What's Next
Tools as Extensions of our Senses
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin realized that over countless eons, evolution equipped Earth life with more and more complex sensory systems in order that Earth's creatures could expand in awareness of themselves, and their world. But he foresaw that the development of ever more complex sensory systems had taken Earth life as far as it could, and that any further human evolution now depended not on our developing even more complex sensory systems - but through our ever more advanced instrumentation to now serve as an extension of our senses.
The laws of physics as well, prevent us from ever evolving eyes that will allow us to see, firsthand, the larger Planetary/Cosmic space we inhabit...But our instrumentation can allow us to see it. This image of our Earth as seen from space has only been made possible through our Space Age instruments. But if Teilhard de Chardin was right and our instrumentation is meant to further our evolution, we can't relegate this consciousness expanding image to the exclusive province of science. If we fail to integrate its transformational potential in a meaningful way, then in essence; what we're doing is deliberately hobbling ourselves and thwarting our further evolution.
Only through Planetization can we begin to realize the deeper evolutionary significance that this image has for us as a species, and through it, our present way of perceiving "The World' will begin to fade from memory like a distant mirage.
One Coherent Whole
"Cosmologists prefer to believe that there is no edge to the assemblage of galaxies and that wherever there is space there are galaxies...But on a larger scale - a Universe of infinite galaxies is as limited a concept as a Universe of infinite atoms - there must be a higher level of organization."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Under the present paradigm the vastness of Cosmic space only renders us insignificant and irrelevant in comparison. But Planetization changes our perspective from a lateral one of disconnected, meaningless vastness - to a more holistic perspective of nested orders of magnitude. Through Planetization we'll begin to see that every order of magnitude of spatial reality - from the vast ocean of quantum foam that undergirds our molecular reality... to the organically rich oceans of our Earth... to the oceanic depths of Cosmic space... all are circles within circles, all are significant 'parts' of the final One. Planetization views the Universe as one organic, dynamically alive, intelligent whole that contains all smaller orders of magnitude of space nested within Itself... and all imbued with its same essence, meaning... and purpose.
"Indian Thinking' is "seeing" things from a perspective emphasizing that circles and cycles are central to the world and that all things are related within the Universe."
Donald Lee Fixico
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World
The 'Felt Sense' of Where We Are
Planetization incorporates the next higher order of magnitude of space - the Planetary/Cosmic dimension - into our felt sense of 'where we are'. It places us viscerally on our Earth, in the Cosmos. It takes this knowledge out of the realm of abstract intellectualization and dry scientific fact and enables us to finally integrate it in a meaningful way. From the time of Galileo, to the present; we've intellectually known that our beautiful Earth is a dynamically energetic orb bearing a lush extravagance of life through the heavens. But this knowledge hasn't yet filtered down into our felt sense of 'where we are'.
"A logical view of the cosmos can only be found through a sympathetic understanding and intuition"
Albert Einstein
History is full of other examples of how we've evolved in consciousness by gradually assimilating major scientific discoveries over time. There's a well-established pattern of this type of 'trickle down' evolution of consciousness that starts with a scientific breakthrough, but then takes decades, sometimes even centuries, before that scientific discovery 'trickles down' into the reality construct of the average person. It took about a century for Freud’s discovery of the unconscious to be integrated into our mainstream thinking. Unlike previous generations, most of us today can recognize when someone is being passive-aggressive, or in the throes of any other ego-defense mechanism. As a species, our capacity for self-awareness advanced by quantum leaps when, thanks to Freud; we became more open to exploring our own and other people's unconscious motivations and ego-defenses.
Other examples of 'trickle down' evolution of consciousness include Carl Jung's discovery of our Collective Unconscious, and Leonardo DaVinci's anatomical studies in order to make his figure drawings more accurate. The rich symbolism and unplumbed depths of our Collective Unconscious still enthralls and perplexes us with the mystery of its ancient origins. Through it, we glimpse the deep psychic unity within all of humankind - a unity we were ignorant of before Carl Jung came along. Leonardo DaVinci had to surreptitiously carry out his anatomical studies with dead bodies in order to realistically depict in art the human musculature in all its complexity - knowledge that was totally absent to the people of his day. Yet only a few centuries later, ‘abs, ‘pecs’, biceps - and everything else that exists under our skin is now commonplace knowledge.