Planetary noogenesis

The processes of evolution may be leading to the emergence of consciousness at the planetary level, whereby the planet achieves its own equivalent of consciousness as a form of "global brain". It has been suggested that the majority of humans currently alive may experience an evolutionary shift from ego-centered awareness to a unified field of shared awareness. This would constitute a completely new level of evolution, as different from consciousness as consciousness is from life, and as life is from matter. This shift is catalyzed by environmental crises, technological breakthroughs, developments in information systems, and the rapid spread of consciousness-expanding techniques. Indeed the hypothesis is that popular attainment of higher states of awareness are a prerequisite to such planetary noogenesis.

Some sources – for example James E Lovelock – postulate the earth as a self-regulating biological mechanism, the Gaia hypothesis. Certain characteristics have remained remarkably constant over millions of years, such as the saltness of the sea, the surface temperature of the planet and the proportions of methane and oxygen in the atmosphere, all this despite radical changes in internal and external environment. Under this hypothesis, humanity is a kind of cancer putting the whole organism at risk – it may be that Gaia will be destroyed, or destroy mankind – or humanity can become a kind of planetary nervous system working along with instead of against the overall organism. It is this state that Teilhard de Chardin hypothesizes, when through noogenesis the "Omega Point" will be reached and the noosphere (planetary mind) created. It is also the state postulated by Sri Aurobindo, a "supermind" manifesting at the individual and the collective level and deriving from the spiritual development of individual consciousnesses; and the self-reflective state or "Gaiafield" described by Peter Russell, which would arise through the interaction of all individual minds within the overall social superorganism. These three predictions refer to time scales of thousands or millions of years, of hundreds of years and of decades respectively.