The only direct evidence we have of any sentience at all is in the earthly organic life-forms of which we are the prime example. Designating a known sentient life-form such as a human as a deity, say to a pet dog or to that human's gut bacteria, may not be too controversial, but the attribution of sentience to an institution such as a government or to a holism must remain a matter of personal inclination. Up to this point I have attempted to restrict my comments to impersonal and hopefully value-free observations. Now I must jump in the deep end and demonstrate my personal inclination - to see sentience among these spirits. Again, all I can do is offer some possibilities. Proof - verification of sentience - would be too much to ask.

Firstly, most importantly, and seemingly trivially, I acknowledge the vastness of possibility offered by a conceivably infinite world. We may argue whether infinity is only a mathematical concept, whether the universe is spatially or materially infinite or whether an infinite count can be made of anything in a universe that had a specific beginning. But consider that there is no theoretical limit to how high a vibrational frequency can go. Electromagnetic gamma-rays may display the highest actual frequencies detected so far but there is no reason to preclude the possibility of finding higher frequencies. Infinitely high frequencies imply infinitely small wavelengths, and in the context of this discussion, the spatial resolvability of connective phenomena such as waves is indeed assumed to be infinite. Consider too that, though the extent and resolvability of any one object is finite, the ways in which objects can possibly aggregate, embrace and produce newness is infinite. In the farthest extents and depths of these infinities, beyond the extents of our current scientific knowledge, we cannot preclude the possibility of strange and counter-intuitive phenomena, as revelations in the fields of quantum mechanics and non-classical relativity have shown.

Acknowledgment of an infinite reality does not mean that absolutely anything is possible. Limitations evidenced by empirical observation apply, as do the characteristic behaviours of connectivity and architectivity, regardless of the world's extent or resolvability.

Secondly, I see a possibility of spiritual sentience in the ordering of pattern and serial meaning, by which we find patterns in patterns and serial meanings organizing or interleaving serial meanings. It is not only fixed patterns that can reveal deeper patterns, patterns can morph from one to another to another, where the change happens according to yet another pattern - which may also be changing, and so on. This recursion or ordering of pattern and serial meaning, as I like to term it, can be extraordinarily deep, and under psychedelics often appears to be infinite. (I must again stress that I am using the word 'pattern' in the sense of a natural motif rather than a preconceived design.)

It is not only serial meaning but meaning in general that explodes as the ordering of pattern deepens. As a connective example, a radio wave of constant frequency carries a very simple and unchanging pattern, but that wave can be patterned to a new order (while staying at its constant frequency) by a microphone so as to carry a voice - patterned with its many meanings of tone, timbre and musicality for example - and then patterned to a yet deeper order to convey language, knowledge, or song for example.

We often measure our own intelligence by the depth we can bring to, or are capable of detecting in, the patterns and meanings around us. Both connectivity and architectivity host infinite possibilities for the ordering of pattern and meaning.

Thirdly, I see possibilities for spiritual sentience in capacities for wholeness, connectively in the holisms of connective systems (possibly infinite as in the cosmic connective system) and architectively in the novelty of emergent wholes and their fields of meaning (again, infinite with regard to aggregational possibilities).

The hierarchical spirits of our social institutions intelligently impose many orders of pattern on our lives, so I attribute sentience to them even though their sentiences are manifested through the expressions of their human office-bearers. Though their human office-bearers are conscious, I do not see these institutions demonstrating an awareness of their own sentience, so I acknowledge our hierarchical spirits as hierarchical deities, sentient but not conscious.

The coherence and connectedness of the cosmic connective system has been made clear by my psychedelic experiences, but I have also seen in it a responsiveness to me as a conscious being that can be reflective and playful, indicating the presence of consciousness. I am not able to associate this responsiveness with any individual connective interactions, and so associate it with the holism of the cosmic connective system rather than any of its interactive forces - with the cosmic holistic spirit rather than with the cosmic systemic spirit. So I attribute consciousness to the cosmic holistic spirit, and refer to it as the Cosmic Deity.

Earlier I mentioned the possibility of an overarching processional spirit organizing the architective serial meaning of a planet without losing the diversity of architective structure on the planet. I see planet-wide orders of architective patterning displaying a mindful intent that I cannot associate with any one being or institution, so I have come to accept the presence of a sentient processional spirit of our entire planet, albeit with great reluctance (and with no psychedelic justification) on my part. This spirit appears to acknowledge my consciousness and play with me, purely architectively, often displaying a most cruel sense of humour. I treat it too as being conscious and genuflect to it, subserviently, as our Planetary Deity.

While our natural spirits may affect our behaviour when our capacities are curtailed by their malfunction, for example when an internal organ fails or is in poor health, I see none of them responding to me as a conscious being. I must allow that they may yet be conscious of each other within their own fields of meaning, but those fields do not include my consciousness - and my own fields of meaning do not include theirs. Sentient some natural spirits may be, but to me they are not conscious.

In summary, I see our lives as being parameterized by a multitude of natural spirits, being governed by sentient hierarchical deities expressing themselves through their social organization and control of us, while we participate in an invisible apprehension with a conscious Cosmic Deity and a pervasive organization by a conscious Planetary Deity, these two concealed in the higher orders of wholeness and patterning in our material reality. It is these latter two Deities that constitute the greater spiritual mystery for me.

Of course this is all presumption on my part but it is not just a wild guess. I embarked on this enquiry because my experiences of connectedness under psychedelics were so compelling, and this exposition has not contradicted those experiences.

There are implications to these presumptions that we may baulk at but should not neglect. Firstly they imply that the two Deities have their own ongoing narratives (in their corresponding modes) and are aware of their own sentience and continuity. Like us, I see them having a sense of self, not centralized as we are (since one is a holism and the other a disembodied processional narrative), but personalities or psyches nonetheless, each with its own character and in its own mode. The second implication is that these personages significantly affect us, in that our Planetary Deity organizes the architective serial meaning on our planet to a very large degree while the Cosmic Deity subtly influences every uncontained connective event in the cosmos. This is not to say our lives are totally determined by them, for our Planetary Deity has no capacity for control and it cannot always successfully organize events to its intent, while the influence of the Cosmic Deity is so mild that it rarely results in events actually reflecting its intent. We are influenced to much greater extents by our natural spirits, by our social institutions as hierarchical deities, and by the stronger interactive forces of the cosmic connective system (which obey neither Deity).

In the previous chapter I outlined some general inferences that can be made about unimodal deities by virtue of their purely connective or architective features. In this chapter I want to describe the characters of the Cosmic Deity and our Planetary Deity as I have become aware of them rather than being deducible from their unimodal natures.

The Cosmic Deity

Generally speaking, connective deities may equally express a preference for turbulence as for harmony. My experience is that the Cosmic Deity has a preference for harmony and takes pleasure in profundities and excitements of harmony while bearing dissonance and turbulence with patience and equanimity. It is also generally unperturbed when things don't make sense to it, as when events follow architective serial meanings. It appears to be quite happy even when its narratives are terminated by architectivity though it cannot understand how or why. The only times I have seen it distressed is when an opportunity for a profound harmony is lost or when a momentous connective narrative is prematurely terminated, since these are relatively rare, and nobody, not even a Cosmic Deity, can produce them at will. It may employ its influence to promote these but it does not have the strength or control to ensure them.

I have come to understand the Cosmic Deity's appreciation of harmony in the same way that we 'melt' in the presence of beauty. It is overcome with awe, gratitude and love when confronted with the profusion of harmony the world offers. It expresses its feelings in a song, warbling subtly through spectra of vibration in search of responses and harmonies, and reveling in them when it finds them. As the subtle influence of the cosmic holism, this pervasive song is background to absolutely everything - the proverbial "sound of one hand clapping". We are never completely alone: the universe is always singing at us. Connectively speaking, our spiritual aim is to discern this song, thereby tuning our consciousness to that of the Cosmic Deity. We need quiet environments rich in connective subtlety to hear it.

I see the singing of the Cosmic Deity mediating our connective attention. While we need attend in the connective mode in order to comprehend connective serial meaning, that connective attention only reaches its full potential when both it and the events we are attending to are tuned to the Cosmic Deity's song (and so to each other). An example is how one piece of music will thrill me while another of the same kind, authorship and quality fails to touch; yet at another time, when the Deity's song has moved on, it may be the other music that pulls at my heart-strings. Expressions of the Deity's song also attract our interest, since they offer more and deeper orders of pattern, allowing the profundity of an occasion to escalate. The Deity's singing draws our intuitions to where depth of connective attention may be found. For us, the Cosmic Deity's song is a perennial but capricious facilitator of connective attention.

I previously described attention as a feature of consciousness rather than sentience. Attention, and the facilitation thereof, is an affair between consciousnesses.

Though scale is irrelevant to pure connectivity, I suspect it has some relevance to the profundity available to the Cosmic Deity. I'm guessing that the architective window, and probably even more so the figurate window of scale, offers an exceptional diversity of objects and fields of serial meaning to play in. I suspect that the Cosmic Deity finds our earthly scale to be a very rich spring of connective profundity, offering its greatest depths in the empathic relationships humans and many animals engage in - the relationships we call love.

Our Planetary Deity

Generally speaking, architective deities might equally express a preference for construction as for destruction, for propriety and reasonableness as for deceit and trickery, for charity as for power; or varying mixtures of these. My experience tells me that the planetary spirit of our own cosmic locality has a preference for grandiose destructive eruptions rather than the more gradual progressions of constructive development. We, as its minions, find it much easier to sow dissent than build consensus, while years of our constructive efforts are often destroyed in an instant. I also see our Planetary Deity having a liking for challenge and obstruction, deceit and trickery. It appears to confound the creatures of its dominion purely for its amusement and vanity, playing with us by organizing ever more ingenious arrangements to foil our technological and civil aspirations. Murphy's Law we have named this game, and in this game it is happy to exploit the depths of complexity, isolation and fear that we and all functional organisms are naturally heir to. Rather than enjoying the marvels of complex construction the architective world has to offer, our Planetary Deity gets its thrills from the hunt, from pitting organisms against each other in contests to the death - that most terrifying spectre of ultimate disruption. We see our Planetary Deity's organization of us vividly portrayed in the violence that permeates our political and cultural expressions, while our few triumphs are reflected in the wonders of our technological accomplishments and the integrity of our academic and legal edifices.

But I see another more sinister aspect to this cat-and-mouse play. Being an architective narrative, our Planetary Deity is desperate to avoid its own termination. To this end it requires organizational mastery at all times and so aims to impose an overarching architective serial meaning to everything. Its own narratives are not broken by the demise of any one object while the constant construction and destruction of its partaking architectures ensures that an overarching architective serial narrative endures. It does not care what is being built or destroyed, or who is winning or losing, as long as construction, destruction, winning and losing are what's happening - that is, as long as the serial meaning along which reality is unfolding is architective. It attempts to constrain, contain or eliminate all interaction that is not architective. Of course such an aim is not achievable but that does not deter it from trying.

To this end, I see our Planetary Deity organizing a fierceness to our social isolations, and promoting frictions between us well beyond the requirements of the architective dominion. Were it of a different mindset, we might enjoy a greater degree of civility and reasonableness in our dealings with each other without contravening the architective dominion. Were it of a different mindset, it might even recognize the impossibility of its aims and permit our dalliances with connectivity rather than organizing such a fierce interdiction. Our Planetary Deity has developed an aesthetic of fierceness, devoid even of the architective characteristics of chivalry and fairness.

In line with its singularly architective comprehension, our Planetary Deity assumes any interaction not following its organization to be under the organization of an opponent (in contest). Opponents must be dealt with by destroying them, by constraining or containing them, or by taking their resources for oneself. If you don't do it to them they will do it to you. Uncontained or unconstrained connectivity is unresponsive to its organization and is indicative of the presence of an opponent, so any dalliance with uncontained connectivity on our part arouses a defensive response from our Planetary Deity. And while it may amuse itself with our fallibility, nothing arouses its ire like our choosing a connective mode of consciousness. Our Planetary Deity is one very jealous god.

Another way to understand this is to realize that our Planetary Deity is utterly alone. Being at the apex of architective possibility in its locality, it is not capable of relating with any other to whom it might show consideration, either as a peer or as a superior. It has no capacity for equivalence in relationship. We, and everything it can meaningfully relate with - which is everything on this planet - are its subordinates, game, not worthy of respect or consideration.

This is a very sad state of affairs for us, for there may well be more enlightened planetary narratives on other planets in the cosmos. We simply have the misfortune to suffer under a tyrant. Perhaps in cosmic terms this tyrant is yet a child and might mellow with age.

What this has meant for me personally is that my many attempts to redress the architective dominion in my own life have been thwarted, significantly in a number of crucial situations, by events so unlikely that I can only explain them as a fierceness on the part of our Planetary Deity. It would appear that as I have moved to redress the architective dominion in my life, the intensity of architective distraction has increased in an attempt to force my attention back to architectivity. Against such a powerful adversary I have no counter other than to lick my wounds and stand my ground as best I can.

Another way in which I have experienced our Planetary Deity's obsession with architective serial meaning is in the sense of it demanding my full attention. I personally am happy to perform the architective chores necessary to my existence and I do these dutifully and cheerfully, often delighting in the architective complexities I encounter. But performing my architective chores and participating in architective complexity is not sufficient to satisfy our Planetary Deity's requirement for my attention: It wants my attention to be exclusively architective, which means playing only its games, which means continually contesting with it and my fellow humans, and doing so with fierceness. I am of a pacific rather than a warlike disposition and find many of its games distasteful. Besides, playing with it on these terms would mean relinquishing all choice of connective consciousness, which I am not willing to do.

Our Planetary Deity does not compromise - if you're not for it you're against it.

I see our Planetary Deity taking pleasure in our epic human dramas of heroism, empire, downfall and dethronement, especially when these are richly laced with intrigue, treachery and spectacles of violence. It likes a good story, a grand and complex (architective) plot, and I suspect it enjoys our expressions of these in our theatres. Perhaps our own enjoyment of these spectacles arises from our contribution to its narrative.

In spite of its fierceness I do not associate an aesthetic of bodily pain with our Planetary Deity. I see our experiences of bodily pleasure and pain to be vibratory, connective phenomena in our brains, meaning that our experience of them would be architectively meaningless. I see our Planetary Deity sustaining its warlike passions without any comprehension of the physical pain it causes us, much as a butcher has no feeling for the animals being slaughtered. And if bodily pain is architectively meaningless then so too is compassion for such pain.

If we felt no pain we would all be slaughtering each other in service to our Planetary Deity's bizarre taste in architective spectacle and drama (much more so than we are doing now). Strange as it may seem, our susceptibility to pain is the connective antidote to our wholesale self-destruction.

Though without comprehension of our bodily pain, our Planetary Deity delights in our existential angst and bodily and social disruption, and may even have learned that these are sure-fire ways to interrupt a connective consciousness on our part. Though compassion in general need not be architectively meaningless, it is nowhere evident in our Planetary Deity's character.

Them and Us

Our sentience is not purely architective as our Planetary Deity's is. We comprehend and express both architective and connective serial meaning. Our Planetary Deity makes every effort to constrain or contain connective expressions on our part through whatever organizational mechanisms it can muster, be these political or economic channels, social customs and frictions, physical contrivances or threats of eternal damnation.

Our sentience is also not purely connective as the Cosmic Deity's is and our architective capabilities allow us to do things it cannot do. They allow us to initiate and control connective events using architective means, for example by making music using architective instruments. Humans can make music - and make love - rather than just waiting for it to happen. (How successful our making will be depends on our attunement to the Cosmic Deity's song.)

Our sentient involvement in their narratives has meaning for both Deities. An agile human connective sentience can enrich the narratives of the Cosmic Deity while a powerful human architective sentience can play a deciding role in the dramas of our Planetary Deity. A thoughtful human architective consciousness can enhance the profundity and intensity of connective harmony while a fierce, wily or authoritative human architective consciousness can exaggerate the intrigues of challenge and deceit.

Our conscious attention is valuable to both Deities. Both have an interest in not having their narratives terminated. When a contradictory outcome would arise from our following a narrative of one mode or terminate a narrative of the other, our mode of consciousness becomes important for them, possibly deciding which of their narratives continues and which terminates. Each time we follow a connective serial meaning rather than an architective one, we step out of our Planetary Deity's narrative.

Veneration of our Planetary Deity is a matter of maintaining our consciousness to the architective mode, while consideration of the Cosmic Deity requires only the continuity of our connective narratives (without them necessarily being conscious - though being conscious of them is extremely valuable to us as humans).

Even when engaged in the architective mode of consciousness, we can put ingredients in place for connective harmony to occur, we can avoid terminating a harmony when it does occur, and we can architectively support one. Our consideration of the Cosmic Deity can comprise not only a thoughtful directing of our attention away from the architective default at critical times but a thoughtful preparation for connective harmony at others. We can select living environments that are less architectively demanding, of ourselves and of others, and thereby make peace.

As long as our architective activity does not terminate any narratives our connective sentience is following, or prevent it from following those narratives, the Cosmic Deity is unperturbed. In this way our normal architective activities need not detract from our consideration of the Cosmic Deity.

Tuned to its song, our connective sentiences constellate into visages of the Cosmic Deity. Tuned to its song, our connective experience becomes a visage of the Cosmic Deity's experience. In this way the Cosmic Deity can share our connective experiences and we can share in its. Our Planetary Deity too can share our personal architective experiences, for our personal stories contribute to its narrative, but it also experiences a domination of us which we do not share in. Our sharing with the Cosmic Deity is mutual though rare; our sharing with our Planetary Deity is one-way and common.

Our Planetary Deity cannot actually execute its intentions since it is a processional narrative and so is incapable of interaction in its own right. As a processional narrative it is also not able to control us. But it is able to organize us (and its non-human venerators) towards an implementation of its intentions. For example, it cannot punish our perceived sins or infidelity directly but it can organize its venerators to do so - and so persuade humans to perform the most heinous acts upon each other. (If their Almighty is so powerful, I often wonder of religious zealots, why doesn't He do His own dirty work?)

Designating an object, symbol or place as sacred only serves the ambitions of our Planetary Deity. For the Cosmic Deity no particular object, symbol or place can be special, while some passing events or constellations are more valued than others. We may revere these Deities for their power or their love but it is only our Planetary Deity who benefits from our sanctification of particular items.

The combative nature of our Planetary Deity constitutes a hazard for those who direct their conscious attention to connectivity, for though our efforts may be supported by the Cosmic Deity, they would be opposed by the much stronger Planetary Deity. Our consideration of the Cosmic Deity is not without risk.

Though we may take this risk upon ourselves in pursuit of connective harmony, we should beware of unnecessarily disparaging the practices of architective veneration (such as the performance of traditional rituals) for they are valued by our Planetary Deity. By disparaging its practices purely on principle we invoke its ire unnecessarily. Though many practices of architective veneration are damaging to our social cohesion (such as the glorification of identity), we should weigh carefully the cost of vociferously protesting them, which is also likely to invoke a reaction from its venerators.

Our connective spiritual ambition is extraordinarily difficult, for not only is the Cosmic Deity as a holism essentially hidden to us, our capacity to appreciate its apprehension is enfeebled by our predilection for architective consciousness, while any attempt to genuinely solve its mystery is overtly misdirected by a combative Planetary Deity.

The influence of the Cosmic Deity on our lives is not constant. Being so mild in comparison to the influences of the cosmic systemic spirit, our natural spirits, the controls of our hierarchical deities and the organization of our Planetary Deity, the holistic influence of the Cosmic Deity is dependent on the relative strength of these other influences. When the interactive influence of the cosmic connective system is less stormy and open to profundities of harmony the Cosmic Deity can find easier expression. Similarly, when we are sheltered from our natural spirits and the controls of our hierarchical deities, the influence of the Cosmic Deity on our lives can be greater.

Holes of Meaning

The unimodal nature of these Deities reveals an interesting dynamic.

Our Planetary Deity suspects the presence of an opponent whenever events are contrary to its organization - and uncontained connectivity may well be. The Cosmic Deity too becomes aware of the possibility of an 'other' when events are incomprehensible to it or its narratives are unexpectedly terminated. So these Deities can be indirectly aware of each other through 'holes' in the serial meaning they comprehend even though they cannot perceive each other directly. And the more holes they see the stronger they might assume the presence of the other to be.

Consider that our Planetary Deity sees all connective events contravening its organization as threats, even though most would arise from human (or animal) choices and the raw behaviour of the cosmic connective system rather than as intentional expressions of the Cosmic Deity. So the opponent it often assumes is actually us or the cosmic connective system, rather than the Cosmic Deity.

The Cosmic Deity, on the other hand, can comprehend the raw serial meanings of the cosmic connective system and allow for them (since they are connective) even though it can't control them. But it too is unable to distinguish holes in its serial meaning arising from the day-to-day workings of the architective dominion from those due to the wiles of our Planetary Deity.

Sublimation takes on a whole new relevance in the context of these holes of meaning, for the sublimation of an architecture, while it permits some connective expression, does not affect the architecture's serial meaning. The architecture is neither disrupted, nor are any of its architective narratives altered. Sublimating an architecture by an action that does not challenge the architecture's constraints, does not result in a hole in the architecture's serial meaning and so will not threaten our Planetary Deity. No matter how much connective meaning is expressed in a sublimating action, no holes appear in the architective serial meaning to betray the presence of connectivity. Architectures can be sublimated without fear of reprisal from our Planetary Deity.

In our own behaviour, it often pays to respect the architective restrictions we encounter in our day to day lives - however severe - in order to avoid creating prominent holes in architective serial meaning. Through a well-developed sense of sublimation we can actively pursue what connective meaning is available within the confines of those restrictions.

Them and Them

Since architective deities are only able to comprehend architective serial meaning, any connective influence on an architective deity is necessarily a spirit to that deity. Ironically this means that the Cosmic Deity is necessarily a spirit to our Planetary Deity, albeit an unacknowledged one. Similarly, since holistic deities are unable to comprehend architective serial meaning, any that are enclosed within an architecture must regard any hierarchical and processional deities associated with that architecture as spirits. But the Cosmic Deity is not enclosed in any architecture, so it has no hierarchical or processional spirits even though it is unable to comprehend architective serial meaning.

From the perspective of this book both our own sentiences and those of our deities are features of the material world. Our own sentiences, whether architective or connective, emerge from what might be otherwise dumb functional organisms while the sentiences of our hierarchical deities emerge from our own. The sentience of the Cosmic Deity is associated with a holism of the material world in its entirety while that of the Planetary Deity is associated with the architective narratives occurring on this planet. These deities did not precede the material world. From this perspective, the fundamental forces of physics are dumb natural spirits to us, the phenomena of connectivity and the architective constraining thereof are dumb natural spirits, the entire basic material universe is itself a dumb natural spirit while all sentiences, even those of our Deities, have arisen in it.

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