The ideal of a unified humanity can be found in many Wisdom Traditions. In the past decades the concept of a “planetary consciousness” has been used world wide to describe the building of “a peaceful, cooperative, global society”. The term “planetary consciousness” was already used – if not coined – by Hazrat Inayat Khan in the 1920’s.

In recent times the term is found in the context of the “Manifesto of a Global Responsibility” which was signed in 1997 by many outstanding personalities:

“An individual endowed with planetary consciousness recognizes his or her role in the evolutionary process and acts responsibly in light of this perception. Each of us must start with himself or herself to evolve his or her consciousness to this planetary dimension; only then can we become responsible and effective agents of our societies’ change and transformation.

Planetary consciousness is the knowing as well as the feeling of the vital interdependence and essential oneness of humankind, and the conscious adoption of the ethics and the ethos that this entails. Its evolution becomes imperative for the survival of men on this planet. The twenty-first century must then enter the history books as the century of planetary consciousness.”
Manifesto of a Global Responsibility

The Emergence of the new Planetary Consciousness:
Evolution of a unified Consciousness in Humanity –
Involution of the integral spiritual World Consciousness

The concept of the harmonious integration of man into the whole of creation is already found in ancient Greece, where the world was seen as a cosmos, as a well structured holon. Aristotle called man a “zoon politikon”, a community-being who places him- or herself into proper perspective of the whole, namely into the polis, the world and the cosmos, like an internal organ is placed in the body of man.

The highest part of the human constitution (nous) is seen to be a con-substantial spark of the ordering principle of the cosmos. In the understanding of the Wisdom Teachings, human wisdom is seen as a participation with the field of “primordial wisdom”, which is the root of all consciousness, all experience of unity, and at the same time matrix of all structural forms.

According to Aristotle there are several stages of refinement of the intelligence principle, through which the individualised consciousness of man can come into natural accord with the information field of creation.

1. techne (practical abilities, expert knowledge, art)
2. episteme (scientific understanding, knowledge)
3. phronesis (ethical insight)
4. sophia (philosophical wisdom)
5. nous (intuitive insight, spiritual perception, pure reason)

In the classical Wisdom Teachings the unfoldment of consciousness is shown as a series of several stages of development.
The early stages are characterized by the impressions, of the outer senses, material thinking, personal desires and a separate view of the world. The higher stages are qualified by spiritual values, abstract thinking and by conscious experience and intuitive perception of the essential unity of all creation. In the Wisdom Teachings this existential transformation is called the “turning around within the deepest seat of consciousness” which will allow mankind to find orientation in a deeper level of reality and to bring forth a truly humane culture and civilisation.

The new Planetary Consciousness:
Wisdom and Science in Dialogue

The Wisdom Teachings of all high cultures with the new leading sciences can reveal the highest form of human insight: the wisdom, which allows men to live in harmony with the totality of creation and to take up the responsibility for a planetary community.

Modern concepts of science, contributing to an understanding of the planetary consciousness are:

The concept of the “noosphere” by Teilhard de Chardin
The concept of “integral consciousness” by Jean Gebser
The concept of the “akashic field” by Ervin Laszlo.