I am fascinated by the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest, poet, geologist and anthropologist who found himself in hot water with the Church and with many in the scientific establishment for building a case where the organic and the cosmic complexify along an evolutive axis fashioned by Christ’s love for and supremacy over Creation. What Teilhard did, much to the chagrin of his superiors and scientific colleagues, was reconceptualize the traditional imagery of the redemption through Christ into a redemptive convergence toward a ‘Cosmic Christ’. For him, Gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces operated tangentially and defined the behavior of particles. Christic love, on the other hand, the fifth force and as real as the others, operated along a radial axis that was both hidden from and responsible for the increased interiorization of consciousness and the ultimate unification of that consciousness with the Cosmic Christ.
Teilhard envisioned this directionality as an inclination or impulse or as a far from equilibrium shift toward involution, an embryonic-like transformation that leads to the unification of consciousness with the divine. For Teilhard, there is an inner (radial) and outer (tangential) aspect to the universe which during cosmogenesis turns in upon itself, not unlike what we see when a blastula enfolds to produce the different germ layers during the early stages of embryogenesis.
During the early phases of embryogenesis in amphibians, for example, the egg, once having been fertilized forms a zygote, goes through the process of cell division eventually forming a hollow, fluid filled ball called a blastula. During gastrulation the cells on the surface of the blastula migrate and involute leading to the formation of germ layers which then differentiate into nervous system, internal organs and tissues (organogenesis).
Teilhard often drew from his background as a scientist and his apparent familiarity with embryonic development to describe the multilayered aspects of cosmogenesis and the reciprocal dynamics between the material and the psychic. Ernst Haeckel, a German zoologist, had described gastulation as a mechanism possibly involving invagination as early as 1872. So the comparison, at least on the face of it, between embryogenesis and a cosmic convergence toward an Omega Point (Ω) along ‘privileged axes’ becomes something we can begin to imagine.
This is the Journey where, if we think in terms of ‘resonance’, the amplitude of the vibrational interactions between tangential and radial frequencies create an advancing wave-front that oscillates with the highest relative resonant frequency. Both processes involve the infolding of vibrating layers, both involve directionality, both inexorably led to an increase in complexity, both lead to a convergence. [note: I think it’s interesting that in physics the symbol omega (ω or Ω) represents resonant frequency] For Teilhard Ω represents the Omega point; the point of maximum convergence between the psychic/spiritual and the spiritual/divine. Whether Teilhard viewed the involution of these two aspects as strictly metaphorical or as a real impulse driven by a Christic impulse is a consideration worth pursuing.
I am going to offer up as a hypothesis that for Teilhard, the deeply metaphoric was as real and as central to being alive as his beating heart. For him there was an advancing infolding between the real/effable and the imagined/ineffable whereby both layers , the without and within, converged toward a legitimate and identifable Ω . The deeply metaphoric correspondences between embryogenesis and Cosmogenesis are significant. Both aspects are on an evolutive journey driven by and centered upon the person of Christ. When we say that the metaphor life is a Journey resonates, we are not looking at a hackneyed figure of speech that William Saffire opined as a “vogue word” that has “gone out of control”. We are looking at what happens when the psychic-based within and physical-based without involute and in doing so, resonate.
In any case, Teilhard, it seems to me, was describing a process that operates between and ultimately transforms the inner and outer layers of the world. Involution of the without and within leads to complexification, convergence and unification in Christ.
From: Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Phenomenon of Man . Lulu.com. Kindle Edition.
“The two energies— mind and matter— spread respectively through the two layers of the world (the within and the without) have, taken as a whole, much the same demeanour. They are constantly associated and in some way pass into each other.
“…the exterior world must inevitably be lined at every point with an interior one.”
“Matter no longer spreads out beneath our eyes in diffuse and undefinable layers. It coils up round itself in a closed volume. How will its ‘inner’ layer react to such involution?”
“Thus, wherever we look on earth, the growth of the ‘within’ only takes place thanks to a double related involution, the coiling up of the molecule upon itself and the coiling up of the planet upon itself.”
Life's Lessons on a Road Less Travelled 