Spirituality is traditionally understood to transcend the natural world, either in terms of underlying principles that bring order, goodness and beauty to our world, or in terms of supernatural beings who pay no heed to the laws of nature.

I contend that supernatural beings and underlying principles are not necessary for an understanding or experience of spirituality. I wish to show we can enjoy a rich and expansive spiritual life without them.

I start by widening the idea of spirituality, from its overtly transcendent interpretation to incorporate any coherent being, principle, process or object that is believed to influence us but is beyond our control or description; such that when we can both describe and control an influence on us it is no longer a spirit to us.

This implies that spirits are such only to those they influence - they may be spirits to a particular person or group of people, say, and not to others. It also means that only consciousnesses (as described earlier) are capable of contemplating spirituality since an awareness of one's capacities for description and control are required to make that judgment. It also means that spiritual contemplation and belief is possible for any consciousness, human or otherwise, even if not embodied as an organism. In this way spirits can be spirits to spirits as well as to humans and other animals, while allowing that a spirit to a dog may not be a spirit to a human, or that a spirit to me may not be a spirit to you.

(Some fine print regarding the words 'influence' and 'control' as used here: Control is meant in the sense of a hierarchical architective top-down control while influence is meant as either a connective or architective affect that is not a top-down control. For example, my internal organs and processes affect me architectively but not as top-down controls, so they are influences on rather than controls of me; having to go to the toilet is an example. The same can be said of gravity except that it is connective - it influences me but does not control me. I in turn cannot control gravity, and though I do have hierarchical control over my internal processes in that they go wherever I go, I do not have control over their behaviour - they decide when I have to go to the toilet. So I do not have full control over my internal processes either. Both gravity and my internal processes influence me and I do not fully control them so they are spirits to me in this wider sense.)

Spirits may be sentient or mindless. I speak of a spirit considered sentient as a deity. I use the term mundane to refer to anything not considered a spirit.

I see human religions as collections of architective objects associated with, or representative of, one or more spirits, allowing its 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.

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 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 Contexts 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 'soul' without identity, one not separate from any other; that is, of a purely connective spirit maintained, or participated in, through both life and death. But being purely connective, its interventions in our earthly lives, in both life and death, 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. Indeed, our personal narratives, and those of every living organism on this planet, are continuing, long-running narratives of the last universal common ancestor.

Ruling out spiritual possibilities not complying with connectivity and architectivity means ruling out most of our traditional spiritual pantheons. It also means ruling out spiritual possibilities not obeying the laws of nature. This does not deny the goodness and beauty we have traditionally associated with many of these spirits, only the capacities we have mistakenly attributed to them. In the next chapter I will explore for spiritual possibilities that do comply with connectivity and architectivity - and with the laws of nature.

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