© 2013 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
The first of these rules is that love, in accordance with the general laws of creative union, serves the spiritual differentiation of the two beings it brings together. Neither, therefore, should one absorb the other, — nor, still less, should both lose themselves in the pleasures of a bodily possession which would mean falling into the plural and returning to nothingness. This is common experience. But this is only well understood in the perspective of Spirit-Matter. Love is an adventurous conquest. It holds, and develops, like the Universe itself, only by a perpetual discovery. Those, therefore, only love each other legitimately whom passion leads, both of them, one through the other, to a higher possession of their being. Thus the gravity of the faults against love is not to offend I know not what modesty or what virtue. It consists in squandering, by negligence or by voluptuousness, the reserves of personalization of the Universe. It is this loss which explains the disorders of “impurity”. And it is this loss which, at a higher level in the developments of the union, forms the subject of a more subtle alteration of love: I mean selfishness in two.
(…) When two beings, among the swarm of beings, manage to meet, between whom a great love is possible, they immediately tend to close themselves in the jealous possession of their mutual completion. Under the effect of the fullness which invades them, they instinctively seek to close themselves in each other, to the exclusion of the rest. And even if they manage to overcome the voluptuous temptation of absorption and rest, they try to limit the promises of the future to their mutual discovery, as if they constituted a Universe for two.
Now, after all that we have said about the probable structure of the Spirit, it is clear that this dream is only a dangerous illusion. By virtue of the same principle which obliged the “simple” personal elements to complete themselves in the couple, the couple in turn must pursue beyond itself the achievements that its growth requires. And this in two ways. On the one hand, it must seek, outside, other groupings of the same order with which to associate itself in order to center itself more (…) On the other hand, the Center towards which the two lovers converge by uniting must manifest its personality at the very heart of the circle where their union would like to isolate itself. Without going outside itself, the couple finds its balance only in a third in front of it. What name should we give to this mysterious “intruder”?
As long as the sexual elements of the World had not reached the state of personality, the offspring could represent by itself the reality in which the authors of generation were extended in some way. But as soon as love began to play out, no longer only between two parents, but between two people, then it was necessary to discover, more or less confusedly, in front of the lovers, the Final Term where would be both saved and consumed, not only their race, but their personality. And then begins the “fall forward” whose twists and turns we have already followed. Step by step, we must go to the end of the World. And finally it is the Total Center itself, much more than the child, which appears necessary for the consolidation of love. Love is a function with three terms: man, woman and God. All its perfection and success are linked to the harmonious balance of these three elements *.
* Outline of a Personal Universe, Works, vol. 6, pp. 91 to 95 (Éditions du Seuil).
3. … A noble passion gives wings. This is why the best reagent to recognize to what extent a love is elevated would be to observe to what extent it develops in the direction of a greater freedom of spirit. The more spiritual an affection is, the less it absorbs, — and the more it pushes to action. (…)
… love is the threshold of another Universe. Beyond the vibrations that we know, the iris of its nuances is still growing. But, in spite of the fascination that the lower hues exert on us, it is only towards the “ultra” that the creation of light progresses. It is in these invisible, and as if immaterial, zones that the true initiations into unity await us. The depths that we lend to Matter are only the reflection of the heights of the Spirit.
This point seems to us to be decided by human experience and thought. (…)
… from the point I have reached, I seem to distinguish around me the two following phases in the creative transformation of human love. — During a first phase of Humanity, Man and Woman, withdrawn into the physical gift and the care of reproduction, gradually develop, around this fundamental act, a growing halo of spiritual exchanges. This halo was at first an imperceptible fringe. Little by little, it is in it that the fertility and the mystery of the union emigrate. And then, finally, it is in its favor that the balance is broken. But, at this precise moment, the center of physical union from which the light emanated proves powerless to support new increases. The center of attraction suddenly throws itself back, as if to infinity, forward. And, to continue to seize each other further in the spirit, the lovers have to turn their backs on the body, to pursue each other in God. Virginity is placed on chastity as thought on life: through a reversal, or a singular point. Of course, such a transformation, on the surface of the Earth, cannot be instantaneous. Essentially, Time is needed. The water that we heat does not vaporize all at once. In it, the “liquid phase” and the “gas phase” coexist for a long time. It is necessary. However, under this duality, there is only one event in progress, - whose meaning and “dignity” extend to the whole. - Thus, at the present time, the union of bodies retains its necessity and its value for the race. But its spiritual quality is now defined by the type of higher union that it nourishes, after having prepared it. Love is in the process of “changing state” within the Noosphere. And it is in this new direction that the collective passage of Humanity into God is being prepared.
This is how I imagine the evolution of Chastity.
Theoretically, this transformation of love is possible. For its realization, it is enough that the call of the divine personal center be felt strongly enough to dominate the natural attraction which would tend to cause the couples of human monads to rush towards each other, before time.
In practice, I do not hide it from myself, the difficulty of the attempt seems so great that everything I have written in these pages would be taxed by nine-tenths of men with naivety or madness. Is not experience universal and conclusive that spiritual loves have always ended in the mud? Man is made to walk on the ground. Has anyone ever had the idea of flying!..
Yes, madmen have had this dream, I will answer. And that is why, today, the air is ours. What paralyzes life is not believing and not daring. The difficult thing is not to solve problems, it is to pose them. Now, we see it now: seizing passion to make it serve the spirit would be, from biological evidence, a condition of progress. So, sooner or later, through our disbelief, the World will take this step. Because everything that is truer is found; and everything that is better ends up happening.
Some day, after the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we will capture, for God, the energies of love. — And then, a second time, in the history of the World, Man will have found Fire *.
* The Evolution of Chastity, Unpublished
4. What does this mean, Lord, if not that through all the breadth and thickness of the Real, through all its Past and all its Becoming, through all that I undergo and all that I do, through the servitudes, the initiatives, and the very work of my life, I can reach you, unite myself with you, and progress indefinitely in this union!
The triple dream of love, you realize it with an unheard-of fullness, through your Incarnation: — envelop yourself in the loved Object until you are drowned in it, — constantly intensify its presence, — and lose yourself in it without being able to be satisfied…
May the substantial and mortifying influence of Christ spread ever more in all beings, and may it descend from there upon me to vivify me!..
May the temporary and circumscribed contact with the sacramental species introduce me to a universal and perpetual communion with Christ, his omni-active will, his unlimited mystical Body!.. *
* The Priest, Writings from the Time of War 1916-1919, p. 297 (Éditions Grasset).
5. What I call, like every being, with the cry of my whole life, and even with all my earthly passion, is something quite different from a fellow human being to cherish: it is a God to adore. Oh! to adore, that is to say to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to plunge oneself into the inexhaustible, to pacifie oneself in the incorruptible, to absorb oneself in the defined immensity, to offer oneself to Fire and Transparency, to annihilate oneself consciously and voluntarily as one becomes more aware of oneself, to give oneself completely to that which is bottomless! Who will we be able to adore?
The more Man becomes a man, the more he will be prey to the need, and to an ever more explicit, more refined, more luxurious need, to worship.
O Jesus, tear the clouds with your lightning! Show yourself to us as the Strong, Sparkling, the Resurrected! Be for us the Pantocrator who occupied, in the old basilicas, the full solitude of the domes! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed to balance and dominate in our hearts the glory of the World which rises. So that we may conquer the World with you, appear to us enveloped in the Glory of the world.
* The Divine Milieu, Works, vol. 4, p. 157-158 (Éditions du Seuil).
(To be continued)
Teilhard de Chardin