In 1959 the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote 'The Phenomenon of Man': he also wrote numerous other books. Most of them, including the above book, were not published in his lifetime. He was not allowed to publish them, under order of the Church Authorities, for they considered them blasphemous. Yet these works show an immense vision: a far-seeing vision of the unification of Mankind - a world of interconnectedness and collectivity. A world-mind. Here are some poignant extracts from 'The Phenomenon of Man' which I hope will serve to illustrate some of the points being raised here on our evolutionary potentials & possibilities:


'…the stuff of the universe, by becoming thinking, has not yet completed its evolutionary cycle, and that we are therefore moving forward towards some new critical point that lies ahead.' (p.251)


'We are faced with a harmonised collectivity of consciousness equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness. The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered by myriads of grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection...peoples and civilisations reached such a degree of either physical communion or economic interdependence of frontier contact that they could no longer develop save by interpenetration of one another.' (p.251/2)


'In every organised whole, the parts perfect themselves and fulfil themselves…The more 'other' they become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as 'self'.' (p.262)


'…according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can only find our person by uniting together. There is no mind without synthesis.' (p.263)


'It may well be that in its individual capacities and penetrations our brain has reached its organic limits. But the movement does not stop there. From west to east, evolution is henceforth occupied elsewhere, in a richer and more complex domain, constructing, with all minds joined together, mind. Beyond all nations and races, the inevitable taking-as-a-whole of mankind has already begun'. (p.278)