Great Throughts Treasury

"Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God… it is you, matter, that I bless. "

"We have only to believe. And the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately we must believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more than human arms. "

"We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole."

"In the spiritual life, as in all organic processes, everyone has their optimum and it is just as harmful to go beyond it as not to attain it."

"We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion… To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits."

"The day is not far distant when humanity will realize that biologically it is faced with a choice between suicide and adoration."

"The future is more beautiful than all the pasts."

"It is our duty as men and women to behave as though limits to our ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation of the Universe."

"Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis."

"Love is the most powerful and still most unknown energy in the world."

"Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore."

"Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution."

"Man only progresses by slowly elaborating from age to age the essence and the totality of a universe deposited within him."

"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation."

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

"The world can no more have two summits than a circumference can have two centres."

"The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed."

"Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas."

"Through the incarnation God descended into nature in order to super-animate and take it back to him."

"We are like soldiers who fall during the assault which leads to peace."

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

"The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love. "

"The world is round so that friendship may encircle it."

"The world, this palpable world, which we were wont to treat with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association for us, is in truth a holy place, and we did not know it. "

"We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other."

"A breeze passes in the night. When did it spring up? Whence does it come? Whither is it going? No man knows."

"A first result of the 'mass-setting' which mankind is gradually undergoing at this moment is that every one of us, taken in isolation, is becoming less and less materially self-sufficient. A series of new needs, which it would be puerile and anti-biological to regard as superfluous and artificial, is continually making itself felt in us. It is no longer possible for us to live and develop without an increasing supply of rubber, of metals, oil, electricity and energy of all sorts. No individual could henceforth manage to produce his daily bread on his own. Mankind is more and more taking the form of an organism that possesses a physiology and, in the current phrase, a common 'metabolism'. We may, if we please, say that these ties are superficial, and that we will loose them if we wish."

"A glow rippled outward from the first spark of conscious reflection [noosphere]. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever-widening circles, he wrote, "till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence."

"A center different from all other centers which it "super-centers" by assimilating them; a person distinct from all other persons whom it fulfils by uniting them to itself. The world would not function if there were not somewhere ahead in time and space a "cosmic point omega" of total synthesis... Omega, he towards whom all things converge is reciprocally he from whom all things radiate? Omega itself, is discovered by us at the end of the process... of universal synthesis."

"A love (a true love) of God is perfectly possible; for, if it were not, all the monasteries and churches in the world would be emptied overnight, and Christianity, in spite of its framework of ritual and teaching and hierarchical order, would inevitably collapse into nothingness. And on the other hand, this love has in Christianity something stronger than it has anywhere else. Were this not so, all the virtues and all the charms of the tenderness we find in the gospels could not have prevented the teaching of the Beatitudes and of the Cross from long ago having made way for some more assertive Creed ?and more particularly for some humanism or ?terrenism?. Whatever may be the merits of other religions, and whatever the explanation that may be given, it is indisputable that the most ardent collective focus of love ever to appear in the World is glowing hic et nunc at the heart of the Church of God."

"A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and super-live?, as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so. ?In a system of cosmo-noo-genesis, the comparative value of religious creeds may be measured by their respective power of evolutive activation.? If we use this criterion, where, among the various currents of modern thought, can we hope to find, if not the fullness at least the germ, of what (judging by its power to ultra-hominize) may be regarded as the Religion of tomorrow? In this order of ideas, we immediately meet a fact which it is impossible to reject. It is this: the sort of Faith that is needed, in terms of energy, for the correct functioning of a totalized human world has not yet been satisfactorily formulated in any quarter at all ? neither among the religions of the Ahead (Marxist and other Humanisms) nor among the religions of the Above (the various theisms and pantheisms)."

"A new domain of psychical expansion--that is what we lack. And it is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it."

"A neo-spirituality for a neo-spirit, in a universe whose convergent nature has been recognized."

"A progressive democrat is not fundamentally different from a really progressive totalitarian."

"All around us, tangibly and materially, the thinking envelope of the Earth--the Noosphere--is multiplying its internal fibers and tightening its network; and simultaneously its internal temperature is rising, and with this its psychic potential."

"All abstract knowledge is a faded reality: this is because to understand the world is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality."

"All around us, to right and left, in front and behind, above and below, we have only to go a little beyond the frontier of sensible appearances in order to see the divine welling up and showing through. But it is not only close to us, in front of us, that the divine presence has revealed itself. It has sprung up universally, and we find ourselves so surrounded and transfixed by it, that there is no room left to fall down and adore it, even within ourselves. By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers."

"Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability? and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually?let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don?t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete."

"Already, in the social and biological field, the fact of our recognizing that, as a result of the properties of love, the universe becomes personalized as it concentrates, was enabling us to avoid both fragmentation through individualization and mechanization through collectivism. Now, in the domain of mysticism, the same light shows us the channel between two equally dangerous reefs. Ever since man, in becoming man, started on his quest for unity, he has constantly oscillated, in his visions, in his ascesis, or in his dreams, between a cult of the spirit which made him jettison matter and a cult of matter which made him deny spirit: omegalization allows us to pass between this Scylla and Charybdis of rarefaction or the quagmire. Detachment now comes not through a severance but through a traversing and a sublimation; and spiritualization not by negation of the multiple or an escape from it, but by emergence. This is the via tertia that opens up before us as soon as spirit is no longer the opposite extreme but the higher pole of matter in course of super-centration. It is not a cautious and neutral middle course, but the bold, higher road, in which the values and properties of the two other roads are combined and correct one another."

"Also false and against nature is the racial ideal of one branch draining off for itself alone all the sap of the tree and rising over the death of other branches. To reach the sun nothing less is required than the combined growth of the entire foliage."

"Although we are not as alive to it as we should be, the key question that is beginning to present itself to Mankind in process of planetary arrangement, is a problem of spiritual activation. In our recent mastery of the Atomic we have reached the primordial sources of the Energy of Evolution. This decisive victory cannot be carried to its conclusion unless, to match it at the other pole of things, we find a way to increase the Drive of Evolution to an equal degree within the Noosphere. New powers call for new aspirations. If Mankind is to use its new access of physical power with balanced control, it cannot do without a rebound of intensity in its eagerness to act, to seek, to create. For a reflective being, such an eagerness for self-fulfillment can fundamentally be found only in the expectation of a supreme Summit of consciousness which can be attained, and so provide a permanent home. And such a hope-inspired faith in some future consummation cannot, in turn, take any form but that of a ?religion? in the truest, and most psychologically apt, meaning of the word."

"Although the form is not yet discernible, mankind tomorrow will awaken to a 'pan-organized' world."

"And what does that amount to if not (and it is quite credible) that the stuff of the universe, by becoming thinking, has not yet completed its evolutionary cycle, and that we are therefore moving towards some new critical point that lies ahead. In spite of its organic links, whose existence has everywhere become apparent to us, the biosphere has so far been no more than a network of divergent lines, free at their extremities. By effect of reflection and the recoils it involves, the loose ends have been tied up, and the noosphere tends to constitute a single closed system in which each element sees, feels, desires, and suffers for itself the same things as all the others at the same time."

"Among those who theorize about Biogenesis, there are still many who speak as though the cosmic (anti-entropic) drift into Arrangement ultimately found expression in a diversifying and dispersing expansion of living forms. If the fact of terrestrial co-reflection is correctly interpreted, however, we see that when this drift has fully developed it inevitably takes on the form of a centration of the hominized portion of the Stuff of Things, which at the same time differentiates and fosters a common unanimous mind and spirit."

"An accord between faith and science is certain, provided both converge. Science will not come to the feet of a theologian."

"As a result of the progressive extension of the realm of Science by the study of comparative religion, this great event (which for nearly two thousand years has been universally regarded in the West as unique in world-history) might at first appear to be now passing through an eclipse, in the same way as did Man?s appearance in Nature during the Quaternary age, when Darwinism first came on the scene. ?Christianity: a remarkable sort of religion, of course: but only one among many, and for only a particular period of time.? That is what the vast majority of ?intelligent? persons say to themselves, and openly proclaim, more or less explicitly. In the case of Man, all that was needed to restore the Human to its primacy ? no longer at the center, but now at the head of things ? was the gradual entry into our world-view of the place and evolutive function of Reflection. In just the same way, it seems to me, Christianity is far from losing its primacy in the vast religious medley let loose by the totalization of the modem world; on the contrary it is regaining and consolidating its axial, directive, place as the spear-head of human psychic energies ? so long, that is, as we allow sufficient weight to its extraordinary and effectively significant of ?pan-amorization?."

"And now, as a germination of planetary dimensions, comes the thinking layer which over its full extent develops and intertwines its fibers, not to confuse and neutralise them but to reinforce them in the living unity of a single tissue."

"As far as human origins are concerned, science certainly has a lot to discover and Catholics a lot to think about. What we can foresee is that the Church will increasingly recognize the scientific validity of an evolutionary form of creation and science will make more room for the powers of spirit, liberty and, consequently, of "improbability" in the historical evolution of the world."

"Are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

"As I pointed out, for one form of synthesis that brings freedom there are hundreds of others that lead only to the vilest forms of bondage. We are only too conscious of this; but how can we come together in such a way as to free ourselves? In virtue of the laws of moleculization, the problem obviously consists in finding the way of grouping ourselves together not 'tangentially', in the nexus of an extrinsic activity or function, but radially', center to center; how to associate in such a way as, by synthesis, to stimulate deep within ourselves a progress that is directly centric in nature. In other words, what we have to do is to love one another because love is equally by definition the name we give to 'inter-centric' actions. By its nature, love is the only synthesizing energy whose differentiating action can super-personalize us. But just how can one ever contrive to love a multitude? if we set the two words side by side, love and multitude, surely they enclose a contradiction?"