Matter Matters

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, a great Jesuit of the century, was thought to be a controversial Christian. While reading his book The Phenomenon of Man, his great contribution to the world, especially to the world of philosophy, one is touched by his humble and simple religious life and by his exceptionally wide knowledge and the new way he looks at existence. At the same time, the reader is disturbed to know that Teilhard was sent to China as a punishment for his scientific approach.

Teilhard, a prophet, a mystic, a scientific philosopher, and a committed priest, was born in 1881 at an Auvergne in the heart of France. He was the fourth in a family of 12 children. At the age of 12 he was sent to the Jesuit college of Longre. His teacher, Henri Bremond, said that he was a serious student, “perhaps too serious”.

At the age of 18, he joined the Jesuit Order. He had hardly started his studies in geology in Paris when the World War I broke out. He was enlisted as a stretcher-bearer and served during the whole period of the war. When the war was over, he returned to his scientific research and became a Professor of Geology in 1920 at the Catholic Institute of Paris.

After three years of Teaching he went to China as a member of the scientific expedition which eventually discovered the Synanthropus, one of the most primitive specimens of man. When he returned to France in 1924, he faced opposition to his scientific ideas from his superiors. It was about this time he made the pathetic remark: “If one tries to break new ground, or to walk in a new path, one walks straight to Calvary.”

In 1927 he went back to China and lived uninterruptedly for 27 years. It was there that he wrote his two famous books: Divine Milieu (1927) and The Phenomenon of Man (1938). Death came to him suddenly at the age of 74 after his return to the USA in 1954. He died peacefully on Easter Sunday April 10, 1955 at St. Patrick’s Church, New York. After Mass he mingled with the crowds, that human phenomenon he loved so much and then went to a concert. That is when he fell. And his last words were: “I don’t remember a thing … oh … this time it is terrible”.

A few years before his death Teilhard had told a priest friend, “Pray hard for me that I may not die bitter”. In fact he did not die bitter, but died as a deserted son. Neither the Church nor the Jesuit Order encouraged him in his work during his life-time. It was only some years after his death; the Church authorities and individual clergymen realized the importance and relevance of Teilhard’s scientific and philosophical ideas. Today more and more people, Christians as well as non-Christians, accept his views and take keen interest in studying his philosophy.

Teilhard’s message
In his book The Phenomenon of Man he talks about pre-life, life, the Alpha Point, the Omega Point, and so on. According to him the pre-life is what we call matter. In calling it ‘pre-life’, he wants to imply that there is already a direction, a tendency, an obscure sort of will in matter.

He distinguishes three things in matter: plurality, by virtue of which the substratum of the tangible Universe, dizzily numerous and minute, slopes down towards a limitless base, disintegrating as it goes. Secondly Unity, which pushes the elements towards each other so as to comprehend them together in one great whole, the Universe. And finally Energy, or capacity for interaction. The immediate consequence of this is that the world forms ‘a system by its plurality, a Totum by its energy’.
What is new here is that we can see matter under the twin categories of duration and of evolution, instead of fixity and geometry. The whole universe in fact, is found to be engaged in an immense evolution, to which astronomy claims to be able to assign an initial date – between five billion five hundred million and eight billion five hundred million. Teilhard recalls at this point that two principal laws rule matter – that of the conservation of energy and that of the degradation of energy. The more the quantum of energy in the world functions, the more it gets used up. This is the fundamental phenomenon of the world which necessarily leads to the “Phenomenon of Man”.

Law of Complexity
The great factor in the evolutionary phenomenon as expounded by Teilhard is the “great law of complexity and consciousness’. It is a law implying a structure, a converging psychic curvature of the world upon itself. This is called the metaphysics of union and fits well into the evolutionary conception of the cosmos. Evolution takes place along the axis of complexification – we pass from the relatively simple to the complex. Thus we pass on to atoms from atomic particles, from atoms to molecule and successively to molecular compounds, carbon compounds, viruses, cells living organism, plants, animals and finally man; briefly pre-life, life and thought.

“All energy”, says Teilhard, “is of a psychic nature.” But this fundamental energy is divided in to two distinct components: a tangential energy, which brings together all the elements of the world in an ever-increasing complexities, and a radical energy which draws it in the direction of a state even more complex and even more directed towards the future.

According to Teilhard, matter and psychism were co-created. Just as man’s body goes back to some primordial matter, which has gradually evolved, so does his psychism or soul. The whole matter is permeated by the spirit, although this is not evident at all levels. The whole man, body and soul, thus emerged form matter. Just as matter evolves from the very beginning into a body that becomes more and more human, so psychism from the very beginning evolves into psychism that becomes more and more human. To put it in Teilhard’s own words: “We must accept what science tells us that man was born from the earth. But more logical than scientists when they lecture to us, we must carry the lesson to its conclusion, that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world, not only his flesh and bones, but also his incredible power of thought.”
The most revolutionary and fruitful aspect of our present age is the relationship it has brought to light between matter and spirit; spirit is no longer independent of matter and vice versa. It follows from this that spirit and matter are two facets of one and the same thing. Man’s soul and his body, the inside and outside (Teilhard would say “within and without”) have existed at all times. In Teilhard’s words: “In the world nothing could ever burst forth as final, across the different thresholds, successively traversed by evolution which has not already existed in some obscure primordial way.” And this applies to life, to consciousness and thought.

Everything matters but only while it’s transforming… Pure energy and back again… it matters… while you got it, better spend it wisely cause we can only spend it once, and by the time it returns… we’re gone, cause we’re wasting it… so really, we’re burning time all while cooling off… like the dead… gone is gone and I, For One, am not gonna waste it! Or atleast just waste as little as possible.

My pictures… in my pictures, I’m saving some of the waste… saving a bit of it, therefore; being busy makes time speed up… so like I said, we’re burning it, DAMMIT! Fastly… and if my subjects would just really look at themselves, they could burn less, by saving themselves… in a picture that only costs 5 dollars.

Well, actually… I need 10 dollars to cover expenses and make a little profit per picture… but that 10 dollars can save some of the time gone by… Lost… and thereby make up for lost energy in remembering who they were, just now… on film.

The Asteroid of 2029 is out there and it’s coming right by us… and if it bumps into another asteroid we haven’t mapped yet… then it in FACT it is coming right AT US! And we don’t even know it! If you will only remember this picture whenever you go… you might just be fortunate enough to recognize our destiny before it returns to haunt as fate.

In the land of the rising… before it’s too late… we’re waiting blindly, while the rising comes… the rising will obliterate us before 2029... We won’t even make it to 2029... SHIT! We may not even make it to Christmas!

I’m scared that I may have already waited too long to save myself… because my depression wastes energy… burns it… and trying not to drink too much is depressing… which makes me waste more than I can save. So, basically, I drink to forget how depressing everything is… But everything matters.

Especially my portraits… which energize the moment and theoretically can slow the effects of time… stop it even… while Polaroids cool down, so are we… therefore; my pictures save lives… a little bit at a time… because the Instant Memory applauds us and our Heroism is Living a great life, NOW. Bad lives burns more cells.

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