| 1 |
"Love is the most universal, formidable and mysterious of cosmic energies. From the point of view of spiritual Evolution, it seems that we might be able to give a name and a value to this strange energy of love. Could it not be, in essence, the attraction which is exercised upon each conscious element by the center of the universe? The call toward the great union, whose attainment is the only real business in nature…?" |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Building the Earth |
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| 2 |
"Mankind, born on this planet and spread over its entire surface, coming gradually to form around its earthly matrix a single, major organic unity, enclosed upon itself; a single, hyper-complex, hyper-centred, hyper-conscious arch-molecule, co-extensive with the heavenly body on which it was born. Is not this what is happening at the present time – the closing of this spherical, thinking circuit?" |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Let Me Explain |
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| 3 |
"The first essential is that the human units 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 common 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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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Let Me Explain |
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| 4 |
"The presence of the Incarnate Word penetrates everything, as a universal element. It shines at the common heart of things, as a centre that is infinitely intimate to them." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 5 |
"The Supreme Good is the centre of universal convergence towards which everything tends." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 6 |
"The cycle that sends man down to the bowels of matter in its full multiplicity, thence to climb back to the centre of spiritual unification, is a natural cycle. We could say that it is a divine cycle." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 7 |
"The world is…a single sphere with countless centres from which it can be observed and from which action can emanate." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 8 |
"The absolute, the intelligible, lies at the centre, in the direction in which everything is heightened to the point of being but one." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 9 |
"Every substance is held up by a series of Substances-of-Substance that support one another, step by step, up to the Supreme Centre at which everything converges." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 10 |
"The world we know does not develop haphazardly, but is structurally dominated by a Personal Centre of universal convergence." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Science and Christ |
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| 11 |
"Christ of glory, hidden power stirring in the heart of matter, glowing centre in which the unnumbered strands of the manifold are knit together; whose brow is of snow, whose eyes are of fire, whose feet are more dazzling than gold poured from the furnace; you whose hands hold captive the stars; you, the first and the last, the living, the dead, the re-born; you, who gather up in your superabundant oneness every delight, every taste, every energy, every phase of existence, to you my being cries out with a longing as vast as the universe: for you are indeed my Lord and my God." 'Mass Upon the Altar of the World' |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Divine Milieu |
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| 12 |
"May the time come when people, having been awakened to a sense of the close bond linking all the movements of this owrld in the single, all-embracing work of the Incarnation, shall be unable to give themselves to any one of their tasks without illuminating it with the clear vision that their work – however elementary it may be – is received and put to good use by a Centre of the universe." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Divine Milieu |
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| 13 |
"However vast the divine milieu may be, it is in reality a centre. It therefore has the properties of a centre, and above all the absolute and final power to unite (and consequently to complete) all beings within its breast." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Divine Milieu |
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| 14 |
"Will not the work itself of our minds, of our hearts, and of our hands – that is to say, our achievements, what we bring into being, our opus – will not this in some sense be 'eternalised' and saved? Indeed, Lord, it will be – by virtue of a claim which you yourself have implanted at the very centre of my will! I desire and need that it should be." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Divine Milieu |
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| 15 |
"It is not a 'tete-a-tete' or a 'corps-a-corps' that we need; it is a heart-to-heart….If the synthesis of the Spirit is to be brought about in its entirety (and this is the only possible definition of progress), it can only be done, in the last resort, through the meeting, center to center, of human units, such as can only be realized in the universal, mutual love….There is but one possible way in which human elements, innumerably diverse by nature, can love one another: it is by knowing themselves all to be centered on a single 'supercenter' common to all." Pierre Teilhard deChardin, 'The Future of Man' |
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~ Peter Russell, The Global Brain, Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness |
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| 16 |
"What is the work of works for man if not to establish, in and by each one of us, an absolutely original centre in which the universe reflects itself in a unique and inimitable way? And those centres are our very selves and personalities." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Phenomenon of Man |
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| 17 |
"Each cell divides (by mitotic or amitotic division) and gives birth to another cell similar to itself. First, a single centre; then two. Everything in the subsequent development of life stems from this potent primordial phenomenon." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Phenomenon of Man |
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| 18 |
"Man is not the centre of the universe as once we thought in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful – the arrow pointing the way to the final unification of the world in terms of life….This is nothing else than the fundamental vision." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Phenomenon of Man |
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| 19 |
"In the establishment now proceeding through science and the philosophies of a collective human Weltanschauung in which every one of us cooperates and participates, are we not experiencing the first symptoms of an aggregation of a still higher order, the birth of some single center from the convergent beams of millions of elementary centers dispersed over the surface of the thinking earth?" |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Phenomenon of Man |
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| 20 |
"From what source will human individuals ultimately draw the desire to accept one another and draw one another towards joyful unity? There is only one conceivable source: a growing attraction to the centre of consciousness in which their fibres and their bundle must complete themselves by reuiniting." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Vision of the Past |
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| 21 |
"Is not this divine centre, required by the nature of things to justify our activity, precisely He whose influence makes itself positively felt in us by the tendency to greater cohesion, justice and brotherhood?" |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Vision of the Past |
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| 22 |
"No unit can finally find happiness except by reunion with the whole and the transcendent centre required to move that whole." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Vision of the Past |
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| 23 |
"When each man, by virtue of a conception of the world that demands only a minimum of metaphysics, and that is supported, moreover, by the greatest number of arguments from experience, will admit that his true being is not limited to the narrow boundaries of his limbs and his historical existence but that he forms part, body and soul, of the process that drives the universe, then he will understand that, in order to remain faithful to himself he must devote himself to the task demanded of him by life as to a personal and sacred duty. Then he will regain belief in the world, in a world whose totality cannot perish, and also faith in a supreme centre of personalization, concentration and cohesion, the only point at which the salvation of the universe can be conceived to take place." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Vision of the Past |
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| 24 |
"Humanity seems certainly to have reached the stage of its evolution in which it cannot from any viewpoint face the problems presented to it by the growth of its inner energy without defining for itself a center of love and adoration." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, The Vision of the Past |
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| 25 |
"We are the countless centres of one and the same sphere." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 26 |
"God, who is as immense and all-embracing as matter, and at the same time as warm and intimate as a soul, is the Centre who spreads through all things." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 27 |
"Charity [love] is the force that stops beings from shutting themselves up in a self-centered folding-in of their energies, and makes them 'unbutton', open themselves and surrender themselves to one another." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 28 |
"The final purpose of providence is the influence of the transcendent Centre whose unerring action can infallibly guide chance toward its determined end." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 29 |
"Each monad is to some degree the centre of the entire Cosmos, resting upon and at the same time supporting its fabric." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 30 |
"Precisely because there exists in all beings a common centre, scattered and separable though they are in appearance, they meet together at a deeper level. The more they perfect themselves naturally and sanctify themselves in grace, the more they come together and fuse into one, within the single, unifying Centre to which they aspire: and we may call that Centre equally well the point upon which they converge, or the ambiance in which they float. All these reachings-out that draw beings together and unify them constitute the axis of all individual and collective life." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 31 |
"The inter-personal contains the hopes of higher union on which evolution lives. It is the milieu of the monads' mutual attraction and confluence that sustains their final centre of coalescence." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 32 |
"Basically, the whole of the world's psychism [psyche] gravitates towards a single centre." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 33 |
"I dreamed of a common centre into which all things would drive the most vital roots of their sensibility and energy; a universal Centre, living and benign, that would itself reinforce our desire to do what is right, when we are at a loss to express it, or preserve it, or realize it." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 34 |
"In the material universe it is Spirit, and in Spirit it is the moral sphere, which are eminently the PRESENT centre in which life develops. It is into this flexible core of ourselves, accordingly, where divine grace mingles with the natural impulses of the Earth, that we have forcefully to direct the power of faith." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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| 35 |
"There is only ONE SINGLE CENTER in the universe…it impels the whole of creation along one and the same line, first towards the fullest development of consciousness, and later towards the highest degree of holiness." |
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~ Pierre Teilhard deChardin, Writings in Time of War |
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