It has suggested that we can understand our spirits and deities to arise from the material world in the same way that we do rather than being underlying causes of it. In doing so we gain material reality as a guide to our spiritual thinking in the same way it guides our scientific thought.

In describing the world in terms of a universal connective system interspersed with isolated architective fragments it has shown that the human spiritual experience may be that of a universal union or that of a specific manifestation, depending on our mode of consciousness, and that we are capable of both.

It has shown that any spirit or deity cosmic in scope must be purely connective, and any spirit or deity that is architectively active cannot be universal.

By highlighting the architective dominion of our lives it has shown that our traditional experiences of spirituality are overwhelmingly architective.

It has shown that good and evil are meaningless in purely connective contexts.

By distinguishing the connective and architective modes of sentience, it has shown that our experience of the world is not a single stream of sentience but two (and perhaps multiple), and that we switch consciousness between them. It has shown how we habitually neglect a conscious awareness of our connective sentience, as exemplified by a common belief that thought is synonymous with consciousness.

It has shown that though our lives are parameterized and influenced by spirits beyond our control, our consciousness is our own and we have an individual, sovereign, executive capacity to choose our mode of consciousness.

It has shown that the influences of our connective spirits are extremely weak in comparison to the controls and organizations of our architective spirits. It has shown that connective spirituality has remained so thoroughly mysterious because holistic spirits are so weak, because they are so deeply hidden and because we are blinded by a habitual architective mode of consciousness.

It has shown that the connective spiritual relationship is one of mutual consideration rather than submission and sacrifice.

In demonstrating the distinction between connectivity and architectivity it has provided a framework by which the contradictory elements of spiritual vagueness and rational precision can be reconciled.

It has shown that we may venerate a deity in the context of any social institution whether or not it is a religion. Employees of a corporation and citizens of a country would experience a similar sense of identity, duty and attachment to their symbols and leaders as any adherents of a religion. While they may not be inclined to describe these experiences as spiritual, it is not uncommon for leaders of nations to arouse in their populace a sense of divinity in their leadership.

It has suggested that the connective mode of consciousness is so unusual that we would likely describe the experience as "out of this world" and consider it special if not spiritual. Of course we employ a connective sentience in the everyday management of our affairs but only in brief spurts or subconsciously. To consciously experience its full-blown weirdness one would have to maintain a connective consciousness long enough to allow a significant widening of one's connective web of interaction. Most of us spend our entire lives without ever experiencing it. Though I lived a religious childhood, I never experienced it until I started dabbling in psychedelics, and I suspect that if I had not so dabbled I would not have experienced it in my lifetime.

It has shown that the universal connectedness experienced under psychedelics need not suspend our participation in time and space, only involve a mode of consciousness in which our perceptions of time and space are not normal. Time matters for our spirits and deities just as it does for us. Spiritual conditions are not constant. The timing of events can have spiritual relevance. The success of a spiritual endeavour may well be dependent on the vicissitudes of a spiritual weather.

This book has suggested that one may widen one's connective consciousness so far as to become aware of the cosmic connective system and even to become aware of one's own connective consciousness as a visage of a greater cosmic consciousness. (Note how I mention one's connective consciousness only.) Widening one's connective consciousness to such extremes I believe to be the greater aspect of the spiritual experience made possible by strong psychedelic drugs and dedicated meditational practice.

Many believe that their psychedelic experience of universal connectedness has revealed their "true self", meaning that they regard their everyday experience of separation to be an illusion, one to be cast off at a more advanced stage of spiritual development. This book has shown that though the psychedelic experience of universal connectedness can reveal a Cosmic Self, one's everyday, separate self is not an illusion but a valid means of coping with the architectivity that permeates our planetary existence.

While many teach that our spiritual failure arises from the loss of a primordial innocence, this book has shown that living at a planetary scale means that connectedness is not our natural state - separateness is - and that competence in connective spirituality is something we develop rather than restore, much like an acquired taste: One has to learn to recognize it, what facilitates it and how to enjoy it.

An experience of profound connective harmony - being joyful for the Cosmic Deity and an epiphanic experience for us - would be experienced as being beautiful both by it and by ourselves. The creation of complex architectures, on the other hand, would only be a source of joy to us and to an architective deity when we and it have an appreciation of creativity. We often have such an appreciation but our Planetary Deity does not. The beauty to be found in architective creation is only valued by our human (and possibly other animal) sentiences, whether it be in a work of art, the complexity of a leaf, a monumental cathedral or a human face. What I am trying to say is that any appreciation of beauty in the complexity of architective construction (at least here on planet Earth) is limited to us and to our more benign cultural institutions (in their roles as hierarchical deities). Our Planetary Deity appears to only find beauty in the dramas of human sociality and in the spectacles of titanic disruptions.

The extreme flexibility of connective events means that connective experiences are never repeated exactly. There is no point recreating the conditions of a prior connective epiphany in the hope that it will happen again. Every connective epiphany is found anew. Indeed, it is the finding of the experience - the being in it - that makes for an epiphany. Falling in love is profound, and while marriage may offer subsequent occasions for different profundities, the original is rarely repeated.

Vocabulary

The variety of ways of understanding spirituality highlights a need to extend our vocabulary around the subject. On the one hand many people make no distinction between 'religion' and 'spirituality' while I have gone so far as to divide spirits into connective and architective camps, each with their own sub-genres. And by classifying social institutions as hierarchical spirits I am effectively negating the traditional distinction between the spiritual and mundane.

We need to extend our vocabulary to more clearly distinguish the mode or even kind of spirituality we are referring to. My own preference would be to distinguish 'cosmic spirituality' from 'planetary spirituality', reflecting the architective divide. Many would recognize the connective spirits I have described as being relevant to their spiritual pursuit while others see their spiritual experience only in terms of architective ritual and dogma.

Acceptance of a spirit as a deity carries the implication that the deity has an intent or purpose of its own, one that does not necessarily coincide with our own. Service to a deity should be understood as serving the deity's purpose rather than our own. Our own spiritual intent may take many forms, such as wanting to be healed of one's travails or a desire to participate in a cosmic consciousness; but these personal ambitions rarely match those of our deities. Our architective deities primarily require our unwavering attention and obedience, while the Cosmic Deity is intent on profundity in connective harmony - and neither of these generally rate as human spiritual ambitions. Perhaps we should talk about service to a deity as 'spiritual service' rather than 'spiritual experience'.

So in addition to distinguishing between cosmic and planetary spirituality, I suggest that cosmic spirituality bear a further distinction, between service to profundity in connective harmony and achieving a conscious participation in the cosmic system. For planetary spirituality we might distinguish between service in active performance of religious rites and our everyday submission to the architective dominion.

In the realm of sentience too, there is need for an expanded vocabulary. While I have attributed sentience to our deities as well as to animals and ourselves, these sentiences arise in very different ways. Organismic sentiences arise through their functional operations, human and animal consciousnesses arise in the neuronal functionality of brains, the Cosmic Deity's consciousness arises as a holism, that of our Planetary Deity as a processional narrative and the sentiences of our hierarchical deities as architective wholes. Yet the modes available to all these sentiences are common, namely connective and/or architective, and some are only able to operate in one mode. So we could say there are different kinds of sentience - that our human sentience is of a different kind to say that of the Cosmic Deity - and yet they all manifest in either the connective and/or architective mode. More so, all are intelligible to each other when sharing a mode, as for example, a human consciousness could constellate with that of the Cosmic Deity. As consciousness emerges from the physical world it manifests in at least five different ways. Artificial intelligence would perhaps be yet another kind, based on non-organismic functional operations.

In a purely connective window, without boundaries - without architectivity - there can be no sense of otherness. This means that in the purely connective cosmic context, all participants in a relationship are in some way the same. We need a word for such a universal commonality.

Assuming there are living organisms on other planets, they too could venerate a Planetary Deity associated with their planet. So there could be a zillion Planetary Deities out there, all architective and all different. Yet the organisms on other planets would be apprehended by the same Cosmic Deity we apprehend. In this sense the Planetary Deities are many (even though each may want to be the one and only) while the Cosmic Deity is a universal commonality.

Free Will in Perspective

A universal connection of everything such as offered by connectivity might be seen to imply that there can be no free will, since every individual would then be acting in accord with the actions of every other.

But this would apply to purely connective contexts only, and we should also consider that the immense complexity and volatility of these contexts means there can be no possibility of an absolute determinism to any individual's actions, as the n-body problem demonstrates.

Architective interactions can maintain their integrity under the universal connective interaction because connective interactions are generally weaker than architective interactions. A stone may not be able to withstand the force of a flood but it will likely remain a stone. An architective container can also exclude connective interactions from influencing anything inside it, so the universal connective interaction can be withstood under an architective cover.

I earlier described a sentience as having a freedom of intent (and a consciousness as having free will) by virtue of its capacity to overcome some of the architective constraints and connective interactions it would otherwise be subordinate to; thereby allowing it to choose responses that are more in accord with its values rather than only acting as directed by its environment. But a sentience is only able to overcome those environmental constraints and interactions whose capacities are weaker than its own, limiting its scope for freedom of intent or will. This would be the case for both organismic and spiritual sentiences. So a sentience too can override aspects of the universal connective interaction, though only those which it has the strength to counter. A sentience has some freedom of intent/will with respect to the universal connective interaction.

With respect to the influence of the Cosmic Deity (as the holism of the universal connective interaction), the situation is a little different. Actual expressions of intent by any organismic sentience or consciousness will always override the Cosmic Deity's intent, for the only influences available to the Deity are sublimation and apprehension, which are the weakest of all influences. There is no architective relationship that the Cosmic Deity can overcome and no intent it can override (other than by sublimating or apprehending its environment in some relevant way). The Cosmic Deity can influence us but cannot override any intentions we have chosen to act on. Our will can always be exercised freely regardless of any objectives the Cosmic Deity may have (within the confines of our environmental constraints and influences).

Of course we may choose not to override the Cosmic Deity's influence, or restrain our intent so as to let the Deity's intent unfold free from our intervention. We may also direct our intent to counter any environmental constraints and interactions that run contrary to the Cosmic Deity's intent (and would otherwise overcome it because of its extreme weakness), thereby assisting the Cosmic Deity to express itself. So overcoming environmental constraints and interactions requires an intent. Awareness of the Cosmic Deity's influence requires a consciousness. Choosing to allow or assist the Cosmic Deity's influence requires a free will. Facilitating the intent of the Cosmic Deity when it would otherwise be overridden requires the determination of a conscious free will.

Perhaps here we see our possible usefulness on the cosmic stage as organisms having the free will required to facilitate the Cosmic Deity's expression.

Architectively speaking, consider that we have to eat each other. Whether it's bacteria eating bacteria, animals eating plants, animals eating animals, or societies eating societies, we have to eat in order to guarantee our architective survival. While we cannot avoid eating, we can modify our rapaciousness - but only if we choose to. Architectivity does offer us an alternative to its default, for both altruism and selfishness are architective behaviours. Being aware of that choice requires a consciousness. Making the choice to modify our default architective behaviour also requires the determination of a conscious free will.

Suffering, Salvation and Death

Many religions teach that our suffering is a result of our immorality, a neglect of our spirituality or our ignorance of some divine truth, while atheists generally put it down to our stupidity. All these outlooks involve a guilt on our part. From the standpoint of this book, though we are responsible in some part for our suffering, by far the major contributor is the accident of our placement in the figurate window of scale and the consequent architective dominion. Most of our suffering is not of our own making.

Though they may profess to alleviate our suffering, architectively active religions will prioritize their own well-being above our own. Hierarchical and processional deities control or organize us - our prayers and supplications do not control them. Holistic deities neither understand our architective dilemmas nor are they able to assist architectively.

Devotion to a deity or the following of a religion cannot alleviate our suffering while we yet have bodies that are architectively vulnerable. No matter how assiduously we follow a dogma and no matter how ardent our devotion to a deity - of any kind - we remain subject to bodily malfunction and demise. Our only successful recourse has been to our own technological skill and political civility.

Though overwhelmingly due to our architective vulnerability, our suffering also has connective sources, for example in storms and turbulence in our environment and dissonances in our interactions with each other. Our darker moods may also reflect discord among our connective spirits. In these situations a holistic deity may be sympathetic to our suffering but the most it could do would be to soften the edges; while architective deities would be blind to our connective distress. At least our architective preoccupations may distract us from our connective tribulations, while architectivity allows us to build containers to shelter us from storms and our social institutions can provide architective channels that reduce their impact.

The Cosmic Deity is uncomprehending of the architective sources of our suffering, while it does what it can to shepherd connective turbulence towards harmony. It is totally and absolutely innocent of our suffering. Our Planetary Deity, though it may stoke the contests at the source of our architective suffering, is unaware of the bodily pain we experience as a result (though it relishes our emotional anguish). We are caught in the middle. Knowledge of our cosmic nature makes our architective tribulations easier to bear but we so desperately need salvation from a heartless and overbearing Planetary Deity. The accident of our placement in the figurate window of scale together with our residence on the planet of a particularly aggressive Planetary Deity makes any outlook for architective salvation quite hopeless. The spirituality I have outlined enables a joyous cosmic participation through a connective spirituality but it also nails us into a coffin of architective spiritual despair. The picture I have painted is, in one sense, very bleak.

Death is a salvation from architective suffering but at the cost of our architective existence. Our connectivity on the other hand continues, if only through the free molecules that constituted our erstwhile bodies, but perhaps having subtle repercussions through the cosmic connective system and manifesting in strange visages, altogether clear of our erstwhile architective identities. Death as a salvation comes to us all, regardless of our architective identities, regardless of whether we were devoted to a deity or followed a dogma, regardless of our achievements or failures in life, regardless of our preparation for death or disregard of it, and regardless of the moral choices we made while alive.

Connectively speaking, we are all saved.

Architectively speaking, we are spiritually helpless.

I see some straws to clutch at:

Though the strength of our Planetary Deity overwhelms that of the Cosmic Deity at the planetary scale, the Cosmic Deity has a capacity to mildly disturb the organizations of our Planetary Deity even at that scale.

We ourselves can take some of the edge off our suffering by better managing the balance of connectivity and architectivity in our spiritual economies. Our Planetary Deity delights in the contests among our religious and institutional hierarchical spirits, so removal of any of these superfluous to our needs would diminish its arsenal. We can do this since our hierarchical spirits emerge from us and we can eliminate them by simply not performing the routines and rituals that constitute their existences (which of course is not quite so simple, since they are ingrained in our cultures and will fight for their survival). It may also serve us to remember that while our Planetary Deity is not an object that can be disrupted, it is a narrative that can be modified by our own behaviours (since each of us is a conscious, willful instance of that narrative). Just as our Planetary Deity could come to understand that it only needs to contain connectivity rather than blindly organizing mayhem and destruction, so could we (as willful instances of its narrative).

Understanding that architective processes work through historical succession means that we can weaken them by weakening the historical links in our lives. Socially speaking, this means we should stop celebrating and replaying our history. Of course we should acknowledge what has happened in the past but we should stop recreating the past in the present - we should avoid perpetuating practices for tradition's sake alone and avoid cementing traditional cultural identities. I don't mean that those identities should be disregarded but recognize they were only appropriate in their time. We could stop misappropriating history.

Consider too that reducing the power of our Planetary Deity means proportionately increasing the influence of the Cosmic Deity. The cosmic influence would remain in the background but comparatively speaking would not be quite as weak. There could be a spiritual benefit to weakening our Planetary Deity in addition to any benefit to ourselves.

Stealing Kisses, Dodging Bullets

So what can we get, here, now, from an active pursuit of spirituality?

I won't even consider promises of eternal life or material wealth (though our Planetary Deity may exploit these expressions of greed for its own purposes).

Certainly there are immediate psychological and social benefits to participating in a religion, particularly for people who are otherwise lonely. But spiritual benefits? Well yes, these benefits could be regarded as spiritual if the religious institutions are regarded as hierarchical spirits. These psychological and social benefits are the fruits of submission to their authority.

There are benefits for the lonely in connective spiritual activity too. Experiences of connectivity may not always be harmonious but they are never excluding and never constrain.

Do we benefit in any way from appeasement of our Planetary Deity? I think not, but we might at least avoid being excessively victimized. Perhaps this is a benefit of our unquestioning acceptance of the architective dominion.

Do we benefit in any way from consciously choosing a connective activity at moments significant to the Cosmic Deity? Indeed at such moments I have experienced a sense of increased harmony with my environment, with other people and with the Cosmic Deity. Do these moments have any long term benefits? Perhaps by imparting a sense of fulfillment to one's life, but there are certainly no architective benefits. It is the kiss itself, the profundity of the moment, that counts.

We get some relief from the architective dominion in a conscious experience of cosmic integration, but these experiences are fleeting and rare. Yet the thrills of connectivity are available to us even in a mundane state of mind, were we to recognize and pursue them. Our possibilities for connective fulfillment may be severely limited by our architective constraints and we are distracted by a very determined Planetary Deity, but our connective possibilities can never be entirely eliminated. Even under the severest constraint there is room for connective exploration through a keener appreciation of subtlety. We can find value in our lives by dodging the architective bullets as best we can, without hope of salvation, while stealing connective kisses.

With this strategy in mind, I consciously choose a connective activity whenever an opportunity arises rather than habitually taking the architective default. I give the architective spirits of my planet and my society due respect for my survival depends on them. By accepting the unavoidability of the architective dominion I avoid apportioning blame to myself or to others. I understand the inescapable suffering of our architective condition and offer support to (and accept support from) others in this condition. I take pleasure in architective complexity but avoid unnecessary architective encumbrance for it often prevents connective participation, and profundity in connective participation is my gateway to the infinite.

A kiss to you, helplessly, from Mike.

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