In The Human Phenomenon, Teilhard describes a universal love ” capable of embracing the totality of men and the Earth “. Let’s look, as he likes to do, at the Inside of things, about the actions of the nursing staff towards the patients of Covid 19, actions for which we thank them every evening at 8 pm from our homes.
This extraordinary dedication of caregivers shows us to what extent men and women are capable of surpassing themselves and mobilizing all their courage and tenacity, at the risk of their lives, and beyond what was thinkable and even possible before the pandemic. Is this not the sign of ” that irresistible instinct which (we) carry towards the Unity “ – the unity of the common cause of healing of the sick – and that the passion – passion of human brotherhood pushed to the point of human love – exalts ?
This human love, carried beyond the strict professional conscience, this altruistic love going beyond the forms commonly admitted in the current of our lives, this love-passion or better this love-compassion of the nursing staff, is it not the universal love or the Love-Energy of which Teilhard speaks to us ? R. Mayet
Let’s reread an excerpt from Phénomène humain (Editions du Seuil, 1955, p. 293-298. Pocket edition, p. 265-269)
” Of love we usually consider (and with what refinement of analysis !) only the sentimental side : the joys and sorrows it causes us. It is in its natural dynamism and in its evolutionary significance that I find myself led to study it here, in order to determine the ultimate phases of the human Phenomenon.
Considered in its plain biological reality, love (i.e. the affinity of the being for the being) is not special to the Man. It represents a general property of all Life, […].
The love under all its nuances, is nothing else, nor nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked in the heart of the element by the psychic Convergence on itself of the Universe…
Only love, for the good reason that only it takes and joins the beings by the bottom of themselves, is able, – it is there a fact of daily experience, – to complete the beings, as beings, by joining them. […]
L’Humanité the Spirit of the Earth the Synthesis of individuals and peoples the paradoxical reconciliation of the Element and the Whole, of Unity and Multitude For these things, said to be utopian, and yet biologically necessary, to take shape in the world, is it not enough to imagine that our power to love develops until it embraces the totality of mankind and of the Earth ?
But, one may say, is it not precisely there that you put your finger on the impossible !
All a man can do, is to give his affection to one or a few rare human beings. Beyond that, in a larger radius, the heart no longer carries, and there is only room for cold justice and cold reason. To love everything and everyone : a contradictory and false gesture, which ultimately leads to loving nothing.
But then, I will answer, if, as you claim, a universal love is impossible, what is the meaning, in our hearts, of this irresistible instinct which carries us towards Unity every time, in any direction, our passion is exalted ? […]
A universal love : not only is it psychologically possible ; it is the only complete and final way in which we can love. […]
… – so that the conspiracy of the human monads operates, – it is necessary and sufficient that, extending our science to its last limits, we recognize and accept, as necessary to close and balance the Space-Time, not only some vague existence to come, but also (…) the reality and the radiation already existingI have named it Omega.
