Teilhard de Chardin, an early pioneer of "integral," may provide key insights for the 21st century.

[shaman sun]

I recently picked up a book by this Jesuit priest and scientist, Teilhard de Chardin, "Man's Place in Nature."

It was a quick read, though the language was heavily scientific (but not lacking in meaning). Two main things I've picked up from it: He truly formulated a synthesis of religion and spirituality, through an evolutionary "phenomenology." I've found myself a bit dumb founded as to the scope of his theories, to the point where, dare it be said, this could be more integral, and useful than Wilber's theoretical frameworks (AQAL, etc). In fact, I'm surprised Wilber didn't use Chardin to help really ground his work in more universal language. At any rate, this is not meant to be a Wilber-bash, I like his work too, but I do think a lot of what Teilhard spoke of was profound and ahead of its time.

For anyone unfamiliar or wishing to brush up on what Teilhard wrote about, he proposed a that the whole universe, all physical existence, was literally going through an ongoing holistic, evolutionary process of increasing complexity. He proposed a "geosphere," "biosphere," and "noosphere." Each one was contingent on the former, and as a result of great amounts of interaction, greater "spheres" emerged in a logically and naturally. To state this more observationally, he believed the universe tended to arrange itself in higher forms of complexity given enough time. This was called, "The Law of Complexity/Consciousness," because consciousness was a natural product of such a process.

This is all just the tip of the ice berg, but I do think Wilber mentions these ideas in Brief History.

Technically speaking, all things have some consciousness, but it only emerges into a recognizable form as it converges in higher expressions of complexity; from rocks, to plants, to animals, to people, and then beyond. This reminds me very much of dark matter, and how at localized, smaller levels like solar systems, it's not easily noticeable. Only when you begin to look at more concentrated expansive levels, like that of galaxies, does Dark Matter really began to create observable affects.

That's a tangent I guess, but this is Teilhard's theoretical framework, of which he believes can be both logically and empirically demonstrated. I'm curious as to who, if anyone, is attempting to apply this to our expanded knowledge of biological evolution? By now we have a lot more knowledge than he did in the 1940's and 50's about the rate of complexity that species evolved. I'm sure there could be some fascinating data and theories on this. I know Kurzweil even uses it to demonstrate his own laws of exponential growth ( a similar idea, perhaps). Cosmically, this evolution would eventually come to a singularity, or "omega point," of which he believed was synonymous with God.

The really integral part of Teilhard's theories come about when he analyzes our place in the emergence of this "noosphere," or literal ecosystem of concepts, theories, information, knowledge, and the sentience of the beings that developed them. He believes that human beings will undergo, and are undergoing, a process of cerebralisation. Basically, we're headed for more consciousness, higher levels of complexity. The universe is naturally expanding and evolving this way, and humans are the first of the many potential creatures to have begun to develop a noosphere.

He marked the evolution of the noosphere in three major components:

a) Collectively
b) Individually
c) Cosmically

Teilhard describes increasing complexity as when something, "folds over on itself," or becomes "self-reflective." Evolution goes through periods of expansion and convergence, and the noosphere is no different. There is an expansion (humans populating the globe, infrastructure, technology) physically, a development of interior (culture, ideas, philosophy and the increasing development of those), all creating a "collective" noosphere. This is highly contingent upon our ability to think in deeper and deeper "interior" levels, but in order to do that, basic subsistence must be provided. This is comparative to spiral dynamics, with lower "waves" focused more on survival and rudimentary complexity of culture, and higher levels having deeper and deeper levels of interior complexity. Basically: In order for a noosphere to grow, the physical existence must also develop. We can't contemplative philosophy if we must hunt a wooly mammoth to feed our family and tribe.

Teilhard predicted that the many nations and people would only undergo more integration, or convergence. In the future, he claimed that there would only be civilization, not civilizations plural. Adding to that, he believed that the future of humanity was in unity, not increasing individualization. The contemporary focus on individuality (b), and in our modern case, pluralism, was a transitionary process to integration. He predicted that technology, faster and faster abilities to communicate and network across the globe, would play an ever more important role in the future.

Finally, cosmically, if we are to survive this grand evolutionary process, likes in the expansion into the universe, as well as a grand expansion of the interiors.

This is all very complicated, perhaps, but perhaps no more than many scientific studies with philosophical underpinnings. At least this language is more universal, relying upon our ability to synthesis the many disciplines: biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology, and see how particular, logical laws and empirical data can demonstrate an increase of complexity. These things are subjects that more people can work with than not. It requires little of us to assimilate entire new metaphysics (as sadly Wilber does), and literally tries to just be more "self reflexive." At any rate, I thought I would just share with everyone what I've learned from Teilhard. To me, he has a fascinating body of work, an interesting life (as a Jesuit priest, he had terrible disputes with his controversial teachings. Some refer to him has the modern Galileo).

If integral began to use these major tools: evolution, cosmology, logic and scientific method, to explore these ideas, we may find them as great ways to describe the great changes in modern times.

If Teilhard was right (as his predictions seem to be), then even Wilber's work represents a further evolution of the noosphere, one of many. But just as evolutionary is the mobile phone, Ning networks, twitter, forums, the internet in general, and other physical devices which make communication and collaboration easier. A network society is integral too, in that all these things are ways of integrating, increasing complexity, building a "brain" upon the world. We can assist in this process just be talking, finding new ways for our ideas to "fold upon themselves," in complexity. In a way, even twitter was a way to do that, hence "Micro blogging," faster communication.

At any rate, this topic is vast and I could probably go on for hours. If you've read this far, thankyou and I hope this provided some food for thought this afternoon.

[Mike Redmer]

Fascinating concepts, I agree. Just to point out though Wilber does mention a similar evolutionary unfolding, talks about the noosphere and if I'm not mistaken quotes Teilhard in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. He also talks about the "interior" of every particle, atom, rock, tree, rabbit, dog, human etc. as evolving different levels of interior complexity. It's only with the emergence of language that the noosphere emerges to create culture, philosophy, technology etc.. But I wonder if such a differentiation serves us? Can we slice reality into more integrated chunks?

This may seem a bit far out, but it seems that animals and cells for that matter communicate on some level. I tend to think that the whole of the Kosmos is interpenetrating, so that there is communication going on, perhaps on different levels or frequencies, between all of Reality. Quantum Physics has much to say on this subject/object interaction via entanglement. (ie. if before the Big Bang all "matter" or "possibilities" were condensed into the area the size of the tip of a pen, all that "stuff" would be "entangled", so everything from matter, to cells, to biological creatures (including humans and interplanetary creatures) are connected and communicate on some level according to the Theory of Entanglement). This makes sense to me, though I do realize that some critics of Entanglement say that this only occurs on the micro scale, but some noted physicists have shown it in the macro, as well as people like Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake in their "psi" experiments.

If the Universe is experiencing Itself in more and more complex ways, it would only make sense that eventually every level of this communication will become more apparent to it's inhabitants as they climb the evolutionary scale of consciousness or awareness. If this is true the subject/object distinction will only grow weaker as time goes on, till eventually time has no meaning.

Time, Space, Subject/Object are not separate in the Absolute sense but how they manifest in reality is like the tripod of a stool, you can't have one leg without the whole stool falling over. For example you can't have Space without a Subject/Object in Space, you can't have a Subject/Object without it having duration or Time within Space. They are all interdependent. As I see it the Subject/Object collapse as experienced within mystical traditions is only the beginning. Once we "Awaken" to non-dual reality, Time and Space open up to be navigated. So just as the Kosmos is becoming more aware of itself in this present moment at ever more complex levels, the potential is there to know "Itself" not only in the present but in the past and future (Time) as well as throughout all Space. If this is so you can see where there may come a point in time when the hum and vibrations of the entire Kosmos crescendo, and synchronize, so there is no differentiation between "any-thing" or "no-thing", and It all goes back to Zero to start all over.

I will say that I have not read any Teilhard but I have heard a lot about him lately and will definitely check him out.

[M Alan Kazlev]

Hey Shaman

I long ago noticed the parallels between Teilhard and Sri Aurobindo. I cosider the two to be the founders of the Integral Paradigm. Teilhard in turn got many of his ideas, including the Noosphere, from Vladimir Vernadsky, the Russian-Ukranian ecologist, little known in the West, who popularized the term "biosphere:" and coined the term "noosphere".

If you get a chance, you should read Teilhard's major book The Phenomenon of Man.

Teilhard had a huge influence, for example on the "Epic of Evolution" folks (Berry, Swimme, etc)