Many spiritually oriented individuals have as their personal aim the realization of union with the Divine. Many spiritual paths view the sense of union with all humanity as being preliminary or at least concurrent with Divine union. It is to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., that contemporary religion owes its increasing capacity to see humanity as an interrelated whole and its will to transform religious thinking into global consciousness. Teilhard wrote:
Across the immensity of time and the disconcerting multiplicity of individuals, one single operation is taking place…. one single thing is being made: the Mystical body of Christ (Teilhard de Chardin 1960, p. 143).
Reflecting on Teilhard’s worldview, Catholic scholar Ewert Cousins wrote:
Clearly, the earth is on a trajectory toward unification. That we of the twenty-first century can conceptualize this process spiritually is due in large part to the prophetic vision of the Jesuit mystic-scientist (Cousins 1985).
Teilhard the Man
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Halligan, F.R. (2020). Teilhard de Chardin. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_686
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