Birthday of French Philosopher Chardin

Born on May 1^st 1881 in France, Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, palaeontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books. He took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He conceived the vitalise idea of the Omega Point. With Vladimir Vernadsky he developed the concept of the noosphere.

In 1962, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned several of Chardins works based on their alleged ambiguities and doctrinal errors. Some eminent Catholic figures, including Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, have made positive comments on some of his ideas since. The response to his writings by scientists has been mostly critical.

Osho talks about Buddha field (Noosphere) and Chardin, and says, “The Master simply means a certain noosphere. The word “noosphere” is coined by Chardin, one of the very strange men of this century. He was basically trained as a scientist — he was a geologist — but his whole heart was that of a mystic. It is very unfortunate that he belonged to the Catholic Church, and the Pope prevented him from publishing any of his ideas while he was alive… His approach is very clear, like that of a scientist and yet full of poetry. But the world missed a direct communion with Chardin. The Catholic Church is the culprit — they prohibited. They have always been against anything new happening in the world. So only when he died his friends started publishing his books. Now the people who have come across his books can see what the world has missed, because now they are only words — beautiful words. Chardin coined the word “noosphere”. We are acquainted with the word “atmosphere”; atmosphere means the air that surrounds you, the climate that surrounds you. Noosphere means the world of subtle vibes, thoughts, feelings, that surrounds you. A Master carries a noosphere around himself; I call it the “Buddhafield”.

Jains have a very specific idea about it; they worked very hard to find it, exactly what it is. And I think no other tradition has discovered all the details about the Buddhafield that surrounds a Master like Mahavira. Jains have worked — they were a little bit scientific in their approach — and I agree with their discoveries about the Buddhafield. They say a Master has a Buddhafield around himself extending in all the directions for twenty-four miles — a circle with the radius of twenty-four miles becomes a Buddhafield whenever a person becomes enlightened. No other tradition has worked it out with such scientific detail — even they have measured the length, how big is the circle that surrounds the awakened person. Whosoever is a little bit open entering in the Buddhafield will start feeling something strange that he has never felt before. But it happens only if one is open.”

Osho Says….

This is the meaning of the Christian parable of Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He became interested in higher things, he became interested in knowing things. He ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he started becoming more conscious. He started trying to understand what this reality is. He moves into knowing, and suddenly the doors of the Garden are closed for him. Suddenly he finds himself outside the Garden, and he does not know where the way back is. He has to go farther and farther away. This is what Zen people say: Mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more rivers. Then one has to go on a long journey. Tedious is the journey, full of miseries and nightmares. It is a wandering in a desert where oases are only dreams; they exist not.

And then after a long long journey — it may continue for many many lives — one can come back. This time, coming back has a totally different meaning. Now one comes as a knowing consciousness. One is again innocent, but this innocence is no more ignorant, it is luminous, it is full of light. This is Jesus turning into Christ. Adam finds himself outside the Garden. Jesus wanders in the world. Christ suddenly finds himself back in the Garden one day.

Adam, Jesus, and Christ — these are the three stages of human consciousness. Adam is absolutely unconscious. Jesus is half-conscious, half-unconscious — hence the conflict, the confusion, the division, the tension and Christ is absolute consciousness.

Before we enter into the sutras, this has to be understood because these sutras belong to the last night of Jesus’ earthly life — the departing message to his disciples. He is leaving them. He is going out of the world into God. He is going to die to the world, and will be reborn into God. He is going to become twice-born: the resurrection after the crucifixion. And the resurrection can only be after the crucifixion.

Adam dies to God and is born to the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. And Jesus remains in the limbo — half-half, divided, split. Something he knows and something he does not know; something he understands and something he does not understand. It is kind of cloudy there in the Jesus-consciousness. Adam is clear but fast asleep. Jesus is half awake; his eyes are full of dreams.

Yes, he can see a little bit because he is half awake. Just like in the morning when you are half awake and half asleep, and you can hear the milkman knocking on the door, and you can hear children getting ready for their school, and you can hear the neighbour’s radio. But you are not yet fully alert. Yes, these things go on like ripples, enter into you — you kind of hear, and yet you don’t hear. You go on swinging between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes you hear something and again you are drowned in sleep. You cannot figure out what is happening. Then you are fully awake. Adam dies to God, is born into the world. Jesus lives in the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again.

And these sutras belong to his last night, the departing message to his disciples. Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be of great help.

Teilhard de Chardin believes that ‘the evolution of consciousness depends on three steps.’ And Chardin is one of the most important Christian thinkers of this century. But still he remains confined to Christianity; he cannot soar higher than Christian boundaries. These are the three steps that he talks about. Ordinarily, consciousness is simple, innocent. After that there are three steps. First he talks about complexity. He says ‘Consciousness grows through complexity.’ That is true. The original mind is absolutely simple, its taste is one, it has no duality. And because there is no duality there is no possibility of dialogue, argument. And because there is no possibility of argument and dialogue, there is no possibility of understanding. With the conflict, with friction, one evolves.

So from one, man becomes dual; from unity, duplicity: from duplicity, triplicity: from triplicity, multiplicity. That’s how man goes on growing — complication.

Man’s consciousness is one in the original state, then it becomes many. Through the many… the growth; that is the Hegelian concept of growth, and Marxian too. Hegel calls it ‘the dialectical process’: thesis creates its antithesis, antithesis and thesis join into a synthesis, and the synthesis becomes a thesis and creates its antithesis. And this is how it goes on. You cannot grow if your consciousness is unitary. It has to create a conflict in itself. With the conflict, energy is created. Conflict creates energy, friction creates energy. You strike two stones and fire is born. You strike two dry woods and fire is possible. You rub your hands and electricity is born. All energy is created through friction. So the original human consciousness has to become divided, has to become split, has to become dual. And the more evolved a mind man has, the more fragments he will have. So a thinker is almost a crowd. He is not one, he is not two, he is not three, he is many.

The second state Chardin calls ‘concentration’, because once the unity is lost and man has become many, there arises chaos and one loses one’s identity. One does not know who one is, then an identity is needed, a self is needed, an ego is needed to hold all these fragments together. Otherwise they will start falling apart and you will not be able to survive — hence the ego. Ego is an effort to create a kind of unity inside yourself. The natural unity is lost. Now you have to create an unnatural, synthetic unity. The ego is a synthetic self, a created self, a managed self. One part of your being becomes the master and forces other parts to be slaves. A kind of government arises inside you. Complexity creates energy. Concentration creates a possibility to use that energy; otherwise there will be no use for it. Energy will be there, and energy will kill you. It will be too much and it will be in so many directions. All those directions have to be focused in one direction, the whole energy has to be channelised into one. This is what Chardin calls ‘concentration’; unification around a centre; a self is born, ego is born, discipline is born.

And the third he calls ‘direction’. Once the ego is there, once you have a kind of self, a kind of unity — although managed, but still a unity — then the goal is possible. You can become an arrow, you can have a target in the future.

These three steps Chardin thinks are enough to explain human consciousness. They are not. They are important but not complete. The Hindu vision of life is far more complete. Chardin’s vision is linear: unity, then complexity, then concentration, then direction. And the direction goes on and on, the arrow goes on and on and on, and there is no end to it. It is linear. The arrow goes on for infinity, it never comes back. This is not true. This is logical, but not natural. The Hindu vision is circular. Hindus say everything moves in a circle not in a line. Nature moves in a circle, seasons move in a circle, stars move in a circle, man’s LIFE moves in a circle.

Everything natural moves in a circle. The circle is the way of nature. The linear is just a concept of the mind. The line does not exist in nature. If you are aware of non-Euclidean geometry then you will know.

Euclid believes in line; non-Euclidean geometry says there is nothing like line in existence. The line also is part of a bigger circle, that’s all. No line is straight, and no line can be straight — you cannot draw a straight line. If you draw a straight line, that simply means you are sitting on a circular earth and drawing a straight line. Go on drawing the line from both ends, go on drawing it, and you will find one day that the line has become a circle around the earth. So that small straight line was just a part of a big circle. Hindus say it is circular. To me, the Hindu concept is far more true than the Christian concept of linear progress. But still, my own suggestion is a little different to both. My suggestion is: spiral — neither linear nor circular; evolution is a spiral. In that way both are joined together. In a spiral the progress moves as if it is moving in a line, because it never comes to exactly the same point again.

Christ never becomes Adam again, because Adam was ignorant and innocent, and Christ is innocent and fully aware. He never comes back to Adam, exactly to Adam. So the Hindu concept misses something. But in another sense he becomes Adam again because the innocence is the same, just that now it is fully aware. Then it was not aware, then it was asleep, now it is alert.

In a sense Christ becomes Adam again because it is the same innocence. So Hindus are right. And in a sense Christ never becomes Adam again, because it is luminous innocence. In that sense Christians are right. But they are only half-half right. To have the vision of the full truth, I would like to call evolution a spiral. It comes back to the original point but never on the same plane — on a higher plane. It comes again and again but always on a higher plane.

If you have been trekking in the mountains you know what I mean. You go on a path; the path moves around the mountain. Again you come to the same point, the same rocks, the same valley, the same trees, but a little higher, it is a spiral

To make it a spiral, I would like to add three more steps to it. Chardin says: complexity, concentration, direction. These three more steps have to be added. The first is: awareness, meditation. Concentration is just the beginning. Concentration is not relaxed, it is tense. One cannot concentrate twenty-four hours a day; one will go mad. So concentration can never become natural, but one can meditate twenty-four hours a day. One can live in meditation. It can become natural, it can become like breathing. It can be relaxed. Concentration is focused consciousness. Meditation is just aware consciousness. For example, if you are listening to me, you can listen in a concentrated way. That will tire you, that will exhaust you. If you are listening very very tensely so that you don’t miss a single word, then it will be tiring. But you can listen in a meditative way. That means you are relaxed and open, vulnerable, that’s all. You will not be tired. Listening, for one and a half hours, rather than being tired, you will be enriched, rejuvenated. You will feel more energy afterwards than before, and you will feel more flow in your being. So the fourth thing has to be awareness, meditativeness, openness.

Concentration is directional, meditation is non-directional. Concentration has an object, a content. Meditation has no object, no content; it is just an opening. You are listening to me, a bird starts singing — that too you listen to, a train passes by — that too you listen to. You are not listening to me exclusively, all is included. You are open from all the sides, not only open to me. This is a higher stage of evolution than concentration is: it is de-concentration. And the fifth I call playfulness.

Christianity has no idea of playfulness, and Chardin has no idea of playfulness. ‘Direction’, ‘goal’, ‘purpose’ — that is very business-like, tiring, and makes man sad and serious. Something like playfulness has to be added, because a really grown-up person is capable of play. A really grown-up person is sincere but not serious. Seriousness is a kind of illness because seriousness will create tension in you; it will never allow you to celebrate. Only playfulness can become celebration and joy.

And there seems to be no space for joy in Chardin’s chart — nothing of playfulness. Complexity, concentration, direction — good as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. And they don’t go into creating a happy, celebrating human being. And without celebration what is the purpose? All purpose leads to a purposeless play. You work, but you work finally to relax. You work hard, just so that you are able to play. You work five days, so that at the weekend you can rest on the beach. All purpose leads to purposeless play. So the fifth I call playfulness, non-seriousness, non-purposiveness, celebration, joy.

And sixth I call egolessness.

Ego is needed — because one falls into a chaos, and a synthetic self is needed. But that self is synthetic, plastic, it is not real. It has to be dropped one day. Use it, go beyond it, and throw it! One has to come to egolessness, one has to forget that one exists separately from existence. In that forgetfulness, in that dropping of the ego, one becomes Adam again in a totally new way. One becomes Christ — again unity, again simplicity, again innocence, but now luminous this time. You are twice-born. This way one again comes back to the original simplicity, the original face. But it is higher than the first originality, hence I call it spiral. It is primal innocence, but not just primal innocence. It has immense light in it, it is not dark. It is not primitive, it is the highest point of consciousness. It is divine innocence. What Plotinus calls ‘the One’ — this is the One. First the One was not aware of itself, now the One is aware of itself. God is born in you. In Adam God was a seed, in Christ God has become a flowering. The seed has come to its full manifestation.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: I Say Unto You, Vol 2

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Ye Shall Live Also

8 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on eminent philosophers like Aristotle, Berkeley, Bukharin, Camus, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Russell, Sartre, Schiller, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. A Sudden Clash of Thunder
2. Be Still and Know
3. Dang Dang Doko Dang
4. Beyond Psychology
5. The Rebel
6. Philosophia Perennis Vol.1-2
7. Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky
8. The Invitation
9. Just Like That
10. One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
11. Light on the Path
12. The Empty Boat
13. What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t
14. From Personality to Individuality
15. From Death to Deathlessness