A HUNGER FOR WHOLENESS

Ilia Delio is a Franciscan Sister who also holds the chair in theology and specialises in science and religion; I have reviewed a number of her previous books, and she is one of the leading exponents of the scientific and theological work of Teilhard de Chardin. Subtitled 'soul, space and transcendence', this book elaborates on the two forms of energy proposed by Teilhard - tangential as the energy of attraction (this is in fact the French word for gravity), and radial as the energy of transcendence. These are applied to both inner and outer worlds, and the author rightly insists on the primacy of the inner and shaping the outer. Hence she maintains that nature has two principal dimensions: 'the empirical, visible realm and the invisible, conscious realm.' (p. 29) Teilhard maintained that radial energy defies the second law of thermodynamics and increases with complexity - hence 'it is the inner energy of evolving consciousness that gives evolution its qualitative direction' towards unification and what he calls centration. In its inner aspect, tangential energy is love and in the interplay between these two forms of energy 'as we become aware of another and attracted to the other, knowing and loving become symbiotic energies of an interwoven reality.' (p. 31)

The 17th Century scientific revolution led to a loss or at least a degrading of inner space and a compression of the soul into the head. Quantum mechanics has reinstated the central role of consciousness, but we are still in the process of working the implications of this revolution. Drawing on Plato, Plotinus and mediaeval mysticism, the author redefines the features of the soul as a field of mind and a centre of freedom and self-determination, while also adding aspects such as the ground consciousness and the depth and breadth of all existent life which I myself would classify as defining the spirit. She usefully draws parallels between the outer and inner universes (p. 42) arguing that our attention needs to shift to the inner universe. This is exactly our challenge as we become increasingly immersed as cyborgs in our technological devices that tend to draw our attention outwards, although virtual reality technologies can have the opposite effect and may provide new modalities of inner space. There is some ambiguity early in the book where AI is posited as the next phase of human transcendence, and a chapter is devoted to digital humans and to the blurring between the natural and technological. However, for the author technology cannot fulfil the aims of religion because such fulfilment lies in God: 'we can enhance our lives with technology, but we are transformed by love.' (p. 68) In fact, this statement may be too dichotomous in that many younger people are now working on technologies to transform consciousness, although I do agree that transformation involves spiritual discipline and the development of our capacity to love.

The mystical path entails the awakening and expanding of self in God and going beyond the separate ego to a realisation of the universality of the one consciousness, spiritually represented as light. This feeds into a chapter on planetisation, where the author observes that 'instead of increasing consciousness through the unity of love, we are information overloaded and brain fatigued, thinned out interiorly, and mentally fried.' (p. 85) Readers will recognise this description and the corresponding hunger for wholeness and meaning that involves a shift in the centre of identity by means of inner work leading towards increased centredness or centration. However, concentration and meditation are the opposite of technological distraction and fragmentation, so we need to go against this tide. The author also suggests that to be a person is to be consciously relational and oriented towards community - I am in fact writing this review in the Tamera Community in Portugal. For Delio, relational consciousness opposes power, control and domination in favour of belonging, mutual affirmation, participation and creative love.

We have reached a critical point in human evolution where we are challenged to unify rather than destroy ourselves. Teilhard refers to a convergence in the hyper- personal rather than a depersonalised process and the technological 'transcendence' of ultrahumanism. As Albert Schweitzer put it, our task is to become more finely and deeply human, which means an inward journey of effort and concentration so as to build the necessary inner universe to be reflected in the outer. In this respect, religion and spirituality can be seen as technologies of the spirit giving us access to the inner universe 'as an undivided whole where mind, heart, and the core of love energy abound.' (p. 106) In this way, we can align ourselves with the unitive, relational and transcendent energies and play our part as evolutionary co-creators in building a new world from the inside out.