So my view is there is no permanence either in substance or in thought. Goethe was right; theology is the creation of intelligent men for the benefit of their contemporaries. It therefore evolves like everything else, and no form of thought is immortal. In other words, Einstein’s postulate that in the world of space/time no one frame of reference is better, or worse, than any other, does indeed dispose of any permanence of thought.
Not only does a study of the past suggest that evolution is like a river, forever changing as it makes its way through time, until at last it triumphantly ends in consciousness; but he also says in his Vision of the Past, that once consciousness appears, it takes over the development of evolution. Unlike all animal species which become mutually infertile once they have specialized enough, man continues to be able to breed with all other men. The ability to communicate, either in words or in other ways, seems to preclude the division of mankind into separate species. So not only do thought and will have an ability to get the muscles into action, permeating the whole being and extending apparently to the ends of one’s fingers and toes, as anyone with any physical skill knows; but thought and will seem to be able to influence mankind on a global scale as well, moulding the development of his evolution. If this is so, then it is forlorn to try to expel the world of the spirit from the teaching of biology; because thought and will, which greatly depend on belief and faith, are apparently ultimately supreme in the biosphere. He went further, and suggested that evolution, as controlled by thought and will, was heading for a point of convergence, in other words was heading for a goal, as opposed to being on an endless journey.
Teilhard de Chardin, being a Jesuit and a Christian, saw this point as Christ, because this is what the New Testament and St. Paul’s Epistles in particular prophesy. But suppose we leave the gods out of it, what could this point of convergence be? My view was that it would be immortality of a kind; with a remote chance of literal immortality, and a much greater probability of metaphorical immortality. Anyone who reads my book “Man’s Relationship with God” will see this opinion writ large in almost every chapter. And on page 327, I state categorically that, “My choice was to think that the interpenetration of two minds might so enormously increase the imagination of both, that I was justified in choosing this as the next step forward”. I was saying that, in my opinion, the interpenetration of two minds was the next step towards the final consummation of this convergence. I had no idea what the subsequent steps were; and still have none; but at least this idea indirectly provided the inspiration to master my profession, and one often has to settle for less than perfection. Anyway at the end of the day when something actually works, and enables you to earn money and earn a living, naturally one tends to think there is something in it.