April 2005 Edition

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
global visionary for our times

Download a PDF Version

Ursula King

Fifty years after his death the visionary and evolutionary perspective of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) seems more relevant than ever. This article is a contribution to the discussions, held in New York in 2005, commemorating Teilhard’s death in 1955 and marking the appreciation of his work, especially The Phenomenon of Man, first published in the same year. It is based on earlier research by the author, published in Towards a New Mysticism: Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern religions ((London: Collins, 1980) and especially The Spirit of One Earth: Reflections on Teilhard de Chardin and Global Spirituality (New York: Paragon House, 1989). The anniversary celebrations will begin with a symposium at the United Nations on 7^th April, inaugurating a conference in New York and Washington, followed by others in different parts of North America and Europe.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout his life, Teilhard de Chardin was a wanderer between different worlds, especially the worlds of science, religion and mysticism, and the geographical worlds of West and East. His life and thought are interwoven like the parts of an immense symphony with ever new variations on a basic theme. This theme is the supreme adventure of humanity's ascent to the spirit, and the continuous breakthrough of God's presence in the world of matter and flesh. Teilhard's vision, like that of other seers before him, was one of consuming fire, kindled by the radiant powers of love. It was a mystical vision, deeply Christian in origin and orientation; yet it broke through traditional boundaries and grew into a vision global in intent.

From his youth he was attracted to the East. He first went to China in 1923 and worked there as a geologist and palaeontologist until 1946, travelling all over the world and visiting many other eastern countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and Japan. In the growth and expansion of his vision, the experience of the East, its peoples, cultures and religions, played an indispensable part. As he himself admitted, the invitation to come to China proved to be “the decisive event of his destiny”, for until then he had felt the attraction of the earth without really understanding the greatness of its phenomena.[i] It was in China that many of his central ideas grew to their full maturity – whether the idea of the noosphere as an immense layer of human thought and action a rising out of the biosphere and covering the entire globe, or the rise of the divine milieu as an intimate presence and power of the divine spirit surrounding us, or the rise of the human phenomenon within the cosmic history of life, or the human responsibility for the future and the coming convergence of diverse human groups and different religions.

His vision of convergence, of the complementary religious insights of East and West, and of the need for a new understanding of Christianity, first emerged in full in China; it impressed itself upon his mind with even fuller force and urgency on his return to the West in 1946. Today, the attraction of Indian religions to many Westerners is greater still than it was during Teilhard's life time. The questions which he asked then are even more important now although they may have to be asked in a different way. But in spite of differences in detail, the basic orientation of his search and the open-endedness of his quest, particularly in later years, may well point beyond Christianity as we know it. From the 1920s onwards, during a time when few Western contemporaries were aware of and alive to the problems of modern spirituality, Teilhard was already seeking insights in the East and stressing the central importance of mysticism for religion today.

It is certain that, without the experience of the East, his thought would not have developed in the way it did. It would never have reached the same perspectives of unity, universality, and convergence, searching for a spirit of one earth which ultimately transcends both East and West.

WORLD CONGRESS OF FAITHS

It is not generally known that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, after his return from China, was associated with the activities of the French branch of the World Congress of Faiths, for which he wrote several talks and lectures. The World Congress of Faiths was founded in England in 1936 at the initiative of Sir Francis Younghusband and is one of the original global movements promoting interreligious encounter and dialogue today. From the beginning, certain Frenchmen – particularly the well-known scholar of lslamic studies, Louis Massignon, and the orientalist, Jacques Bacot – showed great interest in this interreligious movement, which aims "to break down the barrier of exclusivism and to build bridges between faiths."[ii]

The French called their branch Le Congrés Universel des Croyants and renamed it later simply Union des Croyants. Its founding members were all actively engaged in the study of the history of religions, or of Eastern religions and art. The Council members of the French branch included, among others, an Iranian Sufi, a Confucian, the Hindu Swami Siddheswarananda from the Ramakrishna Mission, and the French philosophers, Etienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, and Edouard Le Roy, with whom Teilhard had been closely associated between 1921 and 1930.[iii] Teilhard's biographer, Claude Cuénot, briefly mentions that the World Congress of Faiths became a useful field of activities for Teilhard during his stay in Paris, 1946-1951, but he goes on to say that “although he could not actively and officially co-operate, he was anxious to encourage the movement for unity."[iv]

The inaugural session of the French branch of the World Congress of Faiths took place on 8^th March, 1947. Teilhard was not personally present, since he was not allowed to lecture publicly on religious topics (but did so privately for small groups), yet, at the request of the Congress, he wrote an inaugural address which was read by René Grousset. It revolves around the theme that people of different backgrounds and convictions can come together and cooperate through their common "faith in man." This faith is defined as "the more or less active and fervent conviction that Mankind as an organic and organised whole possesses a future," a future which, beyond mere survival, means some form of higher life.[v] The essentially modern concepts of collectivity and of an organic future have led to an awakening and transformation of human consciousness which has also brought with it a spiritual crisis on an unprecedented scale. After discussing the ambiguity of this situation, Teilhard outlines some of the forces that may unite humankind:

A tendency towards unification is everywhere manifest, and especially in the different branches of religion. We are looking for something that will draw us together, below or above the level of that which divides. . . Not through external pressure but only from an inward impulse can the unity of Mankind endure and grow. And this, it seems, is where the major, "providential" role reserved by the future for what we have called "faith in Man" displays itself. A profound common aspiration arising out of the very shape of the modern world. . .

Later he says:

In short, we may say that faith in Man . . . shows itself upon examination to be the general atmosphere in which the higher, more elaborated forms of faith which we all hold in one way or another may best (indeed can only) grow and come together. . .

     No one doubts that we are all more or less affected by this elementary, primordial faith. Should we otherwise truly belong to our time? . . . I have said that the spirit has only one summit. But it has also only one basis. Let us look well and we shall find that our Faith in God, detached as it may be, sublimates in us a rising tide of human aspirations. It is to this original sap that we must return if we wish to communicate with the brothers with whom we seek to be united.[vi]

With these words the inaugural address concludes. Fifteen years later, looking back at the development of the French branch of the World Congress of Faiths, Louis Massignon called this address "an outstanding text" which from the start provided a direction for the work of the World Congress of Faiths.[vii] During his stay in Paris, between 1948-1950, Teilhard wrote five more texts for the French branch of the World congress of Faiths, now mostly found in his published works, and further mention of some of their ideas will be made below.

UNIVERSALIZING FAITH

In March 1941, in remarks to a Congress in Science and Religion, Teilhard had attempted to outline the "possible bases of a universal human creed" which he presented as the personal testimony "of thirty years spent in close and sincere contact with scientific and religious circles in Europe, America, and the Far East."[viii] Though less clearly stated, we find the same ideas expressed: a rightly understood faith in the future, and the idea of a possible awakening of a higher state of consciousness are both seen as necessary for preserving in human beings the taste for action. What is more, they alone are capable of bringing about that necessary synthesis of adoration wherein people can combine "both a passionate desire to conquer the World and a passionate longing to be united with God."[ix]

Thus we have a theme here which forms an integral and essential part of Teilhard's view of the world and his understanding of religion. Earlier this theme was expressed as the necessary integration of two kinds of faith, the faith in God ahead and the faith in God above, the immanent God of evolution and the transcendent God. Now the theme has, so to speak, left the theological circle and become universalized. Speaking to people of different religious traditions and no tradition at all, Teilhard emphasizes faith in man, the world, the future, as a common bond. Faith in the human being is the uniting basis for a humanity seeking the spirit at its summit. The conclusion of his 1947 essay still echoes the motto of the very first lines Teilhard ever wrote: "There is a communion with God, and a communion with earth, and a communion with God through earth" (1916).[x] The continuity and persistence of this insight, which endured for some thirty years, is truly remarkable.

Teilhard stressed on one hand the importance of a faith and the necessity to recognize the right to a faith in others, and on the other hand, the need for cooperation with all those who do not adhere to any particular faith at all. He recognized the possibility of a coming together, a development of convergent lines, with contributions from all sides. Similarly, he stressed his quite different understanding of mysticism and the need to renew the mysticism of the West. In his view, the West "has not yet found its formula of faith" which answers the need of the present. Within humankind a faith and mysticism may develop in new ways which presently do not yet exist.[xi]

FUTURE CONVERGENCE

One of Teilhard’s major contributions centers on the question of how a greater human unity or a unification of humankind may be achieved. There are many external forces at work to bring people closer together, but this is not enough. Only a free unification based on mutual attraction and love can lead to the true union of human beings; for this some form of affective energy is needed. Beyond the "push" of external forces, a "pull" towards "something" is needed and Teilhard sees this pull as coming from a point of universal convergence in the future. After the emergence of life, and then the growth of critical reflection, a third important threshold is now in view, the building-up of one human community. The Marxist view sees the human collectivity in terms of a merely human future; the Christian view sees the center of universal convergence as both ultrahuman and transcendent. It has the warmth of attraction of personal love as its summit: ". . . it seems that Man's urge towards Some Thing ahead of him cannot achieve its full fruition except by combining with another and still more fundamental aspiration – one from above, urging him towards Some One."[xii]

The search for Some Thing (or Some One) ahead is expressed again in the brief unpublished description of the aims of the World Congress of Faiths, given in two pages dated September 1950. Here again the need for some principle of unification is stated, such as the birth of some common spirit, the awakening of faith in life, for without it the forces of collectivity will break and harden people. Teilhard sees it as one of the aims of the World Congress of Faiths to help work out such a faith which allows people to become one with others, without either proclaiming the essential sameness of all religions or rejecting any purely human creed.

Any union, believes Teilhard, however much conditioned by technical and social progress, can only be accomplished through the vision and influence of a supreme center of attraction and personalization. This work is based on two fundamental convictions. Everything that rises beyond itself through the love of something greater will, in fact, converge towards a summit. At present, an immense number of isolated elements in the human community already seek to rise and come together, but Teilhard envisages the growth of sympathy and attraction on a scale unknown in the past that will bring people much closer together. It is important for people to meet and to get to know each other to bring about such a rapprochement. The different types of scientific thought and religious faith found in the world today have to come into contact with each other and further develop in reaction to each other. Only then may human beings finally discover Some Thing (or Some One) ahead.

Here again Teilhard speaks in general terms, without any specific reference to particular religions. In fact, the term religion or religious faith is very little used. There are other forces at work which can bring people initially together; it is the "ecumenism at the base," as he calls it elsewhere, which needs to be pursued first in order to bring about understanding and unification. Religions cannot achieve this human unity on their own, but they must contribute towards it and, what is more, without the deepest intuitions of the great religious traditions, human efforts of sympathy and union cannot find their true center.

DIVERSITY AND COMPLEMENTARITY OF FAITHS

A spirituality for the individual alone is no longer enough. Teilhard speaks of "a religion of mankind and the earth." Contemporary religious needs can only be answered by those mystical currents which are able to combine the traditional faith in the above (that is, flight from the world, from the bonds of time, to union with some Absolute) with the newborn faith in some issue ahead (that is, integration into a human community and union with others, and the unity found together in a higher center).

Why, then, not have a completely new faith based on some "evolutionary sense" or "sense of man" as, for example, Julian Huxley would have it? Teilhard lists two reasons why this would not be a satisfactory solution:

First of all, there can be no doubt that in each of the great religious branches that cover the world at this moment, a certain spiritual attitude and vision which have been produced by centuries of experience are preserved and continued; these are as indispensable and irreplaceable for the integrity of a total terrestrial religious consciousness as the various “racial” components… This, however, is not all. What is carried along by the various currents of faith that are still active on the earth, working in their incommunicable core, is no longer only the irreplaceable elements of a certain complete image of the universe. Very much more even than fragments of vision, it is experiences of contact with a supreme Ineffable which they preserve and pass on.[xiii]

The most important idea contained in these paragraphs is Teilhard's recognition of the diversity and complementarity of the "active currents of faiths," what we today would call the "living religious traditions." Each of them contains fragments of vision and experiences of contact with a supreme Ineffable. It is only the sum total of these visions and experiences which represents the full religious heritage of humankind, and this heritage is most precious for the development of a "total terrestrial religious consciousness," necessary for a humanity that wants to be one. It is at this source that the deepest springs of human energy dwell and therefore these active currents of faiths are of prime importance in maintaining the zest for living:

... sustained and guided by the tradition of the great human mysticisms, we succeed, through contemplation and prayer, in entering directly into receptive communication with the very source of all inner drive (élan).[xiv]

Teilhard’s views on interfaith encounter have to be seen within the larger context of his thinking about a new planetary consciousness and a new threshold in human social and cultural evolution, which he considered as integral to the further development of the noosphere. In his view, the reshaping of all human institutions, including our attitude to the earth, global political, financial and social arrangements, is necessary for the building of a future for humanity. This cannot be done without paying careful attention to the spiritual energy resources available to us for feeding the zest for life, for making responsible ethical choices and caring for each other through the power of loving each other.[xv] More than anywhere else, these resources are found in our global religious heritage which we must cherish, nurture, and hand down to future generations. As he wrote in 1950:

In a world which has become conscious of its own self and provides its own motive force, what is most vitally necessary to the thinking earth is a faith – and a great faith – and ever more faith.[xvi]

Ursula King is Professor Emerita of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, UK, and a Vice-President of the World Congress of Faiths. She has published numerous books and articles on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Indian religions, interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism, and on women in world religions. Her most recent work was for the revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion (Chicago: Macmillan, 2005) where she acted as consultant for all the entries on gender and religion, covering 20 different religious traditions, and writing among others the entry on Teilhard de Chardin. She is currently working on spirituality in a global context for a new book, One Planet, One Spirit.