© 2013 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
1. …
Love is the most universal, the most formidable, and the most mysterious of cosmic energies. Following centuries of trial and error, social institutions have externally contained and channeled it. Using this situation, moralists have sought to regulate it, — without, moreover, going beyond the level of elementary empiricism in their constructions, where the influences of outdated conceptions of Matter and the trace of ancient taboos linger. Socially, we pretend to ignore it in science, in business, in assemblies, — while, surreptitiously, it is everywhere. Immense, ubiquitous, and always rebellious, — it seems that we have ended up despairing of understanding and capturing this wild force. So we let it (and we feel it) run everywhere, under our civilization, asking it just to amuse us, or not to harm… Is it really possible for Humanity to continue to live and grow without frankly questioning what it is letting lose of truth and strength in its incredible power to love?
From the point of view of spiritual Evolution, admitted here, it seems that we can give a name and a value to this strange energy of Love. Would it not be, quite simply, in its essence, the very attraction exercised, on each conscious element, by the Center in formation of the Universe? The call to the great Union whose realization is the only affair currently in progress in Nature?.. In this hypothesis, according to which (in conformity with the results of psychological analysis) Love would be the primitive and universal psychic energy, does not everything become clear around us, for intelligence and for action? — We can seek to reconstruct the history of the World from the outside, by observing, in their various processes, the play of atomic, molecular or cellular combinations. We can try, even more effectively, this same work, from the inside, by following the progress gradually made, and by noting the thresholds successively crossed, by conscious spontaneity. The most expressive, and most profoundly true, way of telling the story of universal Evolution would undoubtedly be to trace the Evolution of Love.
In its most primitive forms, in barely individualized Life, Love is difficult to distinguish from molecular forces: chemisms, tactics, one might think. Then, little by little, it emerges, but to remain, for a long time still, confused with the simple function of reproduction. It is with Hominization that the secret and the multiple virtues of its violence are revealed, finally and only. “Hominized” Love is distinguished from all other love because the “spectrum” of its warm and penetrating light has been marvelously enriched. No longer only the unique and periodic attraction, with a view to material fertility; but a possibility, without limit and without rest, of contact by the spirit much more than by the body: infinitely numerous and subtle antennae, which seek each other among the delicate nuances of the soul; attraction of mutual awareness and completion, where the concern to save the species gradually merges into the larger intoxication of consuming, together, a World. — Towards Man, through Woman, it is in reality the Universe which advances. The whole question (the vital question for the Earth…) is that they recognize each other.
If Man does not recognize the true nature, the true object of his love, it is the irremediable and profound disorder. Determined to satisfy on a thing too small a passion which is addressed to Everything, he will necessarily seek to fill, by the ever-increasing materiality or multiplicity of his experiences, a fundamental imbalance. Vain attempts, - and in the eyes of those who glimpse the inestimable value of the human “spiritual quantum”, a terrible waste. - Let us leave aside, if you will, all sentimental impressions, and all virtuous scandals. But let us look, very coldly, as biologists or engineers, at the glowing atmosphere of our great cities, in the evening. There, - and everywhere, moreover, - the Earth continually dissipates, in pure loss, its most marvelous power. The Earth burns “in the open air”. How much energy, do you think, is lost in one night for the Spirit of the Earth?.. Let Man, on the other hand, perceive the universal Reality which shines spiritually through the flesh. He will then discover the reason for what, until then, disappointed and perverted his power to love. Woman is before him as the attraction and the Symbol of the World. He could only embrace her by enlarging himself, in his turn, to the measure of the World. And because the World is always greater, and always unfinished, and always ahead of ourselves, - it is to a limitless conquest of the Universe and of himself that, in order to grasp his love, Man finds himself engaged. In this sense, Man could only attain Woman in the consummated universal Union. — Love is a sacred reserve of energy, — and like the very blood of spiritual Evolution: this is what the Meaning of the Earth reveals to us, first of all… 2. The Spirit of the Earth, Works, t. 6, p. 40 to 42 (Éditions du Seuil).
2.
The mutual attraction of the sexes is such a fundamental fact that any explanation (biological, philosophical or religious) of the World which does not result in finding an essential place for it in its structure by construction is virtually condemned. Fixing such a place for sexuality is particularly easy in a cosmic system built on union. But it is still necessary to define it clearly, in the future as in the past. What then are exactly the meaning and essence of love-passion in a Universe with a personal fabric?
In its initial forms, and up to very high in Life, sexuality seems identified with propagation. Beings come together in order to prolong, not themselves, but what they have gained. So intimate is this connection between couple and reproduction that philosophers like Bergson were able to see in it an indication that Life existed more than the living; and that religions as accomplished as Christianity have until now based almost the entire code of their morality on the child.
Quite different, from the point of view to which the analysis of a Cosmos with a convergent structure has led us, things are revealed. That sexuality had at first as its dominant function to ensure the conservation of the species, this is not doubtful, as long as the state of personality had not succeeded in establishing itself in Man. But, from the critical moment of Hominization, another role, more essential, was found to be devolved to love, - a role whose importance we seem to be beginning to grasp: I mean the necessary synthesis of the two masculine and feminine principles in the edification of the human personality. No moralist or psychologist has ever doubted that the two spouses found a mutual completion in the play of their reproductive function. But this completion was never regarded until now as anything other than a secondary effect, incidentally linked to the principal phenomenon of generation. Around us, if I am not mistaken, the importance of factors is, in accordance with the laws of the personal Universe, reversing. Man and woman for the child, — again and for a long time, as long as earthly life has not reached maturity. But man and woman for each other, more and more, and forever.
In order to establish the truth of this perspective, I cannot do otherwise, or better, than to resort to the only criterion which guides our progress during this study: namely, as perfect a coherence as possible of the theory with a wider domain of reality. If man and woman, I would say, were principally for the child, then the role and power of love should diminish as human individuality is completed, and moreover as the population density on Earth approaches its saturation point. But if man and woman are principally for each other, then we understand that, the more they become humanized, the more they feel, by this fact alone, an increased need to come closer together. Now it is this, and not that, which is verified by experience, - and which must be explained.
In the hypothesis, accepted here, of a Universe in the process of personalization, the fact that love grows, instead of diminishing, by becoming humanized, very naturally finds its interpretation - and its extrapolation. In the human individual, we said above, Evolution does not come to a close; but it continues further, towards a more perfect concentration, linked to a subsequent differentiation, itself obtained by union. Well, we will say, woman is precisely, for man, the term capable of triggering this forward movement. Through woman, and through woman alone, man can escape the isolation in which his very perfection risks locking him up. It is therefore no longer rigorously accurate to say that the mesh of the Universe is, for our experience, the thinking monad. The complete human molecule is already around us a more synthetic element, and therefore more spiritualized than the individual person - it is a duality, comprising both masculine and feminine.
Here appears in its magnitude the cosmic role of sexuality. And here, at the same time, we can see the rules that will guide us in the conquest of this terrible energy where passes through us, in a direct line, the power that makes the Universe converge on itself.
(to be continued)
Teilhard de Chardin