Needs, Wants & Beliefs: Body, Mind & Soul

 

“Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.”

― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

"There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter.“

—  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality that remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For, in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.

A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)

“The feminine is the most formidable of the forces of matter.“

—  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

"The Evolution of Chastity" (1934), as translated by René Hague in Toward the Future (1975) 

“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.“

—  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Matter, which appears to be dense according to physics, actually is made up mostly of empty space, with a few very small particles moving around like planets. At high energy, other particles pass through what appears to be solid matter.

… As you probe more deeply into matter, it appears to have more and more subtle properties. In my view, the implications of physics seem to be that nature is so subtle that it could be almost alive or intelligent.

… The question is whether matter is rather crude and mechanical, or whether it gets more and more subtle, and becomes indistinguishable from what people have called mind.

—David Bohm

from Dialogues with Scientists and Sages: The Search for Unity