“We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Interesting when we finally learn the source of quotes that people use but never give the proper credit for their source.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ (1881 – 1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man[1] and Peking Man[2].

Teilhard conceived the idea of the Omega Point[3] and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's[4] concept of Noosphere[5]. Some of his ideas came into conflict with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, and several of his books were censured.

Teilhard's primary book, The Phenomenon of Man, set forth a sweeping account of the unfolding of the cosmos.




[1] The "Piltdown Man" was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England.
The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.
The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous archeological hoax ever. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

[2] Peking Man: A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing, China.

[3] The Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to denote the state of the maximum organized complexity (complexity combined with centricity), towards which the universe is evolving.
Five attributes of the Omega Point
Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man states that the Omega Point must possess the following five attributes. It is:
1. Already existing. Only thus can the rise of the universe towards higher stages of consciousness be explained.
2. Personal – an intellectual being and not an abstract idea or a human collective. The increasing complexity of matter has not only led to higher forms of consciousness, but accordingly to more personalization, of which human beings are the highest attained form in the known universe. They are completely individualized, free centers of operation. It is in this way that man is said to be made in the image of God, who is the highest form of personality. Teilhard expressly stated that in the Omega Point, when the universe becomes One, human persons will not be suppressed, but super-personalized. Personality will be infinitely enriched. This is because the Omega Point unites creation, and the more it unites, the increasing complexity of the universe aids in higher levels of consciousness. Thus, as God creates, the universe evolves towards higher forms of complexity, consciousness, and finally with humans, personality, because God, who is drawing the universe towards Him, is a person.
3. Transcendent. The Omega Point cannot be the result of the universe's final complex stage of itself on consciousness. Instead, the Omega Point must exist even before the universe's evolution, because the Omega Point is responsible for the rise of the universe towards more complexity, consciousness and personality. Which essentially means that the Omega Point is outside the framework in which the universe rises, because it is by the attraction of the Omega Point that the universe evolves towards Him.
4. Autonomous. That is, free from the limitations of space (nonlocality) and time (atemporality).
5. Irreversible. That is attainable and imperative; it must happen and cannot be undone.

[4]Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (Russian: 1863 –1945) was a Russian/Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in Ukraine where he founded the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess’ 1885 term biosphere, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.




[5] Noosphere according to the thought of Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin, denotes the "sphere of human thought".
In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is also currently being researched as part of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project.