Love and the Blue Pearl in the Time of Harris and Trump

Can politics be equal to the deepest of who we are? Can humanity evolve beyond war?

Such questions — I know, I know — are never officially asked during a presidential campaign. That’s not the point of the election: to plunge philosophically and spiritually into who we are. And thus, as the Trump-Harris race proceeds, not too many people (besides me) will be bringing up Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — Jesuit priest, theologian, scientist, best known as the author of The Phenomenon of Man — who died seventy years ago.

But I can’t tolerate the clichés of state! So let me sneak a dozen or so of Teilhard’s words into the present moment: “Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.”

Love? To those who are beginning to feel their cynicism percolate, I ask you to bear with me, at least for a moment. We’re stuck with that word, “love,” to describe humanity’s sane and positive reach; its understanding that we’re connected to the whole planet, as well as to each other, and a social structure that blows off this truth is certain to bring about its own collapse. Doesn’t it make sense to talk about this, right now, as we’re forging tomorrow politically?

Here’s another Teilhard quote. This one is pretty well known: “Some day, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of Love, and then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

Harness the energies of love? What in God’s name could this mean, especially in Teilhard’s context: that doing so would have evolutionary significance? I fear we don’t have a word that gives adequate impact to his words.

OK, in her acceptance speech as presidential nominee, Kamala Harris did toss in some love:

“So, fellow Americans. Fellow Americans. I — I love our country with all my heart. Everywhere I go — everywhere I go, in everyone I meet, I see a nation that is ready to move forward. Ready for the next step in the incredible journey that is America.”

Basically, she’s saying that she feels love for an abstraction, defined by random border lines on a map, created via several centuries of land and people theft and is now, wow, richer and more powerful than any other abstract political entity on the planet. To “love America” requires, I fear, instantly creating an us-vs.-them world.

Yes, she adds, this is “an America where we care for one another, look out for one another and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. That none of us — none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed.”

OK, wonderful, but all this empathy stops at the border, right?

“And America, we must also be steadfast in advancing our security and values abroad. As vice president, I have confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

America’s president can’t just be lovey-dovey. But what if Teilhard is right: “Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.” This is where I fall off the edge of American politics. We have, in essence, a trillion-dollar annual military budget. We’ve played war or proxy war all over the planet throughout my lifetime, including right this moment, as we give Israel the means and freedom to wipe Gaza off the map (otherwise known as “defend itself”). This is not questioned in the halls of power. This is not questioned in the American electoral system.

What if, as a nation — as residents of Planet Earth, as caring participants in humanity’s creation of tomorrow — we . . . uh, meditated? What if we dug, collectively, deep into the human soul? Not possible, the cynics cry, the snarks hiss! But I refuse to believe them. We cannot continue to evolve if we don’t know who we are, and that includes knowing who we are politically. We are not the clichés of state. We are not its lies and atrocities. We — all of us — are participants in deep, profound change.

So let me take a moment to offer, to candidate Harris and even that other guy, this tiny treasure I came upon in the wake of my wife’s death from cancer twenty-six years ago and my brief foray into Eastern religion: the blue pearl, a term I came across in a book by Swami Muktananda. Basically, it’s your innermost reality. While practicing meditation in my own so-so way, I was certain this was something I’d never find. But after my wife’s cancer diagnosis, it suddenly seemed as though it had found me. Some years ago I wrote in a column:

“The blue pearl is mortality’s unit of currency. It’s passed between the wounded like a secret handshake — secret only because the polite constructs of everyday life require discretion, averted eyes and an allegiance to the fiction that we’re strangers. The blue pearl has no tolerance for this, because the truth is, we’re ‘strange’ to each other only on the surface.

“Thus, when my wife was diagnosed with cancer, I noticed a charged change in conversations. For instance, here was my friend Herb, constructor of crossword puzzles, divulging that he’d lost his son in an accident some years earlier. I was his editor; we talked routinely on a weekly basis, but not till now had there been room for such a disclosure in our amiable chats. His telling me this was like a warm hand on my shoulder — ‘Yes, I too am mortal’ — and gave me courage. This is the blue pearl.”

I’m certain the blue pearl is more than just a personal discovery. As Swami Muktananda has put it: “After the Blue Pearl stands steady for a while, it explodes. Then its light spreads throughout the universe and you can see it everywhere.”

This is the tomorrow that’s at stake today.