Friday, 15 April 2017
7.00pm AGM (NOTE- no Discussion Group)
8.00pm Habitat Canterbury
The Light of Consciousness:
Teilhard de Chardin’s Evolutionary Mysticism in dialogue with CG Jung
“The thoughts and writings of Teilhard and Jung converge. In their common interpretation of matter and psyche they saw the interior as well as the exterior role of the process of evolution.”
French paleontologist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) was deeply distressed by the dangerous one-sidedness of both science and religion. His writings, published after his death, bear witness to a lifetime’s effort to heal the split. Teilhard saw humanity’s fate lying in the conscious realization of the unification of the divine and human energies, of spirit and matter, as dynamic poles in the one organic evolutionary process moving towards unity and completeness.
Though he remained confident in humanity’s capacity to fulfill its evolutionary task, Teilhard did not underestimate the risk of the venture, describing human consciousness as ‘an incredibly small radius of light’. C G Jung described consciousness as a ‘flickering candle’. Teilhard’s vision bears some striking similarities with C G Jung. Some of these similarities will be considered in this presentation.
Father David Moore graduated in chemistry and initially worked as an industrial chemist. Crossing the great divide he took up communication studies and completed an education diploma leading to secondary teaching in media studies, prior to his theological studies and formation as a priest. He served in the dioceses of Perth and Christchurch before moving to St John’s Camberwell in Melbourne in 2013.