3.2. The point of Universal convergence
It was without any doubt one of Teilhard de Chardin's most
cherished convictions that the cosmos as a whole is somehow converging towards
the Omega Point2:
L..] in the heart of a universe prolonged along its axis
of complexity, there is a divine centre of convergence. That nothing may be
prejudged, and in order to stress its synthesizing and personalising function,
let us call it the point Omega.3
He felt that cosmic evolution must have a term, and that this
end can only be conceived as a point or centre of universal convergence. Mary
LINSCOTT expresses this fact when she avers:
Socialisation energised by love and leading towards
unification prepares the consummation of the world but it is a process which
cannot go on for ever, Teilhard holds that everything that rises must converge
and, when he projects the curve of evolution into the future, he postulates a
final convergence which will be the culmination of evolution: the fullness both
of the unity of the species and the personalisation of the individual. This is
the pleroma seen as the completion of the scientific phenomenon of evolution.
Teilhard calls it the Omega point.4
It is evident therefore that it is evolution that depends on
Omega and not the reverse. Teilhard de Chardin takes his final step and
identifies Omega with Christ. Faith
I Claude Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin,
London, I965, p. 303.
2 See appendix I and appendix II.
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of
Man, New York, I964, p. I27.
4 Mary Linscott, Teilhard today, Rome, I972,
p. 37.
78 had to go on to identify the Omega of scientific deduction
with the cosmic Christ of revelation and, in this light; the transformation of
the world became the fullness of evolution not only as a scientific phenomenon
but as a Christian phenomenon too. In effect, in the process of totalisation,
the Omega of evolution is to be identified with the Christ of Revelation:
If the world is convergent and if Christ occupies its
centre, then the Christogenesis of St. Paul and St. John is nothing else and
nothing less than the extension, both awaited and unhoped for, of that
noogenesis in which Cosmogenesis culminates.'
Hence, the divine Omega is rooted in the Person of Christ,
source and object of love, through whom mankind is destined to achieve its
ultimate unity on a new plane of being. The Prime Mover to speak like
Aristotle, the centre of the Civilization of the Universal, actuates all the
energies of the universe. Epoch-making as it may be, the scientific recognition
of an Omega Point as the ultimate term of Cosmo genesis was for Teilhard de
Chardin the first major step towards an even more momentous discovery: the
realization, namely, that the Omega Point of Science coincides in reality with
Christ. What appears to the eye of science as a universal centre of attraction
and confluence is in reality none other than the cosmic Christ of Saint
Paul:
It was to be the work, and the constant joy of the next 20
years to see, step by step, and keeping pace with one another, two convictions
build up around me, each gaining strength from the other: Christic "density"
and the "cosmic density" of a world whose "communicative power" I could see
increasing with the increase in its "power of convergence"...The heart of
"amorized" matter, of matter impregnated with love.2
In Teilhardian metaphysics, the layers of matter considered as
separate elements no less than as a whole, tauten and converge by synthesis. It
is not simply a question of
I Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in Cuenot, C.,
Teilhard de Chardin, London, I965, p. 297. 2 Ibid., p.
375.
79 isolated regions detaching themselves from the rest of the
cosmos, but of a universal convergence to a single Apex, the Omega
Point.I
First, Omega is a pole. It is a centre in itself and it is not
directly comprehensible to us even though its divine nature allows us to
formulate the conditions which must be met in order that it fulfils its role.
Omega must be supremely present, with a mastery over time and chance and it
must be a personalizing focus, a Person distinct from all persons whom it
completes in unifying.
Secondly, Omega must be conceived as a summit of
transcendence, a primeval transcendence, a transcendent reality. Omega must
also be looked at as a centre of centres, a centre of a superior order which
waits for us, no longer besides us, but also apart and above us.
The main reasons for the nature and function of the Omega
Point are based on love and love is the highest energy that can personalize by
totalisation: it is the highest form of radial energy:
Love is the most universal, the most formidable and the
most mysterious of cosmic energies. [...] The progress towards Man, through
Woman, is in fact the progress of the whole universe. The vital concern for
Earth [...] is that these bearings be established.'
For human beings, "love alone takes them and joins them by
what is deepest in themselves".3
Omega is thus the pinnacle of humanisation, the summit of the
Civilization of the Universal. The final union of the converging forces of
evolution must entail not repression or diminution, but expansion and
fulfilment. Omega must therefore be a supreme centration, the focus in which
are united without any loss of identity all the individual centres of men,
taking up into themselves the full development of the material cosmos.
I See appendix I and appendix II.
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in Cuénot,
C., Teilhard de Chardin, London, I965, p. II2.
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of
Man, New York, I959, p. 256.
According to Teilhard de Chardin, "autonomy, actuality,
irreversibility, and thus, finally, transcendence are the four attributes of
Omega".I All these four attributes simply refer to a Perfect
Being in whom the universe is personalized by His very nature.
Omega is not a potential centre, but something real and
already in existence and only a sufficiently high degree of socialisation will
enable man to reflect it. The ultra-reflection, which is the way through which
men could reach the Omega Point, is the third and final stage of reflection
after the birth of consciousness in man and the stage of co-reflection.
Teilhard de Chardin stresses the fact that the ultra-reflection does not
consist in bringing all men into a single supra-consciousness in such a way
that their personal identity and their individuality would disappear. Every
gigantic effort to reduce the multitude of mankind to some order seems to have
ended by slitting the human person, because none is higher than each man's
personal consciousness and freedom.
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