What this Book is About

Spirituality and religion are regarded as being out of this world. The very reason many religions regard themselves as spiritual is because they envisage beings or worlds other than the natural world we live in, while many non-religious people see the beauty and order of our world to reflect values transcending our own. But do we need supernatural beings or transcendental values to satisfy our spiritual ambitions? Could we not find all the splendour of our spiritual aspirations here in our physical world without them? We could simply take our world for what it is and find spirituality in it.

This is not a new idea. Pantheistic ideas have equated spirituality with nature for centuries if not millennia, their most notable proponent being the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza in the 17th Century who contended that there is only one set of rules - the rules of nature - that governs all of reality without exception. He saw the physical reality we live in as the only reality but regarded it as divine. He saw God as the intrinsic order of nature; a God that is not outside of nature, does not have a consciousness and does not get involved in human affairs. Some panpsychists too, who regard consciousness as an elemental substance present in all nature's parts, find spirituality in a conscious nature.

One should not dismiss Spinoza's conception of spirituality lightly. Einstein, who believed in Spinoza's impersonal God, was a deeply religious person. He said: "By way of understanding, one achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which, in its turn, is inaccessible to man." ^#15 Experiencing this "rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law" to him was a truly spiritual event.

I get it. But there's a new kid on the block.

Albert Hofmann's synthesis of LSD in 1943 heralded a completely different kind of rapturous amazement, one that allowed humanity to consciously participate in the harmony of the universe rather than only stand in awe of it. Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin permit one to consciously merge with the universe and everything in it, an astonishingly different circumstance to one's usual experience as a separate individual, and, since one is conscious at the time, leads to an understanding that the universe is conscious. Many have described this experience as spiritual ^#1, yet it is triggered by the ingestion of a very material drug inducing a very material molecular response in our very material brains, while the crux of its success lies in one's acceptance of the physical world rather than a devaluation of or escape from it. That it is only a drug-induced illusion has not been confirmed, with many questioning their normal perception afterward.

While such a psychedelic experience is popularly interpreted as transcending nature or a validation of panpsychism, this book attempts to build on Spinoza's natural pantheism to accommodate it. Like Spinoza, the book is based on the idea that only the rules of nature govern the universe but unlike Spinoza it recognizes a consciousness to the universe with which we can relate. The book's distinction is that it sees this consciousness to be an emergent phenomenon, arising from and within the universe utilizing only the natural capacities of the universe to do so. And unlike panpsychism, it associates this consciousness with the universe as a whole rather than being a substance present in all its parts. It is the merging of one's personal consciousness with an emergent, extrinsic consciousness of the whole universe that the book considers our most prized spiritual attainment.

Indeed the book regards all consciousness, including our own, to be emergent phenomena. Rather than consciousness being an intrinsic attribute of nature as proposed by panpsychists, it sees emergence as the intrinsic attribute of nature by which, among many other phenomena, consciousness arises, and by which value arises from consciousness. Regarding emergence to be an attribute of nature means it's expression is commensurate with Spinoza's rules of nature governing all reality ^#17.

This spiritual consciousness has thus not preceded the physical universe, is not sourced outside of it and is not a basic element of it. It is an effusion of nature, an emanation of being rather than a ground of being, a flowering of the material universe rather than a keeper of its orderliness. This is not to say there is no ground of being only that it is not mental - as Spinoza foresaw - and is not an appropriate aim for our spiritual endeavours.

This consciousness of the universe (which I would rather not call 'God') is a different kind of consciousness to our own and independent of our own, but as an emergent consciousness nonetheless, has acquired (and is acquiring) a personality with values of its own ^#19. Being of and in this world, it is able and willing to relate with others in this world, and when it relates with us it does so in accordance with its values, not ours.

This is a new approach, and it is surprisingly helpful. It allows perennial questions such as free will, suffering and morality to be addressed in a completely different light, while expanding our understanding of how we relate to the world and how it relates to us. And since the book is addressing an emergent spirituality rather than a ground of being, it makes no attempt to explain how we and the world have come about, why nature is ordered, or how emergence happens. What it does attempt to explain is how a spirituality associated with the entire universe could possibly emerge from the currently accepted fundamental principles of physics.

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The book discusses spirituality in a wider sense, not only with regard to a spirituality of the entire universe. It investigates how other spiritual possibilities could emanate from the world's physicality.

To do this, the term 'spiritual' is invoked as a catch-all for anything that influences us while remaining mysterious or beyond our control, rather than restricting it to its traditional religious sense.

We have no control over many of the physical phenomena that affect us: The rotation of our planet vis-a-vis the sun absolutely dictates our daily rhythms while the genetic structuring of a human body is an important determinant of what we are and what we can do. These influences are unavoidable and beyond our control, and in this wider sense are spirits we cannot but obey. But could such spirits be sentient? Could we revere them for their intelligence, love or wrath as we have our traditional gods?

An essential element of sentience is the comprehension and expression of meaning, while the meaning a physical phenomenon carries lies in its patterning and the patterning of its relationships. I see the way things are patterned to give us the clearest hints of sentience. A patterning of sound for example, physical as it is, might carry a police siren's wail, but it might also carry a baby's cry, a bird's call, language, music and poetry. All these illustrate not only the variety of ways a physical phenomenon can carry meaning but the heights to which it can let that meaning flourish. The messages we communicate - speech, words on a page, decorations on a vase, electronic data, signs or songs, a pat on the back, a shared laugh - all are patternings of the greater material medium. Our organs sense our environment through signals in the material medium and it is through manipulations of the material medium that we respond. Our material world is a replete medium for pattern, meaning and sentience.

While we have traditionally attributed mysterious patterns to transcendental sources (and here I include mysterious patterns in our brains), we could equally attribute them to this-worldly sources at scales not perceptible from our own. Molecular biology, for example, has revealed staggering layers in the microscopic patterning of living organisms, well beyond our normal scales of perception, while astronomy has revealed a universe far exceeding our everyday expectations. Even the physical operation of the world appears to be different at different scales, as the irreconcilability of quantum mechanics and gravity suggests. Patterns can also change according to yet other patterns, which in turn may themselves be patterned - over and over and over again - with patterns at the extremes of such recursion often lying outside our scales of perception. It is in these far reaches of material patterning that I see possibilities for spiritual sentience. I see psychedelics shifting our perceptions towards scales we don't normally frequent, prompting us to describe their experience as spiritual.

Spirituality could thus be understood in terms of scale rather than in terms of dimensions. Humans, animals, bacteria and spirits all inhabit the same physical dimensions, only our scales of habitation differ. By attending to the world and ourselves more closely we can heighten our sensitivity to the scale of the world's patterning, thereby making our spirits more accessible for engagement and widening our participation in it.

Spiritual engagement can take the form of a sharpened scientific scrutiny but it can also take the form of an immediate personal intimacy. We can enjoy as passionate and enigmatic an enjoyment of spirituality with a physical outlook as we can with a transcendental outlook, for there may be more splendid players than we populating the vastness of scale. A physical outlook does not preclude epiphanic states of consciousness nor a post-mortal continuation of our awareness but it does circumscribe the contexts in which they can occur, and elucidating these will be a major task of this book.

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At the core of this project are two modes to the patterning of the world that make these scale sensitivities really stand out.

In the mode I call architective, patterns reside in hierarchical levels, with higher level patterns overriding those below, while in the mode I call connective there are no levels of authority and patterns relate with each other proportionally. These modes of patterning and relationship can be seen for example in the way armies organize in ranked levels while fish school without leaders.

I will show that the architective, hierarchical mode is scale dependent and the connective mode is not. This means that the architective mode is only effective in a limited window of scale while the connective mode is effective at all scales. We inhabit the scale where the architective mode is effective and many of our spirits rely on that mode. This has implications for our spiritual speculations, for spirits relying on the architective mode are confined to the scale in which it is effective and attributing universal roles to these spirits would be misguided. Many of our traditional deities rely extensively on the architective mode yet are claimed to have universal influence.

I will also show that relationships utilizing the architective mode are generally more forceful than those utilizing the connective mode, and since we live at the scale where the architective mode is effective architective relationships dominate our lives.

Being scale independent, the connective mode offers the possibility of cosmos-wide relationships while the scale limitation of the architective mode means its relationships manifest in separate, isolated occurrences. In the connective mode phenomena relate with each other as if connected while in the architective mode they relate with each other as if separate. This is hugely significant for us, for at our human scale we must deal with physical, social and spiritual phenomena that relate in both modes. Our consciousness is also contingent on both modes, so that in one mode we are more sensitive to the connection of things and in the other we are more sensitive to their separation. And with the architective mode the more forceful, we take things as separate by default.

A cosmos-wide connected spirituality is thus only one way - a connective way - for us to contemplate spirituality. We can also contemplate it in a scale-dependent way, in which separate spirits exploit the hierarchical capacities of the architective mode. The architective mode may dominate our contemplation but both modes are valid and we are capable of both.

What then about a singular, all-encompassing God? Could not all the contraries of our world be taken up in a single ultimate totality such as a Supreme Being, a primary consciousness or a Theory of Everything? With the consciousness of the universe being emergent as proposed, our spiritual challenge is not to consolidate the contraries of our world in an all-inclusive totality but to understand how such contrasting ontologies as a universal connectedness and a manifold of separates can coexist without denying the fundamental validity of each.

In his groundbreaking work "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" ^#2, Dr. Iain McGilchrist has described distinct modes of operation for the right and left hemispheres of our brains. His hemispheric modes align so closely with the connective and architective modes I will describe, including a domination by the left hemisphere or architective mode, as to have me suggest that the hemispheric division of our brains is an evolutionary adaptation to a more primary dichotomy.

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A brief biographical note to allay suspicions about my motives: I grew up orthodox Jewish and as a teenager in the 1960's was groomed for the rabbinate. On leaving school I chose to study physics and maths at university where I embraced atheism instead. In the 1970's a chance encounter with psychedelics rekindled the spiritual interest, this time in the direct experience of spirituality rather than the following of any religion. This embrace of the worldly and the spiritual resonated deeply with me and for the first time I saw the physical world as sacred. Attempts to reconcile that experience with the scientific outlook I had acquired have occupied my attention ever since. This book is such an attempt. I have also published a more intuitive work called "The Oracle of Love" ^#3 based on the Daoist I Ching.

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The first Part of this book, "Modes of Interaction", examines our everyday physical, biological and social interactions while fleshing out the characteristics of the connective and architective modes. The second Part, "Modes of Meaning", shows how connective and architective contexts permeate the meaning we find in the world, which in turn has implications for our understanding of consciousness. It is only in the third Part, "Modes of Spirituality", that I turn to spirituality, imagining how our spirits would negotiate these modes. The last Part, "Changing the Paradigm", envisages how an awareness of these modes and their scale dependencies can refine our approach to spirituality and provide valuable signposts for our psychedelic journeys.

Though I did not follow a career as a physicist (I earned my living in computer software) my study of physics significantly coloured the way I see the world. The discussion in Part I is overtly physical and can be a little dry but the disclosure at its end is rewarding. The physics is elementary and hopefully accessible to everyone. Occasional statements that are beyond one's reach may be bypassed without losing the overall gist. On the other hand, I have stated the ideas much too simply in order to convey them as directly as possible and to as wide an audience as possible. The physics is mainstream and largely classical, only the perspective a little unusual so as to illustrate my thesis. Physicists please be forbearing - my intention is not to change the way we think about physics but the way we approach spirituality. On the other hand I do hope to change the way we think about consciousness, and cognitive scientists may be justifiably aggrieved by my naivete. Nonetheless, I regard my insights concerning the modes of patterning and their scale dependencies to be definitive and believe them to significantly impact our spiritual speculations.

The book is not long. It prints to about 200 pages but can be overly dense as I am not a skilled writer. Appreciate too that I am grappling with unusual ideas and have probably made mistakes along the way. Criticism is welcome - there's an email address on the cover page. My hope is that you will emerge from this adventure with a very different idea of what spirituality can be and a very different approach to the psychedelic landscape.