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“As I understand (and I checked my interpretation with Max Wildiers, a friend of Teilhard and the supervisor of the Dutch translarions of Teilhard’s works. Wildiers was also professor of comparative theology at the University of Berkely) Teilhard’s theories, he discerns 9 levels in the kosmic evolution, which he groupoed in (1) lithosphere, the stage of dead matter, grouping levels 1 to 5, (2) biosphere, the stage of living matter with the exception of man, grouping levels 6 to 8, and (3) noosphere, the stage of conscious thinking, level 9, starting with man. This 9th stage is also called socialization.

So the particles, atoms and hydrosphere (whichever this is) belong to the lithosphere. On the other hand, the spiritual and the theological are the most important parts of the noosphere, as is the Omega Point.

In fact, Teilhard only described 6 levels, because at his time (around 1940-1950) levels 1,2 and 6 were not yet dicovered. He saw level 6 as part of level 7 (it is Margulis who discovered the eobionts), and included levels 1 (superstrings) and 2 (quarks) into level 3 (the particles). The addition of these three stages, by Wildiers, only confirms and completes Teilhard’s theories.

Furthermore, Teilhard included the spiritual and the divine in the noosphere. If one discerns 4 stages in human philosphical thinking, magic, mythic, rational and post-rational, concepts as spiritual and divine, supposing another substance than matter, are magic and mythic. In the postrational view, thoughts and cultural phenomena are considered as the software of intelligent hardware, not as a separate, second, immaterial substance. So I contest the Wilber-style scheme where one tries to coerce Teilhardian concepts into a mythical scheme.

I see another problem with Aurobindo’s supermind, analogous to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and the Global Brain concept. These theories consider human mind as one of the stages in the development of consciousness and the noosphere, whereas Teilhard very explicitely insists on the fact that human individual intelligence has to be considered as the last stage. There will be a Global Mind, each of us thinking the same superior way, but no global brain, with our brains as a kind of braincells building up a superior brain. This is another reason not to put Teilhard in the Wilber-Lovelock scheme.”