Co-evolution

A Dialogue on Science and Spirit by Guy Dauncey, 2002 Guy Dauncey is an author, organizer and sustainable communities consultant who specializes in developing a positive vision of an environmentally sustainable future, and translating that vision into action. His website is www.earthfuture.com

If you go along with the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, or the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo, then yes, that is exactly what I am suggesting. They placed spirit right at the centre of evolutionary theory. They proposed that there is a co-evolution of spirit and matter – that the more complex matter becomes, like the brain of a whale, or a human, with its 100,000 million cells, the more consciousness it can hold. And consciousness gives us access to an awareness of spirit. Spirit is in everything, from here to the birthplace of the universe, but we have to be open to perceive it. That’s what I think the world religions were meant to be – manuals, to help us let spirit in. Teilhard and Aurobindo proposed that spirit is the driving principle within all evolution, as it is seeks ever greater union with the universe from which it sprang - a universe which is simultaneously spiritual and material.