Exploring the Noosphere: Teilhard de Chardin

Both mystics and scientists explore the vast reaches of the cosmos, though it can be said that scientists have been exploring outer realities of the material universe, while mystics have been exploring inner realities of the psychic world. Unfortunately, the two groups have seldom studied one another's findings with care with the objective of enhancing their own understanding of cosmic reality. There has traditionally been little interest shown among the community of physical scientists to explore those maps of consciousness brought to us by generations of saints and introspective mystics. Mystics (and saints) have seldom received sufficient training in science and technologies to model their discoveries in scientific language, while rarely have scientific materialists found time and interest (under the tacit threat of ridicule or censure) to explore consciousness introspectively in a direct, experiential way in order to obtain the perspective required to formulate an effective hard science of consciousness. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was one of those rare few capable of bridging these "two cultures: " a priest, mystic, and scientist, he wrote extensively and produced, in scientific terms, a model for the evolution of consciousness in the universe. He left behind a legacy that he hoped would forge a new mysticism, a science-based religious understanding of the dynamics of cosmos.