The central concept in Planetary Philosophy is the idea that a Planetary Consciousness is emerging here on Earth right now.
It appears that the Earth is in a transition that could lead to a new, higher level of organization and, in Pierre de Chardin’s sense, “interiorization”, producing a new emergent consciousness. This transition is like what happened when cells evolved to form individual insects and plants and animals and, eventually, humans. And these individuals came to have coherent consciousnesses that could guide the – now unified – collections of cells. It also appears that humanity is a key vehicle for this new higher level of organization for the Earth.
However, the Earth is at a very unstable point in its evolution. In a systems theory context, it will either evolve or devolve now. So, in order to survive, individual humans have to evolve to the next level of consciousness and connect to form the emergent Earth’s next level of organization and coherence. Let’s call that “Planetary Consciousness.
In this essay, I am going to draw on my unpublished book, Spiritual Realism: An Exploration of the Philosophy, in which I assert, as the title of the book suggests, that the spiritual domain is real and that what happens in the spiritual domain has significant impacts on the physical domain. The framework of Spiritual Realism provides a perspective from which to take deeper look at the concept of Planetary Consciousness.
THE GAIA THEORY
In the 1970s, the chemist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis, named after the Greek Earth goddess, Gaia. The Gaia Hypothesis proposed that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. This means that life on Earth is a self- regulating system involving the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the pedosphere (skin of the Earth’s surface, including living organisms), all of which are intimately integrated as an evolving complex system.
The Gaia Hypothesis has been modified and elaborated enough and there have been enough predictions made and confirmed that it has become the Gaia Theory, which now holds that the Earth evolves through a feedback system – including many processes essential for the conditions of life – that regulates the Earth’s surface temperature, surface composition, atmosphere, and ocean salinity, among other factors.
Acceptance of the Gaia Theory has become so widespread that, in 2001, a thousand scientists at the European Geophysical Union meeting signed the Declaration of Amsterdam, starting with the statement “The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system with physical, chemical, biological, and human components.”
Originally, many Earth Scientists strongly criticized the Gaia Hypothesis, suggesting, among other things, that it involved a teleological explanation, incorporating active purpose on the part of the planet (rather than the type of mechanistic/deterministic explanation favored by traditional science). Lovelock responded that “Nowhere in our writings do we express the idea that planetary self-regulation is purposeful or involves foresight or planning by the biota.”
THE EARTH IS ALIVE
However, maybe Lovelock hasn’t gone far enough. It seems possible to simplify and strengthen the Gaia Theory by reformulating it as: “The Earth is alive and behaves in a purposive fashion with an evolving consciousness in order to pursue an environment optimal for life.”
Let’s take seriously the possibility that the Earth is in a transition that could lead to a new, higher level of organization and “interiorization” (as Pierre de Chardin proposed in The Phenomenon of Man), producing a new emergent consciousness. The proposed consciousness of the Earth would clearly be located at a place on a consciousness spectrum that is quite different from ordinary human consciousness or human consciousness as augmented by the technologies of traditional science.
There is significant evidence that people who train their consciousness (e.g., Yogic, Buddhist, Taoist, and Sufi masters in the Eastern metaphysical traditions, and some Christian mystics) can reach and participate in wider portions of the consciousness spectrum, and in some cases, touch the unique form of consciousness that is (beginning to be) manifested by the Earth. Certainly, many Indigenous traditions talk of Mother Earth and experience the Earth as a living conscious being. (The Non-Indigenous may tend to think of traditional Indigenous references to Mother Earth as metaphorical. But for those still living within the original consciousness of Indigenous traditions, it is an actual, perceived reality.
MORPHIC THEORY
Drawing on some of the thinking in my unpublished Spiritual Realism book, I believe that “Morphic Theory” provides one aspect of a conceptual framework that can help us understand Planetary Consciousness better and foster it more powerfully.
Morphic Fields
Rupert Sheldrake (https://www.sheldrake.org/) is a biologist who has embraced an approach to embryology that holds that an embryo divides and produces a differentiated and integrated structure too rapidly to be accounted for solely through the chemical interactions that are governed by the embryo’s genes and chromosomes.
Rather, this branch of embryology posits that the embryo serves as a seed form that generates an energy field called a “morphogenic field.” The embryo’s morphogenic field provides an energy scaffolding that the embryo uses to guide the rapid growth of its structure. (This is a little bit analogous to the way a magnetic field provides the energy scaffolding that gives form to iron filings scattered into the field.) However, with morphogenic fields, the fields are trans-physical and cannot be directly observed using the technology of traditional science.
Sheldrake has expanded this theory to include the impact of the past on embryo development and to extend the theory beyond embryology. In his expanded usage, he refers to the generalized concept as ‘morphic fields.” According to his formulation, each embryo taps into a larger morphic field that has evolved over millennia guiding the growth of all the embryos of a given species through a process that he calls ‘morphic resonance.’ Through morphic resonance, individuals in a species engage a kind of species memory that builds over hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, evolving the energy scaffolding that guides growth of the embryos.
It is possible to generalize Sheldrake’s theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance further to provide an explanation for many different phenomena. For example, the rituals of traditional societies can be seen as generating and maintaining morphic fields. Every time the members of a traditional community perform a ritual, through morphic resonance, their conscious performance contributes to and strengthens the morphic field for that ritual, which provides the energy template for events in the material world. This analysis explains the process whereby a hunting ritual helps lead to a successful hunt, a planting ritual helps ensure a successful harvest, and a rain dance aids in producing needed rainstorms.
At a more pedestrian level most of us have had the experience of participating on a team or rooting for a team that had great team spirit. These teams had high energy and just seemed to function exceptionally well together with each participant knowing their part and how they fit in with the whole. According to morphic theory, the functioning of the group of individuals making up the team was guided, at least in part, by a morphic field and morphic resonance. And the experience of team spirit is the experience of that morphic field.
Faster-Than-the-Speed-of-Light
Dr. William A. Tiller was Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University and the author of Science and Human Transformation: Subtle Energies, Intentionality and Consciousness. He formulated a general theory of the nature of the universe that we can use to provide an explanation of the way morphic fields and morphic resonance work.
From what I have read about him, most recently in the website devoted to his work, (www.tillerfoundation.com), Dr. Tiller was a genuinely good man who had a profound and, in the end, profoundly simple insight. He postulated that the speed of light does not establish the boundary to reality, beyond which nothing exists. Rather, he propounded that the speed of light, in fact, establishes the boundary between the two dimensions of reality, the material and the spiritual.
Professor Tiller recognized that one of the implications of Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2 – that matter approaches an infinite density when it approaches the speed of light – does not mean that nothing exists at speeds faster than the speed of light, just that physical matter does not. Rather, there is a whole realm of spiritual substance that vibrates at speeds faster than the speed of light. Professor Tiller even proposed that Einstein’s field equations suggest such a reality as a kind of mirror spiritual image of physical reality.
According to orthodox science, photons, the units of light, are massless and, of course, travel at the speed of light. Professor Tiller postulates that nature has “many different bands of photons most of which travel faster than the speed of light…Over the past 400 years, we have learned a great deal about only one band, the electromagnetic band. Eventually, during our future evolutionary path, we must come to…understand the inner workings of all these separate bands plus how they might…interact with each other.”
Thus, Professor Tiller, as a scientist and engineer of some note, came right out and said that the spiritual realm is real and follows rules that we can learn about and formulate. We just cannot learn about these rules using traditional physical means, because physical matter and energy cannot cross the speed-of-light boundary in order to discover them.
The acupuncture meridians and the Chi energy flowing through the meridians, which many of us have experienced in acupuncture treatments, are structures in this faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual domain as is the Ki energy tapped into by Eastern martial artists and the Chakra and Nadi energy that the practice of Yoga engages with.
Connecting Tiller and Sheldrake, we can say that morphic fields develop and exist within the faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual realm and that these morphic fields can be guided by conscious intention.
Dr. Tiller and his team undertook a number of rigorous, double-blind experiments to demonstrate the role of conscious intention in guiding the faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual realm in order to impact physical reality. For example, in one of his experiments, meditators were able to change the PH of water at great distances from the meditators’ physical locations by affecting the PH with their conscious intentions.
According to Tiller’s theory, time and space are compressed and operate quite differently in the faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual realm. Tiller’s theory provides an explanation of the seemingly paradoxical behavior of the quantum particles/waves that, according to the science of Quantum Mechanics, go in and out of existence and can produce instantaneous action at a distance through “quantum entanglement.”
According to the explanation inherent in Tiller’s theory, the quantum particles/waves go in and out of material existence because they cross back and forth across the speed-of-light barrier. Two particles can become entangled and produce instantaneous action at a distance by virtue of having a connection in the faster-than-the-speed-of-light vibratory realm.
If it is true that Quantum particles/waves at the smallest end of the size spectrum exist on both sides of the speed-of-light-boundary, it is certainly the case that people do also. Some say that we cross this boundary between the spiritual and material realms whenever we go to sleep and wake up.
Spiritual Senses
So, let’s look at the possibility that, in addition to our physical senses, every human being has a set of spiritual senses (inner seeing, inner hearing, inner sensing) that we can use to experience and act in the faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual realm.
During pre-civilization times, humanity lived lives of spiritual participation. During that era, everyone experienced the physical dimension with their physical senses and also they had a certain access to their spiritual senses, recognizing the spiritual aspects of places, plants, animals, and people. Shamans had pretty much full access to their spiritual senses.
With the emergence of civilization, most of humanity evolved away from direct spiritual participation. Those with a secular orientation came to live without any conscious engagement with the morphic/spiritual dimension at all, treating their spiritual senses as if they didn’t exist, accessing them only when they went to sleep and dreamed.
However, the extensive bodies of scientifically verified research attesting to the reality of near-death experiences, out-of-the-body experiences, and extra-sensory perception all point to the existence of a spiritual domain that can be accessed by the spiritual senses of a growing number of us.
Those with a religious orientation have a conscious engagement with some particular aspects of the morphic/spiritual dimension of reality mediated by their particular Faiths which were launched by the teachings of different prophets who had deep access to their spiritual senses and the revelations that manifested through them. Jesus and Mohammad are two of the clearest examples of such prophets.
The Eastern traditions of Buddhism, Yoga, and Taoism offer approaches to the more expanded development of some of our spiritual senses in certain specific ways within a Faith context.
So, let’s hypothesize that the faster-than-the-speed-of-light spiritual realm is made of bands of vibrations that can be experienced as bands of consciousness, using our spiritual senses, and that these bands of consciousness form a consciousness spectrum.
Now, by taking the work of Sheldrake and Tiller seriously, let’s take a look at how we can come to understand how we might all attain to an experience of spiritual participation in a Planetary Consciousness that exists at a different place on the consciousness spectrum from the usual experience of most people.
EMBRACING PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS
According to morphic theory, we can project that the large group that is the human species produces a morphic field that can be experienced as a type of consciousness. And this consciousness of humanity appears to be a key vehicle for the emerging level of organization/consciousness of the Earth.
What would we be like as human beings if we didn’t have a consciousness that could guide the mutual action of the trillions of our cells that share the same DNA and the many trillions more that cohabitate with us but have different DNA?
It’s been estimated that an adult human being has 30 trillion human cells, and that the number of non-human cells is estimated to be about 10 times the number of human cells. This means that there are about 300 trillion non-human cells in the average adult human body.
The most abundant non-human cells are bacteria. There are about 100 trillion bacteria living in the human gut, and they make up about 1% of the body’s weight. Other important non-human cells in the body include viruses, fungi, and protists.
As of the Spring of 2024, there are a little over 8 billion humans alive on Earth. Each of these people is a node in a human consciousness field within the faster-than-the-speed-of-light morphic/spiritual domain. Our brains/minds interact to help constitute that field and, at the same time, that field plays a role in the constitution of our individual minds.
Our human consciousness field interacts with and interpenetrates the morphic/spiritual fields generated by all of the other species alive, and the morphic/spiritual field generated by the Earth that we live on and that our bodies are made up of.
Let’s posit that there is an emergent interior consciousness dimension of the morphic/spiritual field that is composed of all of the sub-fields of humanity and the other forms of life and the sub-fields of all the different aspects of the Earth. Let’s call that interior consciousness dimension Planetary Consciousness.
Different nodes have different levels of vibratory power. The more powerful the node, the more powerful its resonance impact on the surrounding field. Through resonance, less powerful nodes are affected by more powerful ones. Less powerful nodes tend to vibrate in tune with the more powerful ones creating pools and eddies in the flow of Planetary Consciousness.
It’s not automatic that we can bring coherence to our individual human consciousness, but, with work, we can pretty much get there so that we can effectively guide our own individual lives, which means that our individual human consciousness is constituted on the basis of and grows out of our 30 trillion human cells acting in community with each other and with our 300 trillion non-human cells.
If we humans can develop consciousnesses that take responsibility for guiding and coordinating the various lives of the 330 trillion cells that constitute each of our bodies, we should be able to generate a Planetary Consciousness to provide guidance for the 8 billion other humans and the approximately 8.7 million other species that the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates to exist.
Right now, much of the consciousness of humanity is fragmented and divided against itself. But if we quiet our minds, pay attention to our breathing, relax, look inside, and listen, perhaps we can participate in the developing consciousness of our species that is joining with the consciousness of the Earth to form an emergent Planetary Consciousness, where the deeper singing coming from our species joins in harmony with the great song of our planet. Based on the experience of some Yogis and Taoists and Sufis and other mystics (and my own glimpses), this can be done.
From this perspective, we can see ourselves at a moment of crucial Planetary Transformation, when the Earth evolves to the point that it acquires an integrated consciousness – with humanity playing a critical role – that can guide the formation of a planetary civilization that is conducive to continued human life on Earth.
It is becoming clear that we have the capability to reach down into ourselves, selves that are aspects of the Earth, and find the Earth calling to us showing us the ways to transform our lives and the life of our species so that we can come to live at peace with Her.
And maybe, just maybe, we can actually connect with the emerging Planetary Consciousness that is a blending of the growing unified consciousness of the human species and of the Earth. And maybe we can take strength from it and use it to unite with and act together with the very large numbers of us humans in a Planetary Movement that will be needed to work the work of the Great Transformation whereby we learn to live at peace with ourselves, with each other, and with the Earth.
