FM> Please satisfy my curiosity, David.  Are you referring to _The
 FM> Phenomenon of Man_,  _How I Believe_  or some of his more mystic and
 FM> autobiographical writings, the name of which escapes me. I knew almost
 FM> nothing of his personal belief until I read the _How I Believe_.  One
 FM> might INFER some things from his other writings, to be sure.  Nothing
 FM> like somebody coming right out and telling you in plain language as he
 FM> did.
 DM> Been about 25/30 years since I spent serious time reading him. He
 DM> touched me in the head and I never forgot ....in fact, of the three
 DM> people in my life able to light my candles, he was the
   Are the other two people published authors or family members you prefer 
ot
to name?  
   At any rate, it was, coincidentally, about the same length of time ago 
hat
I first became acquainted with Chardin, not, at first through his most famous
work but through some lecture and films developed by followers attempting to
diagram his notion of the progression from biosphere through noosphere to
culmination in the Divine drawing force of his "within of things."
   I gather that Chardin is, however, merely a category of thought that you
once encountered, that it exacted a certain youthful emotion which you feel
you have outgrown or placed in some more modern and contemporary context.  Am
I accurate in this supposition?
   As I might have intimated in some earlier post, my earlier life was cast 
n
the mode of Evangelistic Fundamentalism, foreign to that which the
well-educated Jesuits know as transcendence.  Circumstances dictated that I
only began higher education after reaching some maturity following service in
World War II.  It was only then that I became familiar with the great
Christian mystics though oddly enough my education was in "secular"
institutions where it was only accidental when one encountered
non-positivistic professors and was introduced to non-positivistic 
iterature.
My only encounter to that point with "mysticism" was with the story of St.
Paul and his visions or with the notion that the older prophets in Judaism
were "busy predicting future political events" or "hearing the literal voice
of God dictating in detail what kings and people should DO!"  
   Then I began to hear about and the read people like Meister Eckhardt and
discover to my very great surprise that these men and women did not speak in
terms of "hearing voices outside of their consciousness" or "voices contrary
to reason" but simply did not accord the various religious rituals of the age
and milieu into which they had been placed of any great importance in the
thoughts they considered authentic.  Eckhardt was quite clear about this and 

found that in contrast to the religious institutions of which I had 
xperience
where bowing and scraping to the deity was not something they felt to have
ANYTHING TO DO WITH communication with the divine.  If anything, they hardly
made any distinction at all between the "divine" and the "human" within their
experience of consciousness except as poles of a tension.  When Chardin came
along and spoke so clearly on the rejection of any necessity of an assumption
of survival of an individual ego in the final resolution of any eschatology
this was even more of a revelation to me and it squared with what I learned
from Voegelin in the serious investigation along purely philosophical lines.
Of course Martin Buber, Nicolas Berdiaev and from the more modern evangelical
tradition, Peter Bertocci appeared to confirm these suspicions that divinity
was not related to some entity BEYOND consciousness associated with some
archetypical figure unchained somewhere in the blue.  
   It then became clearer to me that reality of the experiences within
consciousness as related at first or second hand down through the centuries 
f
man's existence whether paleontological (fossil leavings) or historical
(written records) were NOT related to the gnostic notion of some mysterious
beyond to be reached through gradations of ACTIONS on the part of the
experiencing consciousness but were PRESENT right there in the experiencing
consciousness itself.  Lying or sitting around waiting for some audible voice
from some concrete BEYOND made less and less sense, no matter how deeply the
Fundementalist believes this to be the ONLY contact of the human with the
divine in the world.  The notion of "God" writing books or of "Moses" writing
books had seemed rather strange to me even BEFORE I began to meditate
seriously on man's actual existence and experience.   I listened very
carefully to Voegelin's insistence that there IS NO TRUTH LYING AROUND
SOMEWHERE FOR SOMEBODY TO STUMBLE UPON THROUGH A FORTUITOUS DISCOVERY.  The
truth of existence is not OUT THERE SOMEWHERE but is precisely the 
ealization
of the reality existing WITHIN this consciousness which reveals and is
revealing itself in many modes and certainly not always harmoniously and in
complete fullness.
   That is the point of contact that I found with Chardin's stress on the
"within of things" which I found far more important than his mechanics of the
evolutionary process.  It is obvious from some of the observations of some of
the haters of humanity who post here on this echo that the availability of
what IS revealed in consciousness is NOT available to all "conscious" beings
and why that is so IS a mystery.  Plato could only write what he had
discovered and Aristotle could only take that and enlarge upon it - BOTH were
quite well aware that the hordes of human beings who, of necessity, had to be
politically assembled and ruled throughout epochs lacked the spiritual
sensitivity to operate outside of confining religions (civic clubs for
compatible families) or ideologies (secular aping of the dynamics at the
origin of the religious impuleses.  
   This does not mean that Chardin is other than one of the forces ringing
true in a certain phase of what I uncovered as the truth of existence
available for my feeble grasp.  
 DM> higher than his words reflect. I found (find) him scary. Those that can
 DM> enter and expand another's mind also take something from it. As
 DM> over-mentioned in previous postings, the learning/thinking experience is
 DM> NOT simple for me.
    I am quite serious; why did you find him "scary."  That puzzled me, I 
ust
confess.  
 DM> tip of memory. There was much overlap between writings. I cannot
   That is what I deduced from what I read OF him and ABOUT him.  This is
often true of great thinkers in one mode or another.  Nicolas Berdiaev wrote 

multitude of books, all about the same thickness, but they all come out of a
store of knowledge of philosphy AND religion and although they bear different
titles one finds oneself reading virtually the same thing albeit with certain
quotes pointed up.  Only in one of them, for example, will you find his
assurance [paraphrase] that the "saved or not going to climb into heaven over
the suffering bodies of the damned" which they appear so greatly to enjoy as
they contemplate some grand "rapture."  Such an experience of the Christian
gospel would have been repugnant to him.  Moreover, he was honest enough not
to give any philosophical assurance of the truth of Christianity but he had
found in philosophical searching that without some kind of redeeming act it
was virtually impossible to make sense of the world.  
   Well, that's it for this post.  If you aren't asleep by now. zzzzzzz
(grin).
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
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