Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Wilber's View

Teilhard supplies Wilber with one of his most direct formulations of interiority as a cosmic-scale variable, and Wilber quotes him approvingly and repeatedly for it. Teilhard's claim that "the within, consciousness, spontaneity" are "three expressions for the same thing" is cited as an elegant, compact statement of the interior/exterior distinction Wilber builds his own four-quadrant model on — the idea that every holon, not just humans, has both an outside that can be observed and an inside that can only be participated in. Teilhard's "law of complexity and consciousness" — the more of the former, the more of the latter — is likewise taken up directly into Wilber's own claim that depth and consciousness increase together across evolution, and that depth "goes all the way down." Where Wilber pulls back is on Teilhard's most famous idea, the Omega Point: he groups Teilhard's "final Omega-point" alongside the Aquarian Conspiracy, the New Age, and "Timewave Zero" as an example of a tempting but overreaching move — mystically inclined writers announcing a literal, calendar-datable "end of history" — and elsewhere lists Teilhard among the philosophers (with Hegel and Marx) whose omega points promise that history's culmination will answer all the hard questions and usher in a paradisiacal condition, a move Wilber treats with visible skepticism even as he takes the underlying complexity/consciousness correlation seriously.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

"'The within, consciousness, spontaneity—three expressions for the same thing.'" (Teilhard, quoted)

As for Teilhard de Chardin, he put it very simply: "The within, consciousness, spontaneity—three expressions for the same thing."

— Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

"Teilhard expressed this in his 'law of complexity and consciousness'"

Teilhard expressed this in his "law of complexity and consciousness"—namely, the more of the former, the more of the latter. Since… evolution tends in the direction of greater complexity, it amounts to the same thing to say that it tends in the direction of greater consciousness (again, depth = consciousness).

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

"'Refracted rear-wards along the course of evolution, consciousness displays itself…'" (Teilhard, quoted)

As Teilhard eloquently put it, "Refracted rear-wards along the course of evolution, consciousness displays itself qualitatively as a spectrum of shifting shades whose lower terms are lost in the night."

— Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

"Most people are familiar with Teilhard de Chardin's ultimate omega point"

And most people are familiar with Teilhard de Chardin's ultimate omega point, the resurrection of Christ consciousness in each and all, which, like all omega points, is maintained to be the purpose of history and evolution itself.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 2, "The Pattern That Connects"

See Also

• four-quadrants — the interior/exterior distinction Wilber's Teilhard quote is enlisted to support
• great-chain-of-being — the depth-tracks-consciousness claim Teilhard's "law" feeds into
• involution-and-evolution — where Wilber situates (and gently distances himself from) omega-point, end-of-history readings of evolution