Noosphere [nōə •sfir], noun: the sphere of human thought; an evolutionary ‘sheath’ around the planet, comprised of consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships. The term was jointly coined in 1926 by Jesuit priest and palenontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher Edourd Le Roy, and Russion geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky.
Do these experiences ever happen to you?
A family member or friend pops into my mind. Later, I get a call or text from them. This has happened for a long time for me, in one way or another.
But in recent years, I’ve been experiencing other phenomena of similar strangeness.
There are days when I wake up feeling some sorrow that I can’t explain. It does not feel like my personal sorrow. It feels like something bigger than me, and further away. There have been times when I find out later that there has been another mass shooting or something that day. But not always.
With a handful of good friends that I feel very soul-connected to, I get a strong inner sense of when they are thinking of me. It’s like I feel their frequency or their attention on me, coming through some invisible field. It’s subtle, but the more I notice it, the stronger I can feel it. I could be making it up, but it will happen out of the blue and with a certain signature kind of feeling that I can’t describe, but has some similarity to the thinking-about-someone-and they-call feeling. But stronger. It seems like I’m actually perceiving something real. I’ve noticed this more in the last three years or so.
I have a regularly scheduled Zoom call with four people that I met last summer in an online class. All we do in this hour and a half video conference call is share worlds — talking about what’s been up with us at the deepest levels, what we’ve been wondering about and noticing. A tremendous syngergy is created between us, something that feels like a harmonious resonance that feels really great in my body. I feel deeply connected, seen, inspired and changed by connecting to these folks that I’ve never met in person but with whom I share language and ideas and emotions and love. We keep meeting in virtual reality because it feels so good and we learn so much from each other.
One woman in this Zoom group has started what she calls a ‘Creativity Matrix’ and I signed up to participate. She’s writing and book and she invited a number of people to come together, as they are able, on Zoom calls that she schedules several times a week. After a short introduction and sitting together in meditation (for one or two minutes), everyone works on their own creative project for about an hour and a half. Many people are writing, but some do art, some move, and once one person just sat in the collective creative space and soaked it in. At the end we come back and de-brief; offering a few words on what we experienced.
I’ve done the group call four times now, working on an essay. I have found that writing within this Creativity Matrix is a different experience than writing on my own. I focus more. I seem to have access to a greater source of Something Bigger. I’ve learned a lot about writing in just these four sessions and recently was doing some writing on my own and finding myself accessing a similar creative space without the computer connection.
This month I’m doing Soul Talks again, an in-person gathering where everyone sits in a circle and we do a short introduction and simple ‘tuning in’ to ourselves and each other. Then everyone responds to a good question such as “what is leadership now?” or “why are we so polarized?” and see where it goes. People who come don't all know each other but because of the container that is set, and the nature and set up of the question posed, we quickly drop into deep heartfelt conversation. Each person speaks uninterrupted until they are done. There is attentive and thoughtful listening. Everyone is very present. We end up talking about our own experiences and curiosity, and things we’ve noticed, which feels different from stating our opinions. All together, what people express and the stories that come up weave together a big picture of wisdom that is remarkable.
These kinds of things have been happening to me more often and with greater clarity. A few experiences of this nature I dismiss as coincidence. But when they keep happening, and they get stronger, I begin to wonder.
I don’t think it’s happening just to me. The meaning I make of it now is that the noosphere is thickening.
* * * * *
I first heard the term noosphere in connection with Teilhard de Chardin. His philosophies developed transhumanism (the ethical use of technology for human enhancement) within a Christian context. De Chardin conceptualized an evolution of human consciousness aided by a technosphere or technologically shared human knowledge, a “ . . . network of links . . . extending a closely interdependent network over the whole earth.”
It’s pretty wild stuff — and yet now we have the internet. . .
Several years ago, I read a book by Lynne McTaggart called The Field. It was published in 2002. With exhaustive investigative journalism, McTaggart cites different scientists all over the world who were (and are) studying quantum phenomena that mainstream science generally didn’t accept. This book opened my mind to the possible existence of what McTaggart called The Field (or Zero Point Field)— a universal and underlying web of interconnection at the quantum level that lies outside of space and time, an energy field that is the stratum from which our material world arises, and that contains and/or is consciousness [exhibited as information exchange] between all things.
For the record, my official personal theory is that the internet are (is?) our training wheels to sense and feel our collective consciousness through the Zero Point Field. How generations in the future evolve will be the proof of this theory.
I also theorize that as I practice my own capacities to send and receive information through the Field, and as I gather with other people and harmonize energies in a deep and meaningful way, I am advancing my own theory. As I observe this Field, put my attention on it, it stabilizes and becomes more concrete. As we all observe and put our attention on it, the noosphere thickens.
If you are still reading this blog, then you are one of the advancers, the pioneers, the conscious creators of the noosphere.
I thank you.
Let’s do this.
[More resources: http://www.lawoftime.org/noosphere/theoryandhistory.html, http://noosphere.princeton.edu]