WRITINGS IN TIME OF WAR
Pierre Teilhard deChardin
Written at the front and in the trenches during World War I, these essays contain the core of Teilhard deChardin's thought. His central theme is the unity of all life.
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| 1 |
"After each new crisis, mankind has to yield to the evidence that it has changed for the better and has made progress; for life, and life alone, knows what is best for its children, and, what is more, reality always follows the most favourable line of development."
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| 2 |
"The Real incessantly reawakens us to an impassioned awareness of a wider expansion and an all-embracing unity."
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"Human monads are atoms immersed in, nourished by, and carried along by one and the same unfathomable primitive substance; they are elements that are combined and given a special character by a network of intimate interconnections, in order so to constitute a higher unity."
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| 4 |
"The deeper I descend into myself, the more I find God at the heart of my being."
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"Through God, all bodies come together, exert influence upon one another and sustain one another in the unity of the all-embracing sphere."
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| 6 |
"We can count upon creative energy awaiting us, ready to transform us in a way that goes beyond anything that the eye of man has seen or his ear has heard."
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| 7 |
"Seek in utter darkness the dawn of God."
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| 8 |
"From the pantheist point of view, everything in the universe is seen to be radically One, Absolute, and Divine."
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| 9 |
"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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| 10 |
"To share in a hallowed unity, even for a split second, is enough to enable us to glimpse the future promised to our species, and to find the road that will lead us to it."
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| 11 |
"Souls are not a group of isolated monads…they make up one single whole with the universe."
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| 12 |
"Like knots spaced out along a cord, or like the folds into which a single curtain falls, or the eddies forming on one and the same surface, everything that moves and lives in the universe represents, in one particular aspect, the modifications of one and the same thing."
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| 13 |
"From time to time a great common aspiration comes to the surface from roots that lie deep down in mankind. At a given moment, the whole mass of souls thrills as it opens its eyes to a new light. Their multitude, for all its diversity, forms one whole in the unanimous and undisputed acceptance of a truth that is spontaneously taken as established; and, in one body, they set out together as though to find a new Holy Grail."
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| 14 |
"If man believes with sufficient vigour in the force that is creating him, he will soon find that, for all its terrifying uncertainty, the future provides him with a solid footing as he advances."
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| 15 |
"God, the personal and loving Infinite, is the Source, the motive Force and the End of the Universe."
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"Basically, the whole of the world's psychism [psyche] gravitates towards a single centre."
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| 17 |
"Each one of us is linked by all the material, organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him. Not only is he caught up in a network, he is carried along, too, by a stream. All around us, in whatever direction we look, there are both links and currents."
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| 18 |
"If the Will of God is seen with sufficient intensity and realism it positively transforms the universe. It animates and softens all that we suffer; it stimulates and directs all that we initiate; it abolishes chance. It makes it possible for us to live, physically and for ever, within the divine Unity."
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| 19 |
"The bosom of Mother Earth is in some way the bosom of God."
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| 20 |
"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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| 21 |
"Love is the conscious mark in us of the act that creates us by melting us into one."
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| 22 |
"In everything in me that has subsistence and resonance, in everything that enlarges me from within, that arouses me, attracts me, or wounds me from without, it is you, Lord, who are at work upon me – it is you who mould and spiritualize my formless clay – you that change me into yourself."
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| 23 |
"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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"The interplay of the monads would be unintelligible if an aura did not extend from one to another: something, that is, which is peculiar to each one of them and at the same time common to all."
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"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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