If we can accept the possibility of spirituality arising in the physical world we can allow that world to guide our spiritual explorations in the same way it guides our scientific explorations. If we can also accept the connective and architective modes of meaning I have outlined they can significantly affect our spiritual speculations.

The first chapter of this Part explores for spiritual possibilities that would be commensurate with materiality, connectivity and architectivity. The second chapter imagines what sentience among these might look like based on their utilization of the modes. In the third chapter I voice my opinions as to which I believe to be sentient.

Before going there I need to clarify some terms:

I use the term spirit to describe any coherent but enigmatic being, principle, process or object that may be considered to influence an organism but is beyond the organism's control and/or description. In this sense spirits relate to an organism rather than being absolute. They may be relative to any organism, human or otherwise, to humanity in general or to individual people. When we can both describe an influence and control it then it is not a spirit to us. I use the term mundane to refer to anything not being considered a spirit.

Spirits may be sentient or mindless. I speak of a spirit considered to be sentient as a deity.

I see human religions as collections of architective objects associated with, or representative of, one or more of our spirits, allowing the enigmatic spirits to be architectively addressed and engaged with. These objects comprise the religion's dogmas and myths, temples, icons, symbols, texts, rituals, relics, clergy and administration. In particular, a religion's dogma specifies how its mysterious spirits are to be conceived, how they are to be addressed and the rituals through which engagement can take place. Empathic engagement with a spirit cannot be circumscribed by a religion and remains connective.

While religions are purely architective, spirits and deities, whether or not they are associated with a religion, may display architective or connective characteristics or both. Characterizing spirits and deities as being architective or connective is not straightforward, so to start with I say that spirits, deities and their associated religions are architectively active if the spirits and deities display any architective behaviour at all, and are purely connective if they display none.

Though elevating the discussion to the spiritual, I will use terms such as "the entire universe" and 'universal' to refer only to the universe as it is discoverable in a material sense.

The Great Religions

The distinctive markings of the great religions betray the presence of architectivity. Each can be identified by a distinct mythology, a defining dogma and an iconic symbolism. Each has a hierarchy of administrative office and spiritual authority by which it is controlled. The hierarchies have crystallized into social institutions and their mythologies have been enshrined in rigid social traditions. Religions are usually sanctioned by their host societies and are often major contributors to the identity of a society.

The main attraction of these religions is their offer of solace in the face of bodily demise, often in the form of a promise that our personal and religious identities will continue after our bodily deaths. Their salvations from the dilemmas of architective existence are usually conditional upon obedience to their administrative and spiritual authority. Religious dogmas usually provide punishments for disobedience and incentives for obedience and they often extend their hierarchies into supernatural realms, where spirits, angels, demons and gods are able to provide interminable punishments and incentives to haunt the indestructible identities they offer us.

Connectivity in the great religions encapsulates the empathic aspects of their practice. Foremost among these is the heartfelt emotion that genuine believers bring to their practice, usually in the form of a love of their deity. There is also a comfort for the lonely in the presumed presence and reciprocal love of a deity, as well as empathic engagement with fellow adherents. The revelations that lie at the source of most great religions would have been overwhelmingly emotional for the originating avatars, as they are for anyone experiencing religious epiphany. But note how all these connective experiences are relevant only at the individual level of religious practice. Practices performed in roles higher up the religious hierarchy have only an architective significance.

Architectively Active and Purely Connective Religions

Religions are architectively active if their spirits and deities display distinct identities, reside in hierarchies or require obedience to a dogma. They are architectively active if their spirits and deities require an exclusivity of veneration, take interest in our human contests or are themselves engaged in contests or games of power. Architectively active religions are often beset by struggles for power among their deities, or with other religions.

For most people, a purely connective religion, one that does not have identifiable spirits or a specific dogma for example, would be purely hypothetical. Such religions do exist but they are not prominent in the public eye since they are generally esoteric offshoots of the great religions and actively suppressed by them. I am thinking for example, of the Sufis associated with Islam, Zen Buddhists, Jewish Cabbalists, Tantric Hindus and Christian Mystics. They are not fundamentalist for they do not take the dogmas and mythologies of their parent religions literally. Rather, they see the parental myths as allegories pointing to a secret that is not knowable in any dogmatic sense and so must be alluded to by parable. This secret knowledge can only be attained by direct engagement with their spirits, so all indirect representations of them, including any iconic and dogmatic representations, even those of their parent religions, are considered to be a barrier to their revelation. These esoteric sects do not fit the category of an architectively active religion as, for example, rather than claim an exclusive correctness for their techniques of bypassing the intellectual barrier, they generally acknowledge that the revelations of direct experience can be attained by all seekers, regardless of sect or religion, who have the necessary ingenuity.

The esoteric sects offer techniques for focusing one's consciousness directly on spiritual engagement and not being distracted by representations. They are suppressed by their parent religions because they do not take the parental mythology literally and because the direct spiritual experience they advocate eliminates the need for the intermediate priestly representation that is their parents' architective livelihood.

Architectivity and Connectivity as a Context for Spirituality

A dogma complying with the ideas of connectivity and architectivity would recognize that identity and invulnerability are mutually exclusive. Anything maintaining an architective identity is necessarily subject to the possibility of demise. This means that the dogma should not make any promises (or curses) of an eternal personal identity, for as long as one maintains an identity the possibility of demise remains. The perpetuation of oneself, say as an eternal soul that is separately identifiable from any other eternal soul, is not consistent with these ideas, nor is the eternal perpetuation of a spirit or deity that is uniquely identifiable from any other spirit or deity.

The ideas of connectivity and architectivity do not rule out the possibility of a purely connective spirit lingering after death, but, being connective, it could not maintain a lasting unique identity. As well, any interventions by such a connective spirit in our earthly lives could only be of a purely connective nature.

A dogma complying with the ideas of connectivity and architectivity would also recognize that architective activities are limited to a window of scale not much bigger than our planet and that the sphere of any spirit's or deity's architective influence would also be limited in this way. A conforming religion would not make any claims for exercising control or any other architective serial meaning at a cosmic scale. It is, of course, only architective activity that is so limited - connective serial meanings could well have a cosmic relevance.

While an identity continuing for a person beyond their death is not consistent with these ideas, a processional narrative is. As a narrative of architectures, a person's processional narrative would process through their children, through a lasting legacy such as a dynasty or a classic work, or more simply as a skeleton or tombstone. Processional narratives continuing beyond one's death are of course susceptible to termination (no more offspring, for example). They continue beyond one's physical death only through the architective success of what one leaves behind. In some sense our own personal narratives are the continuing processional narratives of our ancestors and will subsequently follow through to our children.

Ruling out spiritual possibilities not consistent with the ideas of connectivity and architectivity means ruling out most of our traditional spiritual pantheons. Yet it is these traditional concepts of spirituality, passed down through the ages, that have moulded our expectation of a non-material basis to material reality, and a singular one at that. Even the most rational of scientists seek the perfection of a unitary Theory of Everything. Abandoning these traditional concepts could facilitate our acceptance of a material basis to material reality and the likelihood of a fundamental duality.

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