Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Chakras And Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

This one is strait from the Noonesphere,

SEEING THROUGH THE HEART

by Allen L Roland

An excerpt.

Think of it in terms of chakras ~ after the heart chakra opens, you must speak from your heart ~ only then will the third eye open and you will begin to see through the heart . When you speak what you see through the third eye, your crown chakra will open and you enter a state of soul consciousness and assume your place in a loving plan.

As such, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's ultimate truth can be summed up with my axiom;

The basic underlying and uniting force of the universe is a psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness ( The Unified Field ) which lies not only beyond time and space but ALSO beneath our deepest fears.

Link (here)

More from GJBJ on Fr. Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, S.J. (here)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but to associate chakras and Father Teilhard de Chardin is pure crap. My only answer - my English is not up to a long argument - is to READ his work, and not just citations out of context. In Le Christique, what he wants to show is the convergence of the universe towards the pleroma in the Paulinian sense of the word. A book that might help prevent distortions of his thought is: "La pensée religieuse du Père Teilhard de Chardin" by Henri de Lubac, sj. Card. de Lubac knew Teilhard personally and wrote at least three other books about Teilhard (at least that I know of and have in my library) "La prière du Père Teilhard de Chardin", "Teilhard posthume, réflexions et souvenirs" and "L'éternel féminin" an essay on the work with the same title by Teilhard. In this latter book, de Lubac refers a few times to Soloviev. I also have a book (in Spanish) by Karel Vladimir Truhlar, SJ, "Solovjev y Teilhard". Teilhard was closer to the Eastern Christian (Byzantine)theology and the Fathers of the Church than to Thomistic theology. That may be the reason why he is misunderstood and misinterpreted in the Western world.
Teilhard may have been carried away sometimes in his desire to reconcile science and the Church, but his essay "Le christianisme dans le monde" (Vol. IX of his Oeuvres) and what he writes about hindu and oriental mystiques shows that to associate him with chakras is not only dishonest but ludicrous.
Elise B.

Joseph Fromm said...

Dear Elisa B.

I know you love TDC, however if
Google search Teilhard de Chardin and Chakra and /or New Age and you will find countless hits. Because TDC is not up the middle.

JMJ
Joe

Anonymous said...

Yet, consider this...

The most horrific mistake made about the spiritual life today is that we can't begin the spiritual life until the person has no weaknesses (besides sin).

No, we don't work ourselves into or evolve into something more spiritual, while the Cosmic Christ is somewhere out in outerspace, no more than a convenient, abstract figment of our imagination. No.

Christ redeems us and makes us holy, commanding us to take up the just effects, the weaknesses of original sin and our own sin, as the cross, following him, looking to Him for strength. We don't get any less weak in this life. Saint Paul begged to be freed from weakness, but the grace of our Lord was sufficient for him, the strength of the Lord shining out through Paul's weakness. And so it is with us.

Anyone who thinks that we cannot be completely with Christ, now by sanctifying grace and after our deaths in glory in heaven, is only himself a ticket to self-congratulations. That doesn't get very far.

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

After sending my previous comment I was linked to an old post of yours in which you refer to Father Teilhard de Chardin as a "rogue theologian".
There's a lot of abusive use of the word "theologian" in the medias. Any priest is refered to as a theologian. Having studied theology for a few years in view of the priesthood does not make one a theologian.
Teilhard was not a theologian and he never claimed to be one - but he had very close friends who were real theologians: Auguste Valensin (his spiritual director) and Henri de Lubac amongst others. He was a priest first and then a paleontologist. He was also a thinker. As a thinker he was not restricted to the field of science. As a priest, he saw God's work everywhere. He saw the creation converging and ascending towards the Parousia and the Pleroma. He could be called an "apostle" of the Resurrection (another difference with hinduism). The axiom you apply to his thought is therefore quite disingenuous. As I mentioned previously, Teilhard is wrong on some points, but he is definitely not a heretic, or Pope Benedict, when he was archbishop of Munich, would not have quoted him so extensively in his work on Creation. Also, a "monitum" is a warning, not a condemnation. Pope Pius XII never wanted to condemn him; Pope John XXIII, who disliked him, signed the monitum; Pope Paul VI had a special edition of "Ecrits du temps de la guerre" dedicated to him; Pope John Paul II quoted him (I heard him myself).
Is it not time to slow down a bit on Teilhard bashing?
Elise B.

Anonymous said...

Joseph,
I followed you advise and did some googling. Here are the results:
Teilhard de Chardin & chakras: 11,700
Teilhard de Chardin & new age: 47,900
and then I did some more googling:
Christ & chakras: 553,000
Christ and new age: 4,150,000
My conclusion:
Google is useful but should be used with caution :-)
Elise B.

Joseph Fromm said...

Elise B.
I am not bashing TDC. I am not judging his Salvation. I have however seen and heard those priests and religious women whom advocate Teilhard as some sort of ghost pope of some ghost religion. Who use his words as a quasi theologian and mystic to justify their own unorthodox Catholic positions. Elise, you do not live in a box, you know this to be a fact. Teilhard was just a Jesuit priest and deserves the stature of his state in life. But to use his words to justify, alternate marriage, pagan prayer practices, female ordination, devaluation of the Bible and to attack the Petrine mystery, is a whole separate matter.
The Catholic Church does not need Fr. PTDC to make its positions on truth any more clear, if our faith can not stand alone with out Fr.PTDC then we are are all in trouble.

Anonymous said...

"But to use his words to justify, alternate marriage, pagan prayer practices, female ordination, devaluation of the Bible and to attack the Petrine mystery, is a whole separate matter"
I am stunned. I have read I would say 90% of Teilhard's works (essays, letters, etc) and never, never encountered any of those things that you mention. Far from attacking the Petrine mystery, he considered it as the trunk to which the Church must be attached to live! He was always a faithful priest and, as I mentioned in a previous comment, a truly humble man. Instead of playing those people's game, it would be more honest, not only to his memory but to the whole Jesuit order to which he was deeply attached, to set the record straight.
Also, you must be aware that even Christ himself has been "hijacked" by New Agers. Should we reject him? Of course not.
Elise

Joseph Fromm said...

Elise B.
Teilhard wrote that the "Omega Point" of history, which has yet to be achieved and then at that moment when mankind is in complete unity, the "Omega Point" of Jesus will then appear. Man will no longer be man he will be called Ultra- Human; the cosmos will then be transformed and glory of Christ will be established. Has not Teilhard forgotten about Original sin, Creation and the Redemption of man by the Cross of Calvary?

Teilhards embrace of priest-worker moment coincided with his affection for communism and Marxism. Teilhard was the only Roman Catholic whose works were on display in the Hall of Atheism in Moscow, along side those of Lenin and Marx. If I have further explain the incompatibility between Christianity and Communism I will.

Please try to explain Pan-Christicism? In relation to the Incarnation?

He was also a proponent of eugenics, so much marriage and "One Flesh".

Elise B. I sure do understand why some one is fascinated by Teilhard, but after a proper scrutiny, I can not understand why one would not be repulsed by the man.

Anonymous said...

Please be patient. This will be a long post… but the last one on the subject.
You certainly make me work hard! First of all, I would like to point out that I do not take the trouble of writing in English (which for me is not easy) for “love” of Teilhard – emotions and feelings have nothing to do with it – but for “love” of intellectual honesty and accuracy. It is the basis of credibility.

“He was also a proponent of eugenics, …”
In a previous post I mentioned that I do not endorse all of Teilhard’s “teachings” (“musings” would be a better word for most of Teilhard’s work). The first of those “musings” of which I disapprove is eugenics. There are not many references to eugenics in his works. They refer to the “risk” of over population. In The Phenomenon of Man (of which I found a translation here: http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/science/phenom10.html) he also develops a concept of the improvement of mankind, but it is not based on racial criteria as with Sanger’s or Hitler’s eugenics (or as in the US in the twenties and thirties). But, notwithstanding the basic reason, I find the idea of eugenics unacceptable.

“…so much marriage and “One Flesh”
I do not see the relation with the beginning of the sentence. Teilhard’s concept of marriage and “one flesh” was quite orthodox as apparent in the homilies he gave at weddings of friends.

“[Teilhard’s works] were on display in the Hall of Atheism in Moscow”
I googled “teilhard de chardin” +moscow + “hall of atheism” but found nothing. I stopped after page 7, but if there had been anything it would have appeared near the top. Presuming that this really happened, the organisers of the show had not read what he wrote about Russian Marxism. After showing why it was attractive to so many, he goes on to say that Communism suppresses the Person and transforms Man into a termite (Oeuvres, IX Science et Christ, p. 181). So much for his “affection for communism”! In Church, Ecumenism and Politics, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI gives a very good and honest assessment of Teilhard’s vision in the last part (Politics) in the chapter on eschatology and utopia. He explains why there might be a certain confusion between Teilhard’s project and the Marxist utopia.

“Pan-Christicism”
From St Paul: En pasi panta Theos. 1 Corinthians xv, 28.) It should be “pan-christism”. I googled to check the spelling and came across an article about Russian Orthodoxy in the 19th century. Here is the quote about pan-Christism: Awaiting the enlightenment and transfiguration of the world, Orthodoxy became essentially more oriented towards the Resurrection, than did Catholicism and Protestantism. Bukharev propounds a genuine pan-Christism, the omni-presence of Christ, a continuing of the Divine Incarnation and the God-man-ising within the world and within the historical process. Vl. Solov’ev teaches not only about God-manhood, but also about God-cosmos, about the Divinised cosmos. For the Russian consciousness there was uncovered as it were the soul of the word in its wisdom, Sophia-ness (http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_345.html). I have noted before similarities between Teilhard’s thought and that of Eastern Christianity and especially Soloviev. Another similarity is the focus on the Resurrection. About the divinisation of man, see CCC, Nos 460, 1129, 1988 and others.

“In relation to the Incarnation?”
There’s no problem there. There would be no pan-Christism without the Incarnation. And Teilhard has written beautiful pages on the Incarnation and on the Blessed Virgin as Mother of God.

“Original sin, Creation and the Redemption”
In Teilhard’s works, Creation, the Incarnation and the Redemption are often linked together. And Original sin is also mentioned in connection with the Creation and the Redemption. For Teilhard, Original sin is linked to the Cosmos just as mankind is linked to the Cosmos.

“Teilhard’s embrace of the priest-worker movement”
??? I was not aware of this. Besides, the movement has been reinstated by Pope Paul VI in 1963.

“The Omega Point”
Pope Benedict gives a fair explanation in the part of Church, Ecumenism and Politics mentioned above.

“The Ultra-Human”
In my search for Teilhard & the Hall of Atheism, I found the translation of one of Teilhard’s works – The Future of Mankind. There is a chapter on his concept of Ultra-Humanity: http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2287&C=2180

Finally, I suppose that you have not yet read Card. Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, for you would have found out that he quotes Teilhard quite extensively.

“I cannot understand why one would not be repulsed by the man”
That is a strong word. I am repulsed by people who commit repulsive actions such as cruelty to people and animals, rape (especially of children), pornography (especially involving children), degrading behaviours (such as gay pride parades – and the ones in San Francisco are particularly disgusting) and so on. Father Teilhard does not fit in any of those categories. Moreover, I find in him much to admire, especially his real humility. When he was forbidden to teach and sent into exile (China, the US) he did not whine all over the place like Hans Kueng even if it caused him great suffering (and bouts of depression). During WWI he was a stretcher-bearer and a corporal; when he was offered to be chaplain with the grade of lieutenant and better lodgings with the officers, he preferred to remain with the soldiers, and share the stench of the trenches. He carried Hosts on his person and could administer the last rites to dying soldiers. His bravery earned him three citations.

Elise B.

Anonymous said...

Pretty much everything that Elise writes makes me think that Teilhard not only lost the plot but never knew the plot to begin with. What a contrast to Catholic Christology.

Cheers!

Joseph Fromm said...

Dear Elise B.
I want to thank you for your heartfelt writing. Jesus Christ is our Just-Judge, even though you and I disagree on the merits of Fr. PTDC's writings,he will/has be/been judged, no-doubt on the totality of his actions, just as you and I will. I would like to point you to two different books. The first one is "The Jesuits" by Malachi Martin, published by Simon and Schuster. The former Jesuit Martin lays out in about 25 pages a pretty convincing case against many of Fr. PTDC's ideas. Martin also puts Fr. PTDC into the context of his time and how his ideas have affected the Society of Jesus as a whole.
The second is called, "Teilhardism and the New Religion" by Wolfgang Smith, published by Tan, although a little hard to read and academic in nature further explores the writings of Fr. PTDC's and juxtaposes them against Catholic theology.

JMJ
Joe

Anonymous said...

Joseph,
I guess that if you rate Malachi Martin above card. de Lubac & former card. now pope Joseph Ratzinger, there's nothing more I can say...
Elise B.

Joseph Fromm said...

Dear Elise B.
It seems we are at an impasse.

Anonymous said...

Hi there. I'm a different 'anon' to the other anon comment leaver/s above. I have a sort of a question... It has seemed to me for a long time that arguments regularly ensue over questions of what is right and what wrong; do you suppose that the motivation behind the Devil tempting Man to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil may have been to demonstrate to God the Creator, that his human creation DID NOT possess a divine spirit within, and thus could not discriminate between Goos and Evil? My own view is that since Eden, Mankind has done virtually not much of anything else BUT prove the Devil largely correct. And by that I mean to say that Mankind has certainly been walking around in a lot of darkness, rather than to imply that the Devil was completely correct. I must say, that in MODERN CONTEXT, it IS possible to associate TdC with other apparently extraneous concepts, other than what he specifically said, if only because he opened such a door himself. Moreover, these are such complicated subjects - today's Hinduism not strictly the same as Sanskrit Holy Writings, chakras not really part of 'Hinduism' per se, and so on. I am almost certain too there is a reference in the Bible somewhere to the 'Seven Holy Angels before God in Asia...' I would not totally discount a TdC viewpoint on some aspect of an Eastern or other-part-of-the-world religious or spiritual idea.

On the separate point of comparing recent Popes to M. Martin or even Andrew Greeley(!), and since people have introduced 'Pauline' and 'Petrine' let us say that Peter was a weak, occasionally deceitful, and betraying man - that Christ used as the bottom rung of whom he said he could save. Thus, I loudly declare the Seat of Peter, is the leader of nothing... ...other than THE example of the lowliest servant who may be saved, and rather than lord things over anyone, ought to acknowledge most of all how grieviously Man can fail to understand what is right or wrong - and has amply shown this over and over. The Church is in need of the real Christ, now, as it was during the Inquisition, and at other times too. Rather than hold them up, were Christ to return today, I expect recent Popes to bend the knee lowest, and thus I do not hold them up highest at this moment, and neither should they do so themselves of themselves, and it seems unwise to me, for current conformists - or conservatives, if you like - to attempt to hold them up either. False indignation is not going to cut it. Neither will overly scholastic referencing to words of other scholars in an attempt to beat down simplicity. In simple terms, the Church today has problems; problems created by power, influence, money, politics, and greed to hold onto the Crown of Rome. I will say what god said, and I will assume that he was not being merely rhetorical: give back to Caesar, the things that are Caesar's... Which of course, must have caused no end of worry to the usurpers and murderers and thieves in Rome, at that time.

J.