is happening to us, we can stop "groping about" in the dark, and take conscious control of our evolution to speed it on its way. We can become the willing "co-creators" with God, fulfilling our birthright implied in our being made in God's image.

We must also trust the Spirit of God to guide us. Chardin says that if the cosmos is not to disperse itself into infinite and meaningless plurality, we must assume that the convergent movement toward unity in the form of spirit will continue to operate as it has in the past.64 And this progress, as all evolution, all progress does, has cost, and will cost, dearly. Even so, Chardin is full of hope. "The world is an immense groping," he writes, "an immense enterprise, an immense attack; its progress is made at the price of much failure and many wounds.... What will be sufficient, even in our unorganized state, to compensate humanity for the anguish of its ills? Simply for consciousness to awake to an object born from its sufferings."65

Crucial to Chardin's thought at this point is his assertion that matter and spirit are different states of the same thing. All matter, down to the tiniest atom, has an "outside," a manifestation of physical energy, which is perceptible in all things, and an "inside," a manifestation of spiritual or psychic energy, which is possessed by all, but only emerges in more and more structured and complex organisms. The fruit of spiritual energy, according to Murray, is characterized by "reflection, freedom, purpose, and love," and is most easily recognizable in humankind.66 Chardin writes, "Matter and Spirit: these were no longer two things, but...two aspect of one and the same cosmic Stuff, according to whether it was looked at or carried further in the direction in which it is becoming itself, or in the direction in which it is disintegrating. Matter is the Matrix of Spirit. Spirit is the higher state of Matter.67

One way of looking at this is to see evolution as occurring on two axes: a "horizontal" axis of matter, which "pushes toward a higher degree of material complexity," and the "vertical" axis of Spirit, which "evolves toward a higher development of consciousness."68 According to Chardin, the "inside" and "outside" stuff of the Universe are "Functionally related...in a quasi-measurable articulation, with this double result, not only of furnishing us at last with a unified picture of the Universe, but of bursting the two barriers behind which man was beginning to think himself forever imprisoned, the magic circle of phenomenalism, and the infernal circle of egocentrism."69 It is the very process of the evolution, in humankind, of matter into spirit, or as Murray puts it, "turning matter inside out,"70 towards which we are now moving as a people, as a planet.

This is the process of "Noogenesis," or building the Noosphere which will eventually become conscious of itself, and develop a super-consciousness that will posses a "personality" all its own. This is the cusp of our next great evolutionary leap, for not only do we have an evolutionary direction; Chardin perceives that we have an end-point, a destination at which we are destined to eventually arrive. As Jesuit scholar W. Henry Kennedy describes the process,

Evolution is seen as one thrust within which the primacy of life is superseded by the primacy of reflection, and it in turn by the primacy of social or communal reflection. Evolution and time have a direction: toward ever higher consciousness and communion. There is in evolution meaning and coherence. Evolution is not a "tale told by an idiot," but a drama initiated and fulfilled by a God who is both "Alpha and Omega," First and Last. Teilhard's vision culminates in evolution's culmination in a transphysical communion of a united humanity with "Alpha and Omega."71

It is from Jesus' statement in the Apocalypse of St. John, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," (Rev. 1:8) that Chardin obtains the name for his most important theory, that of the "Omega point." Chardin speaks of "Omega" in two ways: as something yet to be realized, at the endpoint of evolution, yet also as a force already operative in the now, and responsible for guiding the process.72

This is where Chardin's Christology enters the picture. Christ, as the Incarnation, at once human and divine, is himself the endpoint of evolution. It is within the symbolism of the risen Jesus of Nazareth from history, the first coming of Christ, that we perceive our destiny, our own resurrection. The Omega point is the second coming of Christ. In Omega all of humankind enters the state of divinity. It is the culmination of the reality promised, even vouchsafed for us in the story of Jesus. For "when evolution has reached its term, when all that is capable of transformation into spirit has been gathered into a centered whole, then an ultimate change of state will occur"..."the end of the world...detaching the mind, fulfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega."73 Blanche Gallagher describes it well:

The Incarnation event becomes the ultimate loving and creative process for Teilhard. The current of love surges from the person of the historic Christ, who had to enter into the process of physical evolution as an element in order to be the center of its convergence at the end point, Omega. As Christ inserts himself into time and space in our universe, all created matter becomes transformed and is incorporated into him.74

Chardin himself writes, "Starting from an evolutive Omega at which we assume Christ to stand, not only does it become possible to conceive Christ as radiating physically over the terrifying totality of things, but, what is more, that radiation must inevitable work up to a maximum of penetrative and activating power. The cosmic-Christ becomes cosmically possible."75 This sounds frighteningly radical, but a strong case can be made for the orthodoxy of Chardin's theories, especially when examining the theology of the Eastern Orthodox, who speak of the goal of the Gospel being the eventual divinization, not only of humankind, but of the universe itself. St. Athenasius in his creed speaks of Christ as one who fulfills his mission "not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God."76 "To sum up," Chardin writes, "Cosmogenesis reveals itself along the line of its main axis, first as Biogenesis, and then Noogenesis, and finally culminates in the Christogenesis."77

For Chardin it is crucial that we perceive this goal. His horror is the same as that perceived by those religions--such as Hinduism or Buddhism--that view life as a cycle of seemingly endless death and rebirth, and thus, endless suffering. "What would happen," he asks, "if one day we should see that the universe is so hermetically closed in upon itself that there is no possible way of our emerging from it? ...I believe...we should lose the heart to act, and man's impetus would be radically checked and 'deflated' for ever."78

It is the zest for life that will propel us forward in our evolution, and we must have hope to have "zest." And if this goal has overcome all of the obstacles thus far, we must have faith that it will continue to guide us effectively. In order to "attract men's hopes, motivate their efforts, inspire them to sacrifice their egocentric individualism, Omega must be not only personal, but loving and lovable."79 It must not exist only as a hope in some far-flung future, but present, available, approachable and perceptible to us even now. Chardin writes, "The God whom our century awaits must be (1) as vast and mysterious as the cosmos; (2) as immediate as life itself; (3) as bound up with (in some way) our effort as mankind itself."80

Very like the God of Hegel and Whitehead, then, Chardin's God is "bound up with" the process of evolution. Chardin could not, even from the beginning, feel comfortable with the world-hating duality that he inherited from the Christian tradition, which placed God above and beyond the reach of the world. For him, "there is a communion with God and a communion with the Earth, and a communion with God through the Earth."81 Chardin is insisting on a new sort of faith; one that incorporates "The sense of the Earth opening and exploding upwards into God; and the sense of God taking root and finding nourishment downwards into the Earth."82 Chardin is not only promising the traditional escape upward, toward some celestial paradise, but just as importantly one that promises an escape forward, toward an evolutionary liberation. This faith holds these two not in opposition, but as complementary to one another.83 "The Upward movement," Chardin writes, "is now reinforces by a Forward movement never before considered by the religions."84

We are, therefore, in the latter twentieth century, at the threshold of another great leap in evolution, the contraction and unification, the construction of the Noosphere, the focusing of our psychic energies into Christogenesis, aided and guided by the Holy Spirit. "The powers that we have released," Chardin states in Human Energy, "could not possible be absorbed by the narrow system of individual or national units which the architects of the human Earth have hitherto used. The age of nations has passed. Now unless we wish to perish we must shake off our old prejudices and build the Earth."85 How we accomplish this is by correcting our errant perception of reality as being made up of separate units. Chardin insists that "to love is to discover and complete one's self in someone other than oneself, an act impossible of general realization on Earth so long as each can see in the neighbor no more than a closed fragment following its own course through the world. It is precisely this state of isolation that will end if we begin to discover in each other not merely the elements of one and the same thing, but of a single Spirit in search of Itself."86 The result of such a realization is the Noosphere, towards which we are moving even now, know it or not, like it or not, want it or not. The standard of morality will eventually not be placed on the maintenance of private property, but upon the health of the Whole, which will become more and more perceptible to us as Noogenesis unfolds. Chardin himself admits that "these perspectives will appear absurd to those who don't see that life is, from its origins, groping, adventurous, and dangerous. But these perspectives will grow, like an irresistible idea on the horizon of new generations."87

Conclusion

These three thinkers have forged brave new cosmologies in the twentieth century imagination. Because of their vision, together with the findings of quantum physics, our universe is a very different one than than into which these three men were born. As diviners of new cosmological paradigms, they have much in common. They all view the universe as being in flux, in process; they view God as being immanent, changing as the universe progresses, and being instrumental in its development; and humankind as being participators in this process. On the other hand, we must not fool ourselves in our eagerness to embrace these men as thinkers-in-solidarity into thinking that they do not possess significant differences as well.

Hegel and Whitehead share the notions of the universe as "organism," that only the Whole is real. Their vision of God is truly panentheistic. God is transcendent, but s/he is also the literal Universe. Unfortunately, Chardin cannot share this opinion: God is with and in the created, material Universe, the Universe is not literally him/her. Hegel and Whitehead also have a common emphasis on the temporal that is missing in Chardin, in that they both speak of individuals as "moments" in time.88

Chardin and Hegel, however, share several ideas that are exclusive to Whitehead. They both have notions of God in which s/he is Absolute and infinite, whereas Whitehead's God only seems infinite and absolute relative to the rest of the universe; Whitehead's God is powerful, but not all-powerful.89 Chardin and Hegel also see Creation as having and end-point, a telos/Omega-point, towards which we are being drawn by the Absolute/Omega. For Whitehead, though, according to Mellert, "there is no culminative point for the same reason that there is no beginning point. There is a cumulative effect as the process continues. The many become one and are increased by one."90 This is why Chardin speaks of evolution, while Whitehead of process--evolution implies culmination. While in Whitehead the future is open to as yet unconceived and eternal novelty, according to Cobb and Griffin, there is also "no assurance that the human species will move forward. It cannot stand still, but in the face of its massive dangers it may decay or even destroy itself."91

Chardin and Hegel also share an anthropocentrism thankfully missing in Whitehead. For Hegel, humankind is the crown, the ultimacy of God's creation, and like Chardin, "the whole vast cosmos itself is for man and, in an important sense, subjected to man. Man exists not simply to profit from the resources of nature but to develop and control those resources for his further advantage."92 In fact, Chardin even prays, "May the world's energies, mastered by us, bow down before us and accept the yoke of our power."93 This is not at all surprising in the context of its time, but by today's standards, it is monsterously arrogant. In Whitehead, however, humankind is just a miniscule part in the larger drama of the Universe, we do not have the starring role.

The importance of all three of these thinkers is immeasurable. Their gift has been to take the static God of orthodoxy and cast him/her upon the sea of our rapidly expanding cosmological awareness, trying to find reconciliation between what we are discovering is true and still live in relation to the unfathomable Mystery who has always whispered in our ears. Chardin speaks for all of them when he says, "Religion is not a strictly individual crisis--or choice--or intuition--but represents the long discolure of God's being through the collective experience of the whole of humanity...God bent over the now intelligent mirror of Earth to impress on it the first marks of beauty."94

NOTES

1 Sahakian, William S. History of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 188.

2 Tarnas, Richard The Passion of the Western Mind (New York: Ballentine Books, 1991), p. 379.

3 Fox, Matthew, OP, ed. Meditations with Meister Eckhart (Santa Fe: BEar & Co., 1982), p. 22.

4 Russell, Bertrand A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), p. 733.

5 Hegel, quoted in Copleston, Frederick, SJ, A History of Philosophy, Vol. VII (New York: Doubleday, 1965), p. 170.

6 Hegel, from Beardsly, Monroe C., ed., The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche (New York: Modern Library, 1960), p. 637.

7 Hegel/Beardsly, pp. 637-8.

8 Copleston, p. 165.

9 Hegel/Beardsly, p. 643.

10 Ibid., p. 643.

11 Russell, p. 735.

12 Copleston, p. 176.

13 Hegel/Beardsley, p. 644.

14 Copleston, p. 180.

15 Hegel/Beardsley, p. 634 & 642.

16 Copleston, p. 170.

17 Tarnas, p. 381.

18 Russell, p. 734.

19 Hegel/Beardsley, p. 644.

20 Copleston, p. 171.

21 Ibid., quoting Hegel, p. 170.

22 Copleston, p. 187.

23 Whitehead, Alfred North, from Sherburne, Donald W., ed., A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality (Chicago: The Free Press, 1966), p. 34.

24 Mellert, Robert B. What is Process Theology? (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), p. 22.

25 Ibid.

26 Sahakian, p. 297.

27 Mellert, p. 27.

28 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 34.

29 Ibid., p. 19.

30 Ibid., p. 25.

31 Ibid., p. 27.

32 Ibid., p. 25.

33 Ibid., p. 22.

34 Mellert, 28.

35 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 30.

36 Mellert, p. 44.

37 Sahakian, p. 297.

38 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 32.

39 Mellert, p. 58.

40 Mellert, quoting Whitehead, p. 58.

41 Ibid., p. 47.

42 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 30.

43 Ibid.

44 Mallert, p. 24

45 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 28.

46 Mellert, p. 47.

47 Ibid.

48 Whitehead/Sherburne, p. 22.

49 Mallert, p. 61.

50 Ibid., p. 59.

51 Murray, Michael H. The Thought of Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Seabury Press, 1966), p. 25.

52 Corbishley, Thomas The Spirituality of Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Paulist Press, 1971), p. 48.

53 Murray, p. 4.

54 Gallagher, Blanche Meditations with Teilhard de Chardin (Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1988), p. 25.

55 Murray, 17.

56 Gallagher, pp. 80-1.

57 Ibid., p. 81.

58 Murray, pp. 20-1.

59 Gallagher, p. 40.

60 Ibid., p. 39.

61 Ibid., p. 105.

62 Ibid., p. 99.

63 Corbishley, p. 58.

64 Murray, p. 22.

65 Gallagher, pp. 62-3.

66 Murray, p. 15.

67 Gallagher, p. 35.

68 Gallagher, p. 18.

69 Murray, p. 14.

70 Ibid.

71 Kenney, W. Henry, SJ A Path Through Teilhard's Phenomenon (Dayton: Pflaum Press, 1970), p. 71.

72 Gallagher, p. 81.

73 Murray, p. 25.

74 Gallagher, p. 82.

75 Ibid., p. 106.

76 The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), p. 865.

77 Gallagher, 106.

78 Cobb, John B., Jr. and Griffin, David Ray Process Theology: an Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 111.

79 Murray, p. 24.

80 Corbishley, p. 42.

81 Ibid., p. 58.

82 Gallagher, p. 33.

83 Ibid., p. 121.

84 Ibid., p. 123.

85 Ibid., p. 119.

86 Ibid., p. 98.

87 Ibid., p. 135.

88 Hegel/Beardsley, p. 637-8.

89 Mellert, p. 44.

90 Ibid., p. 59.

91 Cobb, p. 117.

92 Corbishley, p. 44.

93 Ibid., p. 45.

94 Gallagher, p. 120.