By Simon G. Powell

"My God, its full of stars..."

Any evolving system of genuine importance must stand upon something else. Nothing can support itself without recourse to a foundation of some kind, ideally a foundation both solid and robust. Rock is just such a manifest solid structure ideally suited to bear an evolving system atop it. Itself the manifest result of rock-hard physical law (like gravity) terrestrial rock, or the geosphere, is more than just densely packed minerals. Rock is like a marvellously enduring idea, an objectified layer of the Earth upon which all else of interest stands, be it an ocean teeming with fish or a forest teeming with plants and fungi. In essence, rock serves to support the biosphere, that great interwoven layer of life and gases covering our planet. Yet even the great interconnected web that is the biosphere is not the end of this layered system for, as we shall see, somewhere 'beyond' the biospheric layer of life and the Earth's atmosphere, lies the noosphere, the mind layer of the planet, that space of consciousness wherein you and I with our conscious thoughts, even now, dwell.

The concept of the noosphere is admittedly difficult to grasp at first blush, yet upon careful and reasoned reflection it is not hard to see that the noosphere is as real as any other sphere, whether the sphere in question be the rocky geosphere, the organic biosphere or the gaseous atmosphere. This essay explores the ripe notion of the noosphere, a relatively new concept but one brimming with import as to the sense and significance of our situation as mind-endowed components of life on Earth. It is also the case that Gaia theory - that growing paradigm which views the geosphere, biosphere and atmosphere as interrelated components of one singular living system - remains incomplete unless the noosphere be added as the component with which, in fact, we are most closely familiar, being as we are conscious agents within the Gaian holarchy. What emerges when one contemplates the existence of the noosphere is a view of reality in which different levels, different spheres of organisation and activity, sit atop one another like the layers of an onion. And although I chose rock as an obvious example of the primary ground upon which all else of interest stands, each layer itself acts as a sort of rock by supporting the next emergent layer above.

It is fair to say that we are accustomed to thinking only of tangible objects as being real and substantial. Something that we can pick up and position, or throw, or turn over or tease apart - these things, these objects, we consider real in the objective sense. Cars, tables, chairs, raindrops, newspapers, flowers and so on. They are 'out there', possessing the real and quantifiable attributes of shape, mass and volume. So much is clear. But what of our thoughts that know these things, our thoughts that carry such certainty? Just what are thoughts? What is their status in the Universe at large? But let us be more clear about this. Instead of speaking of thoughts, let us use instead use the more general term consciousness, since consciousness embraces not only thoughts but emotions also.

We are conscious, more or less. That, it seems, is plain enough. Indeed, consciousness, whether there be more or less of it within an individual, is a hallmark of our species. Consciousness mediates our lives. Science, religion, poetry, art, philosophy, ideology, values - all are mediated through consciousness. But just how objectively real is consciousness? Does human consciousness exist in an objectively real fashion as do turtles and beetles? For that is what the concept of the noosphere implies - that there is a huge realm of consciousness as objectively and as firmly real as the realm of the biosphere, a realm of 'mindstuff' consisting of the sum total of all human consciousness, a realm built upon, and emergent out of the biosphere. A true part of Gaia, a true outgrowth of life on Earth.

Think of some crazy fool about to leap off a bridge. The bridge is real. It is tangible, hard, and evident to the senses. It possesses weight and measure, length, height, mass etc. The crazy fool is likewise real in the physical sense. He too can be weighed and measured. Consisting of a finite but massive amount of atoms, molecules and cells, our crazy fool is, at heart, a typical bio-physiological system made of mass/energy. Each constituent organic part can, if necessary, be weighed, measured and analysed. But what of the man's consciousness? Picture our fool about to make his leap to death. Clearly, whatever his thoughts and emotions consist of, he certainly possesses consciousness; his consciousness, albeit dodgy, is 'doing something', is concerned with something or another. Now, I again ask you, just how real, in the objective sense, is this man's consciousness? Or any person's consciousness for that matter?

One might wish to dismiss the man's consciousness, maybe as an aside or a so-called epiphenomenon. Glued to mega-comfy armchairs, some dull philosophers attempt just such a casual dismissal of consciousness. For these 'slackers', human consciousness is merely an incidental 'misty' feature of reality accompanying the much more real features of the physical world. But, given the situation at hand with the fool about to leap off the bridge, it is clear that the man's consciousness may well be the sole arbiter of his dramatic and potentially fatal situation at that moment and at that place in the space-time continuum. Which is to say that we should not dismiss consciousness as merely a sort of limp side effect of life. Rather it is the case that consciousness is a force, a fundamental factor if you will, a really existing something, a phenomenon of very real importance and with potentially great causal influence. In other words, the consciousness of this fellow we are imagining is real, just as real in fact as is the material brain in his head which doubtless embodies his consciousness.

It is surely the same with other mundane examples. For instance, if an alien scientist absolutely unfamiliar with humans and their technology wished to fully understand, say, a cyclist pedalling along Trafalgar Square, then an in-depth analysis of the bicycle, the road, and the person's organism will not yield a full explanation, no matter how deep the alien scientist's physical analysis. In order to fully comprehend the mass/energy system of the cyclist, one must, at some stage, invoke not only the mathematics involved in cycling and the biology and physics of the cyclist and his bike, but also the consciousness of the cyclist in order to account for the ultimate 'why' of the situation. This is especially the case since the cyclist's consciousness, of course, determines exactly why they are travelling at that time and at that place. The real reason then for the phenomenon of the cyclist ultimately lies within the mind of the cyclist - their will or wish to be travelling. It is in this important sense that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the real world. It cannot be dismissed as a secondary phenomenon. Consciousness is very much a real thing. Which means, when you get down to it, that mindstuff is real in the objective sense just as traditionally solid objects like chairs are real in the objective sense.

If we assume that consciousness is indeed as real as solid objects (though obviously of a different quality), then we are in a position to stretch our minds so as to conceive of the noosphere, for the noosphere can, in one sense, be considered to be the sum total of all human consciousness, an objectively real layer within Nature having as its foundational substrate not rock, but human cortical tissue i.e. brains.

Now, to fully conceive of the massive structure that is the noosphere we must bear in mind that some 6 billion or so human brains currently operate within the biosphere. Through the wondrous organic orchestration of evolution, Nature has built 6 billion human brains, each blessed with a convoluted and highly refined neuronal cortex, that outer layer of the brain believed to be bound up with human consciousness. A staggering 6 billion individual minds, each as rich and as expansive in content and in range as, say, any country with its quota of flora and fauna. Indeed, I assume that this realisation led some poet (whom I forget the name of) to assert that when a person dies so too does a unique world die.

At any one moment, the content of these billion-fold minds - the sum totality of human consciousness - makes up the noosphere, that is, the noosphere in the simplest sense that we can imagine it. Although this might seem fairly straightforward to get a handle on, the truth is that we are so caught up in our own minds, with the immanency of our own flowing consciousness, that it takes a great leap of the creative imagination to grasp the very real functional existence of 'other' minds, those of our 6 billion or so fellow humans. Indeed, it is no small thing to fully realise the objective existence of other minds instead of just viewing others as mere talking heads.

Once again, in order to think more clearly about the noosphere, consider the scenario whereby you step onto a packed train. Well now, not only may the train itself be packed with objectively real and palpably solid flesh, but, on reflection, we must also concede that 'other minds' are packed onto this said train, each one bearing a unique perspective, or 'mind-signature' as it were, of the situation at hand. Think of your flowing consciousness as you stand in this crammed train. Think how perceptually clear the smells, sights and sounds might be, as well as the flow of your mental associations. Now try and imagine the sum total of all those minds - the entire consciousness of all passengers considered at once - and you begin to divine the nature of the noosphere. All those other passengers are, like yourself, conscious to some degree. All perceptual views exist together and simultaneously just as all bodies are metabolising at the very same time and just as all lungs are breathing the same air at the same moment. Actually, it is the case that the train itself - and all technology for that matter - is a direct manifest result of the noosphere too, for it is this mind layer of the Earth that has been the causal force building the plethora of technological structures of our culture.

Yet even this simple train scenario is but a minuscule snapshot of the entire noosphere, a locally conceived portion as it were. Beyond the local environment of the train lies an entire city perhaps, consisting of, say, 5 million persons - all thinking and feeling something, and all at the very same instant in time. At any moment in this city we find someone harbouring hateful thoughts, another experiencing joy, another conscious of love, one shouting in frustration, one apologising, one elated, one weeping, another contemplating music and so on. All at once. Beyond this, other cities with countless other millions of cortices, each again blessed with an individual 'mind-perspective' and unique conscious content. Finally, consider the entire biosphere at any one moment. Being night and day, dusk and dawn simultaneously, perhaps one quarter of all the global population are asleep. Yet they too might be active in some kind of conscious sense, dreaming perhaps. Taken together, all at once, this vast spectrum of mindful activity of one sort or another (more or less consciousness in each individual) embedded within the biosphere, is the locus, the matrix, the very infrastructure underlying the noosphere.

The noosphere: an evolutionary outgrowth of the biosphere

Truly this noospherical realm is vast, a huge network of conscious activity as complex and as rich as is the biospherical realm. But whereas science has documented and classified to a quite stunning degree the intricacies of the geosphere, biosphere and atmosphere of the Earth, the noosphere, being the most recently evolved layer of the planet, has yet to be studied in depth, or even for that matter, to be academically acknowledged by most scientists. This might well be because we are more readily able to 'look down' and thus see 'lower level' spheres or layers of Gaia, whereas the more recently evolved noosphere lies in another direction as it were. Whatever the case, the concept of the noosphere is little explored, yet it is such a fecund notion that it is almost certainly destined, should it be elaborated upon, to enrich our notions of our place within Nature.

Each of us then, our individual consciousness, can be considered a dynamic ever-changing 'mind-cell' residing within the greater totality that is the noosphere. Furthermore, we can imagine that each 'mind-cell' is not strictly distinct from its neighbours - distinct through some sort of boundary - but that each individual portion of consciousness, at some level, links up into one solid system just as the cells of multicellular organisms are all intimately conjoined into a solid system and just as all mountains and rocks form one interconnected solid system.

A visual analogy is helpful here. Let us consider a pool of water. Imagine that the water rests upon a bed of rock. The rock represents the geosphere - that layer of Nature made of rock upon which all else rests. The next layer up, the water, can represent the fluidic organic layer of the biosphere perched as it is upon the rocky geosphere below it (we can imagine the water to be filled with a myriad different patterns - i.e. organisms, akin to stable and persistent self-organised vortex-like structures within the fluidic water). Let us further imagine that the topmost layer of water represents humankind, woven as it is out of flesh and blood and floating upon 3 and one half billion years of evolutionary activity. Now, above this water, let us imagine an immense froth, a thin layer of fine bubbles sloshing about upon the water's surface and stretching as far as the eye can see (we can even imagine that the water has been heating up so as to give rise to the bubbles, the heating up process being analogous to the force and creative drive of evolution). In this visual analogy then, the bubbles represent individual minds.

We can see that each bubble is formed out of the water below it (formed out of organic chemistry just like all organisms and all organs), yet within the bubble lies a sphere of water vapour. This inner part of each bubble, its sphere of relatively rarefied vapour, is analogous to a mind, a small individual sphere of 'rarefied' consciousness located within a thin wall of water (the cortex). Although the vapour inside each bubble is a different sort of stuff to the stuff comprising the bubble, nonetheless both are made of real and essentially the same material, the only real difference being the rate of molecular vibration (particles of water vapour vibrate faster than particles of liquid water).

Now, in order to conceive of my earlier suggestion that all individual 'mind-cells' are linked together, we can see that the frothy bubbles in our analogy are not truly distinct at all, rather it is the case that they are joined together in a complex pattern of froth. Each bubble is directly and intimately linked to many, many others. One can even imagine that, for any one bubble, those nearest to it, those to which it is directly fused, are analogous to one's closest associates, those persons who one is in closest contact with, whilst other more distant bubbles represent persons one has never met. Yet all are interconnected, and all are made of the same 'stuff' - in this analogy of course, the 'same stuff' consists of vaporised water. Also, the movement of each bubble influences the movement of others, a process reminiscent of communication. As we have been conceiving it then, the noosphere is directly analogous to the sum totality of all the vapour in all the bubbles.

In this view, consciousness is a real sort of stuff, an objective material of some kind, which has evolved out of the more readily conceived objective material of atoms and molecules. Once conglomerates of those atoms and molecules have been organised into refined human brain tissue by way of evolution, then consciousness is allowed to form and flourish. But to reiterate, both systems - brain and mind - are real, both consist of real substance.

Interestingly, the great Armenian sage Gurdjieff - harbinger of many a profound metaphysical idea - also taught that consciousness was material, declaring that everything, including consciousness, was made of material. In modern parlance, we can arguably refer to this material out of which everything is woven as being informational in nature. Everything is made of, or is a form of, information. This includes rock, flesh, brains and the consciousness that brains embody. We can see that the brain is, at heart, an immensely complicated functional architecture, or pattern, of molecules and proteins. It can, or could be, defined in bit-by-bit detail. This implies that it is essentially an informational architecture (linguistically coded by DNA). Likewise, the neurochemical activity proceeding within it - the countless firing of neurons and neuronal processes which are believed to underlie consciousness - can also be seen to be a form of computational architecture. This again implies that consciousness is a form of information. The only difference then between informational systems considered physical and informational systems considered mental, is a difference in the informational elements employed. At heart, there are patterns of energy, patterns which get their meaning according to contextual relations and such. The key point here is that consciousness can be conceived as an objectively real 'stuff' as can physical matter.

Actually, our frothy water analogy yields more subtle insights for we can see that there exists a realm 'above' the bubbles. This realm or layer, even more rarefied, consists of free air. Perhaps this is analogous to the Collective Unconscious as envisioned by Jung, a domain of universal archetypes, mythical symbols, shared icons and the like, that transcendental realm accessible through the ingestion of entheogenic plants as well as other consciousness-altering techniques (even dreaming). We could even call this realm the Gaian Mind, the domain of information lying somewhere deep within each human psyche, separated only by some 'semi-permeable' membrane. And perhaps psychological death is akin to the bursting or popping of an individual bubble, whereby the contents diffuse back into the great layer above. Or perhaps we have taken the analogy far enough. In any case, we are now in a position to consider the significance of the idea of the noosphere. What does it imply? In short, what does it really mean?

The first thing to consider is the sheer magnitude of the noosphere. Whereas we have been imagining it consisting of the sum totality of human consciousness at any one moment, this surely limits its extent. I suspect that, just as a tree carries a record of its past in the form of its shape and within the layered rings in its trunk, then so too does the entire history of the noosphere reside in some dimension or space (hyperspace?) and in some or another form. As to its internal dynamics, its organisation and to the possibility that there is 'something-that-it-is-like' to be the noosphere or parts thereof, these remain moot metaphysical points. But the idea that all the conscious thoughts that have ever existed exist in some form and reside in some real space might well be commensurate with the ancient idea of the Akashic Record, the belief that all human experience is preserved in some accessible domain...somewhere. Perhaps information, like energy, cannot be destroyed...

To be sure, these unusual assertions depend upon just how far we can creatively imagine the noosphere. If we do accept - in theory at least - that the noosphere definitely exists and that its size and richness must be in the same league as the size and richness of, say, the biosphere, then radical speculations regarding the organisational life of the noosphere actually become tenable. Such is the breadth of the idea of the noosphere. Any glimpse we may catch of it is merely the tip of a whopping great iceberg.

It is also apparent that in such a nested holarchy of geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere, we catch sight of some important growing cosmic system. A tree comes to mind again since a tree possesses a number of distinct layers during its growth. Given that the Universe - in terms of its chemistry and its physical laws - was almost certainly bound to yield life, then we can see that the formation of a noosphere is as natural a tendency of Nature as is the growth and formation of a biosphere. System after self-organised system unfolds over time according to the natural laws and natural potential of the Universe. First suns form which invariably go supernova thus spewing heavier elements into space. Then planets invariably form as well as second generation stars like our own sun. Then, fed by high-grade solar energy, autocatalytic chemical systems arise able to perpetuate themselves. These molecular replicators invariably evolve until eventually a biosphere seizes the entire surface of a planet and begins to alter both the landscape and the atmosphere. In short, Gaia is born. And within this great system, invariably nervous systems evolve to the point that somewhere along the line consciousness of the sort we know arises. This is the birth of the noosphere; a birth once again due to the way Nature is seemingly configured.

It may be that the above process whereby emergent layers arise out of one another, each more complex than its predecessor, is but a brute factual aspect of the Universe's inherently creative potential. However, this seems to seriously belittle Nature's magnificent evolutionary orchestrations, as if such phenomena were 'merely this or that'. Grasping for a more aesthetically pleasing appreciation for this immense process in which each one of us is so intimately involved, I am led to believe that a certain principle is in operation, a principle most closely associated with the general thrust of evolution. Dwelling upon the very real existence of the noosphere, it seems plausible that the noosphere is itself continually evolving just as the biosphere (or Gaia) is continually evolving. But evolving towards what? What is the direction? Indeed, if we dare pose the question, what exactly is the function of the noosphere?

Well, one thing that can be said regarding evolution - and recall that the biosphere and the noosphere are evolutionary phenomena - is that the direction of evolution is in stark polar contrast to the direction of entropy, equilibrium and disorder. Although stars run down (like our sun) and give up their initially high degree of negentropic order, in the process of the evolution of the biosphere and the evolution of the noosphere, we see a self-organisational process in which the direction is towards the 'source', to that ultimate domain where springs the fundamental causal force of these evolving layered systems we have been discussing. In the discussion of rock earlier, I briefly alluded to the laws of physics as being the platform or rock upon which terrestrial rock, and indeed all life, stands. If we can take a quantum leap of thought and intimate that some sort of fantastically sublime Natural Intelligence is bound up with the laws of physics, that the cosmos is a sort of evolutionary engine capable of fostering chemical and biological complexity (the cosmos is coded to foster evolutionary processes), then it might well be that the noosphere is that latest outgrowth of Gaia whose function is to embody yet higher levels of organisation, a sort of reaching out, or return, to its original source. This means that the noosphere is itself a platform, an emergent structure destined to support a still more evolved system.

I am reminded here of another claim of Gurdjieff's. In his cosmology (ostensibly of Sufi origin), Gurdjieff claimed that not only was the Earth a living being (a prescient conjecture given that he spoke of this to his most famous pupil P.D.Ouspensky as early as 1915), but that the Earth would eventually evolve into a sun. If we take this not literally but as metaphorical then the implication may be that the noosphere will eventually evolve to a solar level of being. In other words, as the structure of the noosphere develops and becomes evermore organised, a new evolutionary breakthrough may blossom, for all intents and purposes being commensurate with the solarisation of Gaia. This could only mean an Omega Point of the sort envisioned by palaeontologist and metaphysicist Teilhard de Chardin, that moment in time in which the noosphere transcends itself and penetrates an utterly new dimension. Without becoming unacceptably mystical, this is perhaps the most that can be said at this juncture regarding the hypothetical function of the noosphere and its evolving ontology.

There is one more prospect to consider, no doubt of great importance to most of us. This concerns the nature of biological death. If we assume that the noosphere, existing in a real but little understood dimension or space, contains a record of all conscious experience, then it is probable that each one of us be associated with a noospherical body. Just as we possess physical bodies, so too must we possess a sort of 4-dimensional body of information existing in the realm of the noosphere, a body equatable with the sum total of our inner lives. And just as physical bodies do not simply disappear when they die - rather they are broken down and recycled - so too must something happen to our noospherical bodies after our short earthly sojourns are completed.

Waxing ultra-metaphysical, I would assume that a noospherical body, like a physical body, must continue to exist in some form within the Gaian holarchy system as we have been conceiving it. Embedded in the noosphere, our individual noospherical bodies must go somewhere, they must do or serve something, either by way of being 'recycled' or by evolving to further levels of organisation. Or maybe the noospherical records of our psychological lives serve in the same way that a chapter can serve within a book. Once set down, a noospherical body or individual lifetime can serve to imply something else, thus setting off a kind of new semantic growth, the continuing journey of the soul perhaps. I leave it to the future to take up such fascinating speculation.

Whatever the true implications of the noosphere, it would appear that, under its enormous shadow, life on Earth, and in particular conscious human life, becomes but a sub-structure within some awesome pattern of growth, a pattern of growth grasping and extending itself to realms never dreamed of in traditional philosophies. The greatest metaphysical adventure that is life on Earth continues. The Universe is truly fantastic.