Is Humanity Evolving Towards Oneness?

Is humanity evolving towards spiritual oneness and collective consciousness? Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's groundbreaking work, "The Phenomenon of Man," explores this very question, blending science and spirituality in a way that sparked controversy and continues to fascinate.

In this Beyond the Book episode, we dive into Chardin's fascinating theory about the evolution of consciousness.  Was consciousness born out of the Big Bang and now evolving alongside humankind? Chardin posits that humanity is progressing towards a collective state of enlightenment, an "Omega Point." This thought-provoking work raises deep questions about science, spirituality, and the very nature of our existence. While his ideas were controversial, even within his own Jesuit order, they hold relevance today as we seek connection and understanding in an increasingly interconnected world.

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Transcript

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What is science and spirituality weren't enemies, but were two sides of the same cosmic coin. That's the groundbreaking idea explored by a French Jesuit priest and a renowned scientist named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I've always been interested in consciousness and this intersection of philosophy, spirituality and science. Chardin lived through two World wars and was a leading paleontologist in his time. But his biggest impact was through his writings on evolution, consciousness and the divine. Today on our Beyond the Book series, we're diving into his most famous work, The Phenomenon of Men. He had a broad grasp of other sciences outside of paleontology and had a real affinity for geology and the history of the earth. The text of this book was written in the 1930, but it didn't get published until just after his death in 1955 due to protests by the Jesuit order. And I think that's just one more example of the Catholic Church impeding progress and forward leaning thought. And this wasn't way back when in the 16 or 1700s. This was in the 20th century. His aim in this work is to get behind consciousness and bridge the gap between science and spirituality. His position as a scientist and a Jesuit priest kind of put him in this really unique position to at least attempt this. He argues, and rightly in my opinion, that scientist and theology just aren't that dissimilar. If we open our minds to possibilities, we can uncover these mysteries of the universe. The fact this book initially bothered both the Catholic Church and scientist I think says something about its content. It's probably something that is really useful for us because it made two distinct camps, two very important, different camps angry. His work has been hugely influential for other scientists, environmentalists, spiritualists and philosophers from the mid-twentieth century on through modern times. Much of this book deals with the origin and evolution of humankind and how we came to be as a species. all the various things going into that from the subatomic level through the celestial bodies around us, and then everything in between. It's detailed and sometimes maybe a little too detailed. But he's a scientist and I think that's forgivable. Some questions that came up as I read this is where does consciousness start and does it start with anything living a single cell? Where was consciousness before that? And science deeply struggles to explain the existence of life and that jump that happened from the big Bang to the formation of Earth and to that goo or soup that the creation of life came out of. And I think when you look back at that, this thing that science has difficulty explaining, it's easy to understand why spirituality or religion stands in and walks us through how we came to be. And we know that life could have formed at multiple points in the timeline of creation. And that complicates things as well. Chardin examines the without of man and this external world around us, and he seems, even as he explores that, he goes into great detail about it. He seems more compelled by the within a man what's inside of us. And although he moves between the without and the within throughout this book, he believes that what's inside offers the key to everything. He understands that science can't adequately explain consciousness. But it didn't stop him from trying to at least get some explanation, both through science and through metaphysics. And I think that he understood that to get where he had to get he had to take some leaps that weren't fully backed by science. Even if he used science to get as far as he could. And I really appreciate why scientists do this. And there's another scientist that I have deep respect for the father of quantum physics, his name is Max Planck, and Max Planck talks about consciousness and how important it is to science. He also says that science can't get behind consciousness, but that everything that they see, everything that they've examined, postulates the existence of consciousness and that matter itself sits on top of consciousness. So if you've if you've never familiarize yourself with Max Planck, I'd say go out there and read the philosophy of physics by Max Planck. It's a great book and it really does the same thing that this book does and bridge that gap between the religious and the spiritual, the philosophical and that hard science. Before we move on. Please subscribe by hitting the watermark in the lower right hand corner and share this with any friends or family who you think might benefit from it. Chardin's main theory on humankind, evolution and existence is that if we were created out of the Big Bang and then eventually on earth from this sludge of original life, that it wasn't just our physical forms that were created and evolved. He postulates that consciousness also formed alongside us at this very low level, and that with the lower life forms, consciousness also evolved in and of itself as all of these different beings physically evolved. And he says that consciousness must be made up of the stuff of the universe, that even if we can't explain it, it's still natural. And consciousness evolved. And as it evolved, it became more and more linked to humankind due to our advanced and unique standing within and on Mother Earth. And I understand what he's getting at here, and I think there's portions of that that really resonate with me and make a lot of sense. But I don't think that I don't agree with him necessarily that we have this place at the apex of this conscious pyramid of nature. And I think that's more tenuous than than he may think, because a lot of people, a lot of cultures believe that we're relatively young beings in the terms of this natural hierarchy. You know, indigenous traditions, including many Native American beliefs, align with this idea that we aren't in nature, but we are nature. And if you check out our episode on Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, you can get a really beautiful idea of what this is all about. And we're going to go ahead and link that in a card in the upper right hand corner that you can click on if you want to watch that and believes we're collectively progressing with consciousness and that eventually we're going to all be this collective, unified, seamless human consciousness and that we're going to ascend to this Omega endgame of life in the universe. And by the Omega endgame or Omega endpoint, it's like he sees this collective enlightenment point for humanity where we all kind of evolve into this wholly unified, seamless, collective consciousness. It's way more complicated than that in the book, but that's probably the best that I can explain it here in a short form. And this isn't necessarily an easy book to summarize. It's both scientific, deeply scientific, and it's also deeply metaphysical and theological at points. And when you have philosophy and theology and science and metaphysics all thrown together, you know, it gets complicated. That's a good thing. That's a kind of a beautiful thing. I think if you look at his theory of collective consciousness evolving, you can see some kind of overlap with multiple religious traditions around the world. So if you if you see that he's saying we're going to collectively evolve our consciousness together until we reach this endpoint, which is kind of like this collective enlightenment that's almost like, you know, reaching enlightenment in the Hindu tradition or in the Buddhist tradition or even, you know, becoming one with the dower or the way. And I think when we look at it like that, we can really appreciate this theory. And and that is probably drawn not just from his own thought, but it's from collective thought that humans have been kind of putting forward for thousands of years. He does have some problematic theories. And although I would eventually only rate this three stars out of five, there was a lot to learn from it. And I really appreciate his optimism about life and humankind. I sincerely believe that we're going to be okay. I have great hope and humanity. I talk about that a lot on this channel, and there's a number of theory of his theories that I can get behind. And I think that every book and author should be taken in the context of the time that it was written. But even in doing so, he briefly touches on eugenics as a viable method of advancing humankind. From this evolutionary perspective. It was less it felt less World War to Germany and more kind of Gattaca in nature. But that's still not cool. And I think Jude Law and Ethan Hawke showed us how this ends badly. And if you haven't seen Gattaca, I would say go find it on a streaming service somewhere and check it out, because it's a cautionary tale on things that we do with like how we manipulate how humans are born and raised. So let's go check it out. He also really lost me on his dire opposition to pantheism. He rejects that the divine could be in each of us and that we could find our own salvation there. And if you don't subscribe to salvation, I'm not talking about in a Christian sense, you can call it kind of whatever you want, But he says that we can't find salvation within that we can only find it working together as a collective. But this argument for me gets very semantical, and it just doesn't flow with a lot of the religious and spiritual thought from around the world. He actually would go on in his epilog to say that a variation of Christian pantheism would be superior, and that that struck me as both odd and kind of massively hypocritical, you know. But he was a Jesuit priest in addition to being a scientist. So I think we have to keep that in mind. But regardless, I really myself am very much into this universal oneness of everything and this very pantheistic nature of things. If I am that and you are that, you know, we are that together. He scientifically argues throughout this work and he makes all this effort to be legitimate from a scientific perspective, almost painstakingly so at times. And then in the epilog, he makes the case that in an attempt to unify human consciousness and have a further advancement as a species, that it would be best undertaken through this construct of Christianity and that kind of turned me off from this whole thing. In the last few pages. I think he had a great conversation and a great argument going throughout this whole book. And then he just kind of lost me there. I don't think he actually even believed that Christianity was the answer. It's like his argument was mainly that Christianity was best positioned to unify humankind and collective thought because of how widespread it was. But I don't think that he's taken into account how jaded people are with Christianity around the world, people who aren't Christians. And his argument that we could use it to meld our collective consciousness more closely together and lift up the whole world again, that makes sense outside of Christianity, outside of any specific construct or religion. So the base theory is probably solid. If you strip away Christianity as the container, but again, I've said it before, but I'll say it again. He was a Jesuit priest, so and we don't know, part of he had a hard time getting this published because the Catholic Church was so against his work. And it's possible, like we've seen from other philosophers and theologians and great thinkers throughout time, they've had to make compromises to what they thought just to get their work recorded and published. And so maybe he didn't even believe that necessarily, but he had to put it in the epilog to get his work seen by the world. I don't know. I'm just throwing that out there as it may be because we know that happens. I do subscribe to his concept of a sphere of shared and interactive consciousness around the planet. It's no less important than our atmosphere around Earth. And he called this collective consciousness the newest sphere, and he imagined it as this global thinking layer emerging from our interconnectedness of humankind. And I find this very complementary to the concept that I believe in, which is that our individual consciousness and reality interact with other people's individual consciousness. Reality to form this collective consciousness. And this is how we exist and move through the real world every day. And we have a good video on this theory and how we create our own reality through our own individual consciousness. And we're going to link that in the car in the upper right hand corner. There seem to me to be a similarity in some respect to shamans advancement of the collective human consciousness to this omega endpoint and this Jewish concept of the fact that these good acts or these mitzvahs collectively advance humankind to the light. And I really think that there's a beautiful overlap there. And I always I always love that about the Jewish faith that these good deeds that are done are lifting humankind up towards this place of light. And it's this beautiful thing. And if you don't know much about that, we actually have a video on Judaism, and I would encourage you to check it out. short, it believes our species hit a critical point in evolution, especially from the perspective of the development of our advanced consciousness when we became self-aware and that we were able to reflect on ourselves, ponder ourselves, and we started asking these critical questions about our existence and our place in the universe, and that this would have occurred sometime far before antiquity going back into the Neolithic era or before. Yes, initially postulates the evolution of this kind of psycho human Internet. We're all interconnected. This noosphere that he talks about around the planet and that we're all communicating with each other via energy. Chardin says we need in our irresistibly being led to create by means of and beyond all physics, all biology and all psychology, a science of human energetics and energy is this amazing thing. It's a thing that we can feel even if science can't explain it. Science can explain a lot about energy. Science is often a lot, almost completely about energy in many respects, but they can't always explain the energy that we feel around us. We can feel the energy of a room when we walk into it. we can feel the energy of that same room. Change by a single person of energetic influence walking in or out of that room. Energy connects us with others in love and relationships. We call it the vibe or the flow, or many other names from around the world and throughout time. And some call it magic. I believe reading material above our knowledge or education level that challenges our intellect, it only makes us stronger, it elevates our consciousness. I think anyone interested in consciousness and general spirituality would appreciate the thoughts outlined in this book, even if you don't fully subscribe to his endgame. all these great men and women throughout history have advanced humankind. It hasn't just been, from a scientific perspective, but from the advancement of our divine knowledge as well, the knowledge of the metaphysical and the philosophical and the spiritual and I think at that point, dividing the whole against what you don't believe to only take a piece that fits your universal view, it kind of puts us on tenuous ground. And if you're always only believe what you can see or what you can prove, I think you're going to be left wanting and waiting, Chardin said it is in the course of that creation already obscurely begun, that science, by being led to concentrate on man, will find itself increasingly face to face with religion or spirituality. If you want to think of it like that, most of us with open minds, open hearts and open spirits will find ourselves at this crossroads of science, art, religion, spirituality, philosophy and much more. And it's at this intersection where we can ask better questions. We may find better answers. We can see that things change, and also that the questions and answers themselves will change. So if you enjoy this conversation and if you're looking for a peaceful community with open minded people where we have conversations just like this, visit Keesha Dawg and please like this video if you wanted to keep making content just like this. And until next time, I wish you peace on your journey.