The Hours of the Universe (Ilia Delio) Precis by Helene O'Sullivan, MM
#79 Living into a New Consciousness
The Hours of the Universe:
Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey by Ilia Delio
Precis by Helene O’Sullivan, MM
Introduction
Profound suffering can evoke different responses. We may mourn our losses, especially the loss of loved ones to tragedy. But we may also recognize in these disruptions a call to awaken from our stupor to the signs of a new reality breaking forth in our midst. Can we discern a new reality on the horizon?
The New Testament calls our attention to the in-breaking reign of God. The message of Jesus was one of seeing, believing, and trusting in the empowering presence of God. God is doing new things, Jesus proclaimed, but only those with new minds and hearts can see a new world breaking through the cracks of the old. Jesus offered a new set of values, teaching us how to live on the edge of a new tomorrow.
Only if we believe in a new power in our midst can we let go of the old reins of control and allow the Spirit to draw us toward a new future. What we know today from the modern sciences is that evolution is our fundamental reality. Systems of nature work in tandem with the environment, so that when environ-mental conditions thwart the optimization of life, the system finds the necessary tools to adapt, change, or rearrange its organization. The maxim of nature is life seeks more life.
This maxim holds true on the human level as well as throughout all of nature, except we do not follow the principles of nature. Instead, we seek to control nature and direct its course of action.
God was creating long before we arrived on the scene. We are not meant to con-trol nature, but instead to be its mind and heart as it seeks its ultimate fulfillment. If we seek to manipulate nature, it will rise up against us. The narrative of nature can be summed up in one word: evolution.
We are evolutionary nature on the level of self-consciousness. Evolution is a function of information and complexity; an increase in complexity corresponds to a rise in consciousness. It is no surprise that we find ourselves today in a massive shift of consciousness.
Human Support Systems,
such as Religion, Education, etc.,
are Still Closed-Systems
The development of computer technology has drastically increased the amount of information in the human sphere. As a result, consciousness has rapidly complexified, giving rise to new integrated levels that can now be identified as global consciousness and planetary consciousness. While computer technology has enhanced the rate of evolution, most human support systems, including religious/educational/political systems, are still structured according to a static, fixed model of closed systems. A person who is electronically connected is living from an evolutionary open-system consciousness, while the support systems are individuated, closed systems.
Without rewiring support systems along the lines of complex systems, we are headed for global systems failure.
A seminal thinker whom I have relied on to navigate our unfolding world is the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As early as 1917, Teilhard could see a power at work in the physical universe despite the tragic reality of war and suffering. His faith and trust in the immanent presence of God impelled him to see the sufferings of the world as a breaking through of a new reality; neither war, nor the loss of his family members prevented him from seeing the world in a dawning light. His optimism was balanced by a moderate realism that evolution must be the starting point for all human thinking, whether in religion, politics, or education.
He indicated that dialogue between science and religion alone is insufficient to move us to a new level of consciousness. What is needed is a new synthesis that emerges from the insights of science and religion. Evolution, he maintained, is a “dimension” to which all thinking in whatever area must conform. The human person emerges out of billions of years of evolution.
To realize that humans are part of a larger process, which involves long spans of developmental time, brings a massive change to all of our knowledge and beliefs. Teilhard was convinced that the total material universe is in movement toward a greater unified convergence. As life systems unite and form more complex relationships, consciousness rises.
Teilhard describes evolution as the rise of consciousness toward an irreversible personalizing universe. He spoke of the human person as a co-creator. God evolves the universe and brings it to its completion through the human person.
The Power of Invention and Technology Accelerate Evolution
Before the human emerged, Teilhard says, it was natural selection that set the course of morphogenesis; after humans it is the power of invention that begins to grasp the evolutionary reins. The computer, according to Teilhard, has evoked a new level of shared conscious-ness, a level of cybernetic mind giving rise to a field of global mind through interconnecting pathways.
Technology is a new evolutionary means of convergence; it is accelerating evolution by causing humankind to concentrate upon itself through complex levels of information. He sought to redefine faith within a scientific milieu. He challenged the church to accept the implications of the incarnation and to relinquish otherworldliness. His ideas have been met with skepticism and only partially accepted.
The Catholic Church remains fixated on the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant theologian who developed his ideas in the thirteenth century. Although science has undergone three major paradigm shifts since the Middle Ages, the church still relies on medieval theology to explain the mysteries of Christian faith.
While Vatican II opened the doors of the church to the world, theology remains distant from science. Raimon Panikkar, in The Rhythm of Being, writes that theology and cosmology are interlocking disciplines. God and cosmos cannot be separated. Reality is radically relational and interdependent, so that every reality is connected to all other realities, is nothing but relatedness. The world of matter-energy-space-time is our home.
There is an organic unity, a dynamic process, where every part of the whole mirrors the whole, including God. There is no thought, prayer, or action that is not radically cosmic in its foundations, expressions, and effects. Hence, there is no sacredness apart from the secularity of the world.
The mistake of Western thought, Panikkar says, was to begin with identifying God as the Supreme Being, which resulted in God being turned into a human projection. But the divine dimension of reality is not an object of human knowledge; it is, rather, the depth-dimension to everything that exists. Panikkar called this complex reality, in which divinity, humanity, and cosmos together form a trinitarian reality - a cosmotheandric whole.
A theology that does not begin with evolution and the story of the universe is a useless fabrication. Teilhard de Chardin felt the urgency to articulate his challenging ideas. His profound insights help us realize that a new story of the cosmos demands a new understanding of God, and a new understanding of ourselves in relation to God.
Simply put, we cannot speak of God apart from human evolution, an idea that led Teilhard to state that God and world form a complementary pair. God and world are entangled with one another to the extent that talk of God is impossible apart from talk about nature and creative change, and talk of nature makes no sense apart from God.
This book is to help form a new theological vision
for a world in evolution. The title of the book,
“The Hours of the Universe,”
is meant to convey the idea that
the universe is the new monastery,
the place to find God. God is doing new things,
and our response in fidelity and love
can bring forth
a new communion of planetary life.
For Private Circulation Only ~ April 2021
The above is the beginning of Helene O’Sullivan’s Précis of Ilia Delio’s insightful book: The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey by Ilia Delio, Orbis, 2021, Maryknoll, NY. In subsequent folders, we will continue to share excerpts from Helene’s Précis.
Maryknoll Contemplative Community
Maryknoll, NY 10545-0311