NOÖSPHERE

“We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.” - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

And the word of the day today is “Noösphere”…

noösphere |ˈnōəˌsfir| noun
A postulated sphere or stage of evolutionary development dominated by consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships (frequently with reference to the writings of Teilhard de Chardin).
ORIGIN: 1940s: from French noösphere, based on Greek nous ‘mind.’ and Greek sphaira ‘orb, globe.’
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a visionary French Jesuit, palaeontologist, biologist, and philosopher, who spent most of his life trying to integrate religious experience with natural science. A monumental task, to say the least, as his Christian theological catechism was in direct conflict with the newly developed theories of evolution of Darwin. While immersed in this task he became enthralled with the possibilities for humankind, which he saw as heading for an exciting convergence of systems, an "Omega point" where the coalescence of consciousness will lead us to a new state of peace and planetary unity. Long before ecology was fashionable, he saw this unity he saw as being based intrinsically upon the spirit of the Earth.

He wrote: “The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.” Teilhard de Chardin died a full ten years before James Lovelock ever proposed the “Gaia Hypothesis” which suggests that the Earth is actually a living being, a collosal biological super-system. Nevertheless, Chardin's writings clearly reflect the sense of the Earth as having its own autonomous personality, and being the prime centre and director of our future, the guiding force for the synthesis of humankind into a new and more wise evolutionary race of beings.

“The phrase ‘Sense of the Earth’ should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. The sense of Earth is the irresistible pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion. We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits.” – summarises his philosophy.

He suggested that the Earth in its evolutionary unfolding, was growing a new organ of consciousness, called the noösphere. The noösphere is analogous on a planetary level to the evolution of the brain in humans as they evolved from lower animals. The noösphere is a “planetary thinking network” – an interlinked system of consciousness and information, a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication. At the time of his writing, computers of any merit were the size of a city block, and the Internet was, if anything, an element of speculative science fiction.

However, this evolution is now evolving into being very rapidly, which in Gaia time, is but a mere blink. In these few seconds of evolutionary time, our planet is developing a cerebral cortex, and emerging into self-conscious awakening. We are approaching the Omega point that Teilhard de Chardin was so excited about. This convergence however, though it was predicted to occur through a global information network, was not a convergence of merely minds or bodies, but of heart, a point that he made most fervently:

“It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts. Humanity is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power of unification can never be achieved?”

In these days of uncertainty, economic crisis, terrorism, massive population shifts, gross inequity, East versus West, First versus Third World, it is important to reflect upon the notion of a noösphere, a higher level of being that transcends our greedy venality and our worldly, materialistic pursuits. The answer lies in the melding of religion with science, intellect with emotion, idealism with pragmatism and the breaking down of barriers worldwide. A new state of evolution of humanity, where heart and brain no longer are in conflict but interdigitate and complement one another to indeed bring about the noösphere proposed by de Chardin…