

# Physical Spirituality

by Michael Abramowitz

August 2018

Copyright © 2018 Michael E. Abramowitz

Published by Michael Abramowitz

ISBN: 978-0-9925596-4-9

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Cover: The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)  
Credit:NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Text photographs by Michael Abramowitz

Author contact: physical.perspective@gmail.com

## 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 offer us access to worlds other than the physical dimensions we find ourselves in. Spirituality is commonly used as an antonym for materiality.

Yet there must be some commonality between our spiritual and material worlds for us to be able to imagine them at all. Access to such other-worlds is believed to permit us to extend our same earthly lives, to lead lives of greater civility or comfort, to consort with beings whose powers and intelligence exceed our own or to extend our powers beyond their earthly capabilities.

While it's not possible to test the veracity of other-worldly claims, the descriptions of this world by many religions have proved to be scientifically inadequate, and this has aroused suspicion of their other-worldly offerings. Some have managed to avoid this conflict by simply regarding the wonder and beauty of nature to be an expression of divinity, as Pantheists do.

But could divinity itself be a this-worldly rather than an other-worldly phenomenon? Could we find all the splendour of our spiritual imaginations here in our material world without having to resort to realms outlandish? Could spirits be coursing through our veins and singing through our minds using the elements of the Periodic Table? Spirituality might well arise out of, or be inherent in, our material world - and not a precursor to it. Science could be informing our spiritual imaginations rather than only contesting them.

Rather than looking to spirituality as an antidote for materiality, this book explores it in a much wider sense - regarding any being, principle or object to be a spirit if it influences us while remaining mysterious or beyond our control. In this wider sense spirituality serves as a complement to science - a more intuitive and less restrictive vanguard into the unknown.

We have no control over many of the material phenomena that affect us: The rotation of our planet vis-a-vis the sun, for example, absolutely dictates our daily rhythms, while the structure of our DNA is an important determinant of who and what we are. Dumb though these phenomena may be, their impact on us is unavoidable and in this wider sense they are spirits we cannot but obey.

But are they sentient? Can such spirits be construed to comprehend meaning, experience sensation or express intent? I suggest they can, not necessarily in themselves, but in the patterns they host, in their sequences and arrangements. It's not just that their patterns may be beautiful or wondrous but they may themselves be patterned, and patterned again, in what I call _orders_ of pattern. One has only to watch waves intermingling on a beach to see how deep this ordering can be. Our everyday lives are far too busy to contemplate the deeper orders of pattern but adepts of mindfulness tell us that it is possible to become aware of them.

It is through the patterning of material reality that we express our sentiences, in all their nuances. The material world is a replete medium for meaning. The messages we communicate - words on a page, signs or songs, a pat on the back, exchanges of electronic data - all are patternings in the greater material medium. Our organs sense our environment through material signals and it is through material manipulations that we affect it.

Spirits would utilize the material medium to express their sentiences too. But whereas our organs are confined to human-sized scales of activity, their avenues are not so limited. Their bandwidths in the material spectrum, as it were, are much wider than our own.

Now I distinguish two modes by which patterning can occur. One mode is hierarchical, having levels of pattern that override each other, while the other is proportional, by which all patterns interlace equitably. These different modes can be seen for example in the way armies organize in strict levels of hierarchical authority while fish school without leaders. Our spirits would utilize these same modes in their patterning of reality and the main idea of this book is that we can glean information about our spirits from the modes of patterning they employ.

Modes of patterning can also illuminate a contemporary psychedelic conundrum. Psychedelic drugs appear to offer us a unitary participation in the universe in addition to our usual participation as isolated individuals. Why is such a profound and important experience always temporary? Why is it so far removed from our normal perception of reality? Is the psychedelic experience illusory or is our normal perception illusory? These questions can be more readily addressed from a vantage of modes of patterning.

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 in the following of a religion. Attempts to reconcile the profundity of direct spiritual experience with the mundane physical world have occupied my attention ever since. This book is such an attempt. I have published another more intuitive work called the "Oracle of Love" based on the Taoist I Ching.

My aim in writing this book is not to convince sceptics of the reality of spirituality - only a direct experience can do that - but to offer those so mystified a framework that accommodates both their normal and spiritual states of mind.

Part I examines the physical interactions that underlie these modes of patterning and establishes the characteristics of each mode. Part II shows how the meaning we extract from patterns of interaction follows the same two modes. Part III explores how spirits might negotiate these modes and Part IV looks at how an understanding of these modes can change our spiritual paradigms and better guide our psychedelic explorations.

You may find the initial focus on physics wearying. I ask your patience. The physics is necessary for establishing the characteristics of the two modes but is elementary and 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 idea much too simply in order to convey it as directly as possible and to as wide an audience as possible.

Many of the ideas in this book are speculative - but many are not. The physics is mainstream though the perspective a little unusual. It is in the realms of spirituality and consciousness that I have indulged because they would benefit most from these ideas. I have tried to enclose my speculations in phrases such as "I suspect ..." etc. The main argument is not dependent on these speculations so please put them aside if you find them uncomfortable.

Appreciate too that I am grappling with radically different ideas and have probably made mistakes along the way. Inform me of indiscretions or approach me for more detail through the email address on the front page.

I hope you find this adventure as ingenious, useful and entertaining as I have.

# Part I : Modes of Interaction

"There are two kinds of people in the world" my late friend Wally used to say, "those who squeeze their teabags and those who don't." I suspect he meant to distinguish people who wrung every ounce of flavour from their experiences. Wally squeezed his teabags and most of his friends did too.

People have been putting each other in categories since the year dot. Every which way we can, we do it. Friend or foe? Us and them. We label each other by religion, by nationality, by region and by town; by wealth, by ancestry and by power; by political affiliation; by taste in clothes, music or football team. Are you a cat lover or a dog lover? Do you smoke the same cigarettes as me? If we tried hard, we could create more categories than there are people.

For some people categorization is important - they don't know who you are until they've ticked or crossed every box in their mental questionnaire - while others don't give a hoot about your status or pedigree as long as you're pleasant to be with.

It's not only people that we categorize - we categorize books, music, rocks and plants - everything around us. Categorization helps us get a quick overall idea of what we are dealing with and manage our world more efficiently - it's an essential part of being human.

But things are not equally amenable to categorization. Some are more easily distinguishable than others while some distinguishing characteristics do not last. It's significantly easier to distinguish a cat from a dog than it is to distinguish say your dog from my dog, especially if it is the same dog that has merely changed owners.

Things that are amenable to categorization have some unique and unchanging properties. Parts of a motor car can be relied on to maintain their functionality for as long as they are not broken, so we can categorize them as being tyres or seats, or front-left doorhandles and front-right doorhandles, for example. Sure there may be many front-right doorhandles that all look the same but each is on a different car.

Contrarily there are things that are a nightmare to categorize - things that have no unique properties or their properties change at the slightest disturbance. No testing of water of the Nile at Cairo could tell whether the sample originated in the Blue Nile or the White Nile. A cloud in the sky may be categorized as cumulus or stratus, but no cloud can be pinpointed as being the same one that was there yesterday.

These two contrasting extremes of susceptibility to categorization illustrate the two modes of interaction I will explore. Differences in susceptibility to categorization are only one of the contrasts between the two modes. The mode I call _architectivity_ is also characterized by exclusiveness, separation, definiteness and endurance. The mode I call _connectivity_ is characterized by indistinctness and a penchant for change.

To grasp these modes more clearly, to understand how deeply they are embedded in our reality and how significantly they affect our spirituality, I need to start with the fundamental forces of physics....

## Interactions

Physicists tell us that all encounters between physical objects can be described in terms of four fundamental forces. Every physical encounter, no matter how complex, can be analyzed into smaller components, which in turn can be analyzed into even smaller components, until at some point every contributing component can be described using only one or more of the four fundamental forces. The four fundamental forces of physics are known as the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity.

Gravity is the familiar force holding our bodies to our planet and our planet in orbit around the sun. While we are familiar with the electromagnetic force at work in our televisions and light bulbs, it is also the force that binds atoms into molecules which in turn make up our bodies and the physical objects around us. Atoms are conglomerates of sub-atomic particles such as protons and neutrons which are held together by the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Newton and Galileo gave us a good understanding of gravity, showing how it arose between objects having mass, such as our bodies and our planet, and that the strength of the force was dependent on how much mass each object had and the distance by which they were separated. The larger the masses of the objects involved, the stronger the force, while the greater the distance between them, the weaker the force. Einstein later added greater detail to our understanding of this force that enabled us to make predictions about its effects with extremely high precision.

Similarly, Coulomb demonstrated that the electric force arose between objects having an electric charge, and that the strength of the force depended on the size and polarity of the charge of each object and the distance by which they were separated. The larger the charges involved, the stronger the electric force, the greater the distances between the objects, the weaker the electric force, and whether they attracted or repelled each other depended on the polarity (positive or negative) of their charges. Later the phenomenon of magnetism came to be understood as a by-product of electricity and that forces between magnets were similarly describable in terms of the size and polarity of charges and the distances between them.

These forces all arise as interactions between objects. They do not arise in isolation. Every object having mass gravitationally influences every other object having mass. My body is gravitationally attracted to everything that has mass, including your body and your dog's body, no matter where you or your dog are. An apple dislodging from a tree actually falls towards every planet in the universe, not only to planet Earth. More so, the apple falls towards every other object on planet Earth including every animal, plant, and stone on it. But because planet Earth is so much nearer to the apple than any other planet, and because Earth has so much more mass than any animal, plant, or stone on it, the gravitational force between the apple and Earth is the one that really counts. For all practical purposes, we only concern ourselves with the apple falling to the Earth. Similarly, the tides of our oceans are determined not only by the gravitational force of our moon, but by the gravitational force of our sun, and to far lesser extents (because of the greater distances involved), by the gravitational forces of the other planets of our solar system, by other suns and their planets, and even by suns and planets in other galaxies. But in calculating the times of the tides, we only consider the gravitational forces of our moon and our sun because the others are too small to have a noticeable effect.

This universality of effect applies to every fundamental force. Every object having an electric charge electrically influences every other object having an electric charge, with large distances rendering some influences negligible, and in this case opposite polarities also able to affect an outcome; and so on. The situation is a little different in the case of the nuclear forces but the same principle applies - the strength of the forces are affected by the distances between the objects and the strength of their charges.

The fundamental forces between objects are _mutual_ in the sense that they act equitably on all the objects involved. The force of gravity between a ball and the earth acts on both the ball and the earth, and is of equal strength on both objects regardless of their relative size or their relative mass. Only the direction of the force is different - the force on the ball is opposite in direction to the force on the earth. Both ball and earth would experience a stronger force if either object had greater mass, and both would experience a weaker force if the distance between them was greater, but the strength of the force on the ball is always the same as the strength of the force on the earth. When objects mutually influence each other, the influence of one on the other is of the same quality and strength as the influence of the other on the one, as it were. One of the objects cannot be said to be the cause of the force and the other only to suffer its effect.

At less fundamental levels, encounters between objects are often not mutual. One object can be said to be a cause and another to suffer an effect, as we often see in everyday life. For example, when a person kicks a ball, we can say that the force of the person's foot on the ball is the same as the force of the ball on the person's foot, but we cannot say that the ball is as determined to kick the person as the person is to kick the ball. The person is the obvious cause and the ball flying into the goal-mouth is the obvious effect.

I start my story with mutual interactions between objects, such as those involving the fundamental forces.

Objects participating in an interaction are mutually responsive to each other. They may respond, for example, to changes in each other's masses or charges, to changes in the distances between them or to their orientations to one another. If one changes its position relative to the others then the others will all make suitable adjustments to their relative positions and motions.

#### Connective and Binding Interactions

Some interactions, for whatever reason and regardless of which forces they utilize, are known to constrain the responses of their participating objects within specific ranges. For example, the interaction between a proton and an electron in an atom (utilizing the electromagnetic force between them) constrains the distance between them to be in one of only a few possible ranges. For the proton and electron to constitute an atom, they cannot be too far or too near each other - the distance between them must be just right. They move relative to each other and distance between them changes as they move, but the distance will remain within a definite range. This constraint does not come from outside the atom – it is intrinsic to the electromagnetic interaction between only that proton and that electron. (There may of course be many protons and electrons in an atom, all held in definite ranges, and distance is not the only measurement between them that is constrained within ranges. It's just a little easier to illustrate the idea if I keep things simple.)

Not all interactions between protons and electrons are so constrained. In our sun, for example, protons and electrons can interact without constraint in what is called a _plasma_ \- a sort of soup of individual protons and electrons that do not constitute atoms (though many do).

When an interaction is not intrinsically constrained, I call it, and the group of objects participating in it, a _connective interaction_ , or a _connective_ for short; and when it is intrinsically constrained I call it, and the group of objects participating in it, a _binding interaction_ , or a _bond_ for short, regardless of which forces the interaction utilizes.

Objects participating in a connective can move freely as they respond to the forces involved. In a bond they are confined within a fixed range of each other. Objects in a connective will also be freely responsive to any external forces, while those in a bond can only be responsive to the extents that their constraints permit. The range of a binding constraint may sometimes be so narrow that for all practical purposes a bond allows no response among its constituent objects to an external force at all. By constraining its constituent objects' responses to an external force, a bond is effectively negating that force on them. So a bond not only constrains the effects of its own connective forces on its constituent objects, it also constrains their ability to participate in external interactions. A connective, on the other hand, imposes no constraints on its participating objects – they are completely free to move relative to each other and to engage in external interactions.

Interactions between objects are either bonds or connectives – they are either constrained or they are not – there is no in-between state. Interactions can be compound mixtures of connective and binding interactions, but they cannot be something in-between. In the same way that every encounter between physical objects can ultimately be described in terms of one or more of the four fundamental forces, so every encounter between physical objects can ultimately be analyzed into interactions that are either connective or binding.

This distinction between connectives and bonds lies at the heart of my story.

#### The Disruption of Bonds

The constraints of bonds are known to have limits, called _binding strengths_ , beyond which they break down. For example, it is possible to exert an external force on an atom that is so strong that its electrons and protons are freed from their bond, allowing them to range free as a plasma. But their bond - the atom - is then no more. The bond has been _disrupted_ and has become a connective instead.

Once established, a bond persists with its same range of constraint until it is disrupted, if ever. A bond also persists with its same constituent objects until it is disrupted. No object can join the bond while it persists (though the bond may bond with other objects as will be described later) while any object leaving the bond involves the bond's disruption. A connective on the other hand persists even though objects join or leave the interaction (until there is only one object left!).

Since a bond is intrinsic to an interaction, only a force from outside the interaction can disrupt it.

It may happen that there is more than one range to which objects can be constrained, so that a new bond can be established between the objects of a disrupted bond using a different range of constraint. This can happen, for example, when a strong external force changes an atom into what is called an 'excited state'. The external force is strong enough to disrupt the atom, but the protons and electrons of the disrupted atom immediately establish a new atom having a different, 'excited' range of constraint. If the binding strength of the new constraint is greater than the external force, the excited atom persists.

#### The Wholeness of Bonds

From outside an interaction, any binding the interaction may be under only becomes evident when its constraints are challenged. For example, in the case of a proton and an electron, it only becomes evident that they are bound together in an atom when a force is exerted that should change the distance between the proton and the electron but which instead moves them both together - as a single atom - in order to maintain the constraint of their binding.

One of the magical effects of bonding is that a bond can interact with other objects as a combined whole rather than as the collection of its constituent objects. Connectives cannot - they always interact with other objects as a collection of connected but separate individuals. When objects in a bond are subject to an external interaction and the constraints of the bond prevent them from moving relative to each other, the force of the external interaction moves the bond as a whole instead.

From the point of view of the other objects participating in the external interaction, it is now the bond-as-a-whole that they are responding to rather than to the bond's constituent objects, that is, in the external interaction, the bond is responded to as a single object in its own right. The external interaction is now with the bond as a single object, rather than with the bond's constituents as a group.

Connectives never respond to an external force as a single whole object – their participating objects always respond individually – so connectives cannot be interacted with as objects in their own right.

Contrarily, when objects in a bond are subject to an external force that is so weak as to not challenge the bond's constraints, the force on them is not negated, and they respond to the force individually while the bond-as-a-whole does not. The weak external interaction remains with the bond's constituent objects and not with the bond-as-a-whole. I say that such a weak external interaction has _sublimated_ the bond, acting only on its constituent objects, which respond as if moving in a connective (even though they remain within their constraints).

A strong interaction with a bond thus imbues it with _wholeness_ , and it responds to the interaction as an object in its own right. Overly strong interaction with a bond might of course disrupt it. Weak interaction with a bond does not imbue it with wholeness and it responds as the collection of its constituent objects (albeit within their constraints), just as a connective would.

#### Emergence

Another magic effect of bonding is that the properties of a bond-as-a-whole can be quite different to those of its constituent objects, while the properties of a connective remain those of its participating objects.

A bond between hydrogen and oxygen atoms - being a water molecule - is very different to a connective of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which is not water. At room temperature water is a liquid while hydrogen and oxygen, and their mixture in a connective, are gasses. A mixture of say 50 litres of hydrogen gas and 25 litres of oxygen gas has a mixed volume of 75 litres, but get them to bond (with a spark) and they magically get squeezed into about a tablespoon of water.

The properties displayed by a connective are the properties of its participating objects, summed as a group. For example, a plasma may outwardly display a group electric charge different to the charge of any one electron or proton (and perhaps even no charge at all if they all happen to cancel each other out) but the external influence of a connective through its group properties will be no different to the combined influences of its participating objects through their individual properties.

A bond on the other hand, interacting as an object in its own right, displays its own properties rather than those of its constituent objects, and these may be very different to those of its constituent objects even when considered as a group. The properties of hydrogen and oxygen are very different to those of water. These _emergent properties_ of its own are those displayed by the bond in any external interactions it may enter into in its own right.

Some of a bond's emergent properties will be equivalent to those of its constituent objects. For example, both a bond and its constituent objects have properties of spatial volume, position and speed, though their values will likely be different. An atom and its constituent electrons and protons display spatial volumes, but the volume displayed by an atom will likely be different to the volumes displayed by each of its constituent electrons and protons, and different to the sum of their volumes as a group.

But some of a bond's emergent properties may have no equivalent among those of its constituent objects. It is the new emergent properties of water that makes it different to a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. These new properties are either entirely novel - not displayed by any of its constituent objects - or there are properties of its constituent objects missing from the bond's display. It is the new emergent properties of atoms as different to the properties of their component protons and electrons that opens up the entire arena of chemistry - by which we distinguish oxygen and hydrogen atoms from each other, by which atoms bond with atoms using their atomic properties and by which molecules (which emerge from the bonding of atoms) bond with molecules using their molecular properties.

A connective cannot participate in external interactions as an object in its own right or have properties in its own right. A plasma remains just a bunch of electrons and protons even though they are interacting. A connective can engage in external interactions only as the collection of its participating objects, utilizing their individual properties to do so.

When a bond is sublimated by an external interaction, the bond does not interact as an object in its own right and the external interaction does not respond to the properties that the bond would display in its own right. The sublimating interaction only interacts with the bond's constituent objects through the properties they display.

#### The Equivalence of an 'Object' and a 'Bond'

Since a bond may participate in an external interaction as if it was a single object with its own properties, any of the objects participating in an interaction, whether the interaction is connective or binding, may be bonds.

#### The Spatial Exclusion of Objects and Bonds

Every physical object/bond maintains a more or less firm shape and size, from which every object it interacts with is strictly excluded. Interacting objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

A connective does not maintain a particular shape or size and does not exclude other objects or other connectives from its spatial volume because it does not have one of its own - only its participating objects have volumes, from which they exclude each other (and any external objects they interact with).

Since bonds/objects spatially exclude all objects they interact with, when interacting bonds/objects meet they may collide but remain separate. When connectives meet they merge, integrating into a shared spatial volume and perhaps even passing through each other, while their participating objects may collide.

#### The Identity of Objects and Bonds

It's relatively easy to distinguish things that are separate from each other - and bonds/objects are - while distinguishing merging connectives from each other can be very difficult. Sorting a puff of smoke from the air around and between it would be impossible without some very sophisticated technology, and ultimately only becomes possible because each particle of smoke has properties different to those of air, allowing them to be identified.

The collection of properties (and their values) displayed by an object constitute what I call its _identity_. Every object's identity is unique if only because objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time (and the space it occupies is one of an object's properties).

Connectives do not display a lasting unique identity ( though their participating objects do). They do not display properties in their own right and their group properties are not necessarily unique (since multiple connectives may occupy the same space at the same time, for example). Connectives may or may not be distinguishable from each other.

#### The Aggregation of Bonds

Objects can form bonds in many different combinations.

For example, the bonding of 8 protons with 8 neutrons and 8 electrons results in an atom of oxygen, the bonding of 92 protons with 146 neutrons and 92 electrons results in an atom of uranium, and there are 84 different atomic combinations in-between. A plasma (which is a connective) of 8 protons, 8 neutrons and 8 electrons is not significantly different to one of 92 protons,146 neutrons and 92 electrons. A cornucopia of difference, novelty and variety opens up by bonding objects in different combinations, which connective interactions cannot offer.

Bonding explodes with creativity when bonds, being objects in their own right, bond with each other. It's not just that objects create something new when they bond, or that bonding in different combinations gives a variety of newness, but that the new objects so created can then bond with others to synthesize even greater confections of novelty. Protons, neutrons and electrons bond with each other to create many varieties of atoms. The atoms so created can bond with each other - again in many different combinations - to create molecules of even greater variety and complexity, and molecules can bond with each other to create extremely complex structures such as the proteins that we are ultimately made of. A plasma (which is a connective) is not an object in its own right and so cannot engage in a bond. Plasmas of plasmas are just bigger plasmas that are not significantly different to their contributing plasmas.

When bonds bond with bonds, I say that they _aggregate_. An aggregate is then also an object in its own right, having emergent properties of its own, an identity of its own and able to bond with yet other objects to aggregate into even larger objects, and so on. An aggregate is just a bigger bond, so the term 'aggregate' is really also equivalent to 'object' and 'bond'.

Each aggregation is a discrete, singular event, being the establishment of a bond.

Aggregates may destruct rather than construct. When one of the bonds that make up an aggregate is disrupted, it leaves behind smaller bonds that were the aggregate's constituent objects. These smaller bonds may disrupt into even smaller bonds, and so on. Each step in the destruction of an aggregate is also a discrete event, being the disruption of a bond.

#### The Hierarchical Architecture of Bonds

Atomic nuclei emerge from protons and neutrons aggregating with each other. Atoms emerge from atomic nuclei aggregating with electrons, and molecules emerge from atoms aggregating with each other.

We see that the components of an aggregate such as a molecule are arranged in levels. In the example above, the constituent atoms of the molecule are at one level, the nuclei and electrons comprising each atom are at a level below that and the protons and neutrons comprising the nuclei are at an even lower level. The molecule itself is at the topmost level of the aggregate.

The levels of an aggregate have a hierarchy and every object within it can be allocated a rank according to its level in the hierarchy. With each aggregation event the number of levels rises by one. With each aggregation event a new object emerges at a new topmost level, having an identity different to those of its constituent objects on the level below (and different to those of their constituents on the level below them, and so on).The rank of any two objects in the hierarchy can be compared, according to whether one object is internal to the other, is bound to the other, or has emerged from the other by aggregation.

I call the hierarchy of an aggregate/object/bond its _architective hierarchy_ or _architecture_. The architective hierarchy of an aggregate offers a clearly defined map of all the bonds used in its construction.

I speak of an aggregate's _internal objects_ being its constituent objects at all levels, so as to include the constituent objects of its constituent objects and so on.

The ranking of an aggregate's internal objects cannot be changed without disrupting one or more of the aggregate's internal bonds, which in turn would disrupt the aggregate as a whole, so an aggregate's architecture persists unchanged for as long as the aggregate exists.

Objects of a lower rank in an aggregate's architecture are more numerous while those of a higher rank contain more internal objects than those of a lower rank. There is only one object at the very top of an architecture and it contains all the others.

There is a time-line implicit in an aggregate's hierarchy, for the object that emerged most recently is always at the top of the hierarchy, and those of the next level down are the next most recent, and so on.

(This discussion of the aggregation and architecture of bonds is overly simple but is sufficient to convey the gist of my argument. If you are interested, some complexities are discussed in the appendix.)

#### The Integration of Connectives

Connectives are not objects in their own right and so cannot interact with each other - but their participating objects can. The participating objects in one connective may bond with those in another or they may interact connectively.

When the objects in multiple connectives interact connectively, the connectives effectively _integrate_ or _merge_ into a larger connective. It matters not whether all or only some of the objects interact, for even if only one object from each connective is involved then all the objects of all the contributing connectives will be interacting at least indirectly with each other.

The participating objects of one connective could alternatively bond with those of another, to form a connective of different, larger objects, or they could all bind together to form a single large object; but the connective itself cannot bind with another object or connective.

The capacity for external interaction of an integrated connective is not any different to the capacities of its contributing connectives, which is the capacities of their participating objects. One plasma integrating with another creates a larger plasma that is not any different to the integrating plasmas in its capacity for external interaction.

Each object in an integrated connective directly or indirectly interacts with every other object in the integrated connective, no matter which of the contributing connectives each object originally belonged to. The contributing connectives may become indistinguishable once integrated, or their original groupings may be maintained, to some degree, or for a while. If more connectives join in, the merged participating objects may pass through so many arrangements that it may be impossible to discern the original contributing connectives or any sequence to their merging. In fact, the arrangement of objects in a connective may change so much, even without any integration taking place, that groupings of its participating objects may simply appear and disappear with its flux. In a connective there are no constraints to hold the groupings in place. Lasting identification of groupings or of the contributing connectives is impossible. It may not even be possible to say whether a connective is the result of a prior integration.

#### The Visages of Connectives

The arrangement of objects in a connective will be disturbed to some degree by every force that acts on any of its participating objects. If one object changes its position relative to the others then the others will adjust themselves accordingly. While a connective is not identifiable as an object in the way that a bond is, I say that it may be _discernible_ in the sense that _all_ its participating objects respond to a disturbance even though each responds as an individual.

Though subgroupings of its participating objects may appear and disappear with its flux, the subgroups are sometimes distinguishable from each other, albeit temporarily. We distinguish constellations in our galaxy and swirls in streams and rivers, for example. I call any distinguishable subgroup of a connective a _visage_ of the connective. A visage describes a temporary or arbitrary arrangement of the participating objects in a connective, like a cluster or a swirl, rather than a lasting identity. A visage may last a long time as in the case of a stellar constellation or pass quickly as a swirl in a water stream.

While a bond has a lasting unique identity by which it differs from every object it interacts with, connectives may or may not offer distinguishable visages and may not even be distinguishable from each other since they do not necessarily exclude each other from their spatial volumes. Even when visages are distinguishable, the distinction may not last since the participating objects are free to move in response to any disturbance.

Identity is meaningful to a bond in a way that a visage is not meaningful to a connective. A bond's identity emerges with its establishment and disappears only with its disruption. A bond's identity remains unique for the term of its existence, while a visage of a connective is ephemeral.

By virtue of its constraints, a bond acts to preserve its identity. As long as a bond exists, it maintains a unique identity in the face of external disturbance. As long as it is able to avoid disruption, it maintains its identity no matter how many interactions it engages in. Connectives do not act to maintain their visages. Their visages are incidental and easily changed. In fact, any connective having more than two objects can be arbitrarily divided into visages at the whim of an observer.

A connective also has no persistent architecture mapping its contributing connectives or its visages. Visages may temporarily display a hierarchy in that some may be larger than others or some may be spatially contained within others, but these arrangements are not fixed.

Here we begin to glimpse the charm of connectives. They are unremittingly dynamic and responsive. So much so that they cannot be held to any sort of specificity or precision. They are changeable, unconstrained, flexible, vague and ephemeral. I really appreciate the way air makes way for me as I walk through it.

#### The Contests of Bonds

There is effectively a tussle going on between a bond and any external interaction it participates in. Under the force of an external interaction, a bond either holds its constituent objects to its constraints and thereby keeps itself together, or its constituent objects are forced beyond their constraints and the bond is disrupted. The result is decided on a test of strength between the binding strength of the bond and the force of the external interaction.

Now the other objects involved in the external interaction may themselves be bonds, and they are being tested in exactly the same way. If any bond disrupts under the strain, it can happen that one or more of its constituent objects then aggregates with one of the other bonds. In this case the other bond has not only preserved itself in the tussle but has created a new object - while the disrupted bond has disappeared. There are clear winners and losers in such _contests_ between bonds. A chemical reaction in which an atom that is a component of one molecule exits that molecule to aggregate with another molecule is an example.

Much is at stake in a contest of bonds. A winning bond maintains its identity and creates another, but a losing bond loses its identity, its emergent properties and its ability to enter into interaction. Losing a contest is catastrophic for a bond.

A contest between bonds can also be seen to be a contest between their binding strengths, because all are subject to the same forces under their mutual interaction - and it is the bond having the greater binding strength that wins.

We could talk of competition between connectives but not of contests in this sense. For example, one might say that two solar systems are competing over which will capture an approaching comet to its orbit. But competition in a connective sense does not involve the undoing of any competitor, and all the competitors' influences continue no matter what the outcome. There are no winners and losers, only a change of visage. In a competition between connectives the outcome is a proportional sharing of all the participating influences while in a contest between bonds there is a selection and enhancement of one influence and the destruction of another.

#### The Hierarchical Authority of Bonds

In a chemical reaction in which an atom switches from one molecule to another, the atom's constituent protons, neutrons and electrons necessarily go with it to the other molecule.

When a bond is in a contest, there may be uncertainty over how the bond will cope and which way its constituent objects will go, but it is absolutely certain that, whichever way a constituent object goes, its internal objects will go with it. If a bond holds its constituent objects it also holds the constituent objects' constituent objects, and so on. If a constituent object breaks free or is absorbed into another aggregate, its internal objects go with it.

I say that a bond has _hierarchical authority_ over its internal objects to take them with it in decisions under contest. A contest can also be seen as a tussle for the allegiance of a bond's internal objects.

Put differently, bonds of higher rank have authority over those of lower rank, while those of lower rank are subordinate to those above, in decisions of hierarchical allegiance. The bond at the very top of a hierarchy thus provides a central point of control from where a single decision under a contest may direct the allegiance of every bond in an aggregate.

By contrast, the idea of hierarchical authority has no relevance to connectives. In a close encounter of galaxies, for example, some stars of one galaxy may well be absorbed by the other, and vice-versa, while the galaxies continue to be distinguishable after their encounter.

The relationship between levels in a bond is not a mutual relationship - it is one of subservience and authority. The higher levels control the lower levels and not the other way round. Interactions in general are mutual, including the binding interactions between those of a bond's internal objects at the same level, but objects at different levels of a bond are not in interaction with one another and the relationship between them is one of subservience and authority.

#### Value Bias in Bonds

The bond at the top of an architective hierarchy can control more than the allegiance of its internal objects - it can control the values of their properties as well:

When a bond is in interaction it may happen that the interactive force continually acts in the direction of one boundary of the bond's constraint rather than another, so that the constituent objects of the bond are biased, possibly strongly so, to one boundary of their constraint. For example, when a proton approaches an atom, the electrons of the atom will likely spend more time on the side of the atom closest to the approaching proton by virtue of the attraction of their unlike charges.

The same can be said of the constituent objects' constituent objects, and so on, meaning that all of an aggregate's internal objects may have a bias to one boundary of their constraints rather than another. It may even happen that all the internal bonds of an aggregate are biased in the same direction so that, by the topmost object in the aggregate's hierarchy entering into an interaction, a bias to a particular value may be imposed on all its internal objects.

We begin to see the depth of a bond's capacity for control: A bond not only controls the motions of its constituent objects by constraining them within definite ranges, it controls their ability to participate in external interactions, their hierarchical allegiances and may even impose a bias to their values. None of these controls are evident in connectives.

#### Procession

The internal arrangements of bonds don't change. Their constituent objects at every level remain confined within their constraints for as long as the bond holds. Yet there are ways by which bonds can be considered to change. They can be considered to change when a bond disrupts or is created. They can be considered to change when an aggregate grows or shrinks. In this sense I say that bonds _process_ (rather than 'change'), stepping from one static architecture to another in a procession of discrete reconfiguration events.

In contrast, the internal arrangements of connectives are highly susceptible to change. They can respond to the slightest disturbance, and do so in a smooth, unstepped flow.

## Spatial Arrangements

Bricks are really handy for building houses in a way that water isn't. Bricks maintain their shapes under pressure, much like a bond keeps its constituents in a definite range, and they have shapes that make building with them so much easier than say building with rough stones.

The shapes and sizes of objects matter to the way they can be used. A chair has to be the right shape for me to sit on, and there is no point building me a house the size of a shoe-box. My house must also keep the rain out and let me in. All these requirements can be satisfied using the firmness and emergence of bonds to create strong, useful objects like walls and roofs and doors, having particular shapes and sizes that maintain their spatial arrangements under pressure.

Connectives can't be expected to have particular shapes and sizes let alone maintain them. Their flexibility renders them useless for building houses but it makes them spatially useful in a different way: Since a connective distorts under the slightest disturbance, it allows a disturbance to pass through it as a wave. A bond's constraints prevent waves from passing through it. A wave would have to sublimate a bond in order to pass through it.

#### Geometric Figures and Embraces

Many objects have shapes that are effectively rigid while others have a limited flexibility, like an elastic band for example. Bonds displaying an effectively rigid shape and size I term to have a _figure_. Crystals, for example, as bonds of atoms or molecules, display rigid geometric figures.

Objects having figures cannot move towards each other where their figures contact because objects exclude each other from their spatial volumes. The result is that the ways in which objects having figures can be spatially packed are governed by the geometry of their figures. A packing pattern of square tiles will be different to a packing pattern of triangular tiles, for example. Objects having figures can sometimes be packed so efficiently that for all practical purposes they can't move relative to each other. Objects need not have identical figures in order to pack efficiently – square tiles could be packed against triangular tiles while complementary figures such as a peg and a hole can also pack together efficiently.

When a contact between objects actually constrains their relative movement in some way - like a peg in a closely matching hole or a piece fitting a jigsaw puzzle - I call the contact of their figures an _embrace_.

Because there is no relative movement of objects in an embrace, the embrace as a whole is also effectively rigid, and so has a figure of its own. For example, wooden posts can be shaped to fit into holes in a flat wooden board so as to make a table - and the table has a rigid figure of its own. Embraces can aggregate into more complex embraces in the same way that bonds can aggregate into more complex bonds. An object capable of engaging in an embrace can be regarded as a _figurate object_ , capable of engaging in _figurate aggregation_ , from which a figurate aggregate emerges to be a new figurate object in its own right.

While electrons and protons are spherical or shapeless, the bigger atoms and molecules often display uneven spatial volumes having definite figures, and they can aggregate figurately. The figures of atoms may determine the shapes of the crystals they aggregate into while the complex figures of large molecules such as proteins may allow one protein to fit neatly into and embrace another. Crystals may aggregate into conglomerates, conglomerates into rocks, rocks into mountains and mountains into continents and planetary crusts. Our own bodies are largely built of interlocking proteins. Most items of our material environment – trees, timber, bricks, houses, tables and chairs – are complex figurate aggregates of their underlying atoms and molecules.

The similarities between bonds and embraces are many. While figurate embraces are not exactly bonds, they are reliant on their underlying bonds to maintain the rigidity of their figures and to exclude each other. The shape and size of a figurate object can be seen as _figurate properties_ that comprise a _figurate identity,_ which it maintains in the face of disturbance. Disruption of a figurate object means the loss of its figurate identity. Figurate aggregates display an architective hierarchy in which their component figurate objects are ranked - for example a rock has a higher rank in the architective hierarchy of a mountain than does a crystal it contains. Figurate aggregates may engage in figurate contests decided on tests of their _figurate strengths_. And figurate objects higher in their architective hierarchy have hierarchical authority over their internal figurate objects.

The arrival of figurate objects into the contact of an embrace is a discrete event. Figurate objects are either in the contact of an embrace or they are not. There is no in-between state. Similarly, the separation of figurate objects from a figurate contact is a discrete event. An arrival of figurate objects in, or a separation of figurate objects from, a figurate embrace is a step from one static figurate architecture to another, as for example when a peg is inserted into or removed from a hole, or a hook is inserted into or removed from an eyelet. Figurate objects also process rather than change, stepping from one static architecture to another.

Unlike a bond, an embrace may be disrupted without challenging its figurate strengths, through the motion of its figurate objects in a direction not governed by the embrace, to a position where the figurate objects are not restricted by their figurate contacts. A peg may easily slide out of a hole.

The spatial volume of a figurate aggregate may be the sum of the spatial volumes of its constituent figurate objects, but it may also be more than their sum, for example when the figurate aggregate forms a shell that completely encloses an empty space.

The boundary of a figurate object may be divided into a finite number of distinct _facets_ where each facet is capable of participating in an embrace with another figurate object. For example, a peg may be fitted into holes at both its ends, or a peg may have many ends, of different sizes, all capable of fitting into suitable holes. All the facets of a figurate object need not have the same figure, nor need the figure of every figurate object in an embrace be the same. For example, an object may have the shape of a peg at one end and a hook at the other.

The many similarities between bonds and embraces allow me to use the term 'object' to refer to figurate objects as well as bonds when I don't need to distinguish between them, and to use terms such as 'architecture', 'aggregate' and 'identity' to apply to bonds and embraces in general.

#### Waves and Vibrations

When an external force disturbs a connective, the force will likely act first and most strongly on the objects in the connective that are closest to the source of the force, and the responses of these closest objects will disturb their nearest neighbours in the connective. These in turn will disturb their nearest neighbours and so on, causing a wave of disturbance to propagate through the connective. The flexibility of connectives means not only that they are easily disturbed but that disturbances can propagate through them.

When an external force acts on an aggregate, on the other hand, the aggregate's internal constraints prevent its constituent objects from responding in any significant way. They do not disturb their neighbours and so no wave of disturbance propagates through the aggregate. Instead, the aggregate responds to the force as a whole. The aggregate may itself be an object in a larger connective, and as it responds (as a whole) to the wave, it disturbs its nearest neighbours in the larger connective causing a wave to pass through that larger connective. (And if the external force sublimated the aggregate, the aggregate's constituent objects would be disturbed and the wave would propagate through the aggregate as if it were in a connective.)

So an aggregate constrains not only the motions and external interactions of its constituent objects, it also prevents waves from disturbing them.

Some disturbances repeat with a regular frequency _,_ causing the participating objects of a connective to vibrate as the wave passes through. Some connectives, by their very nature, respond even to a single disturbance with a vibration of their participating objects.

The distance or time between the extremities of a repeating disturbance or its associated vibration is called its _wavelength_.

The strength of a disturbance - the strength of its wave and the size of any vibration it induces - is called its _amplitude_. The amplitude of a wave describes how strongly each object that it traverses is affected by it.

Waves travel smoothly through their host connectives. The motions and vibrations of all the affected objects are smooth, covering all the positions between the extremities of their motions rather than jumping from one extremity to another, as is the case in the discrete steps of a procession. Perhaps the equivalent in a procession would be a cascade of discrete reconfiguration events, as when a bottom item in a grocery display is removed and other items shift in a series of discrete events to fill the gaps as they appear.

Unlike an object, a wave does not occupy a space to the exclusion of other waves (or to the exclusion of objects). Multiple waves can propagate through a connective at the same time and even traverse the same objects at the same time.

When multiple waves meet at an object, the net effect on that object is the sum of the effects of all the waves – no effect is excluded. As well, each of the waves continues on its original way after their meeting, that is, they pass right through each other. This is known as the ability of waves to _interfere_ with each other. Compare such interference of waves to a collision of objects - which cannot occupy the same space at the same time and cannot pass through each other.

When multiple waves traverse the same objects at the same time, the net disturbance to those objects is the same as a single wave equivalent to an interference of the contributing waves. Such a single wave whose effect is equivalent to that of multiple waves is called a _superposition_ of the contributing waves. In a way similar to the visages of connectives, it is not possible to tell if a vibrating object is responding to an irregular single wave or to a superposition of multiple regular waves.

Waves have patterns. They can have patterns in time, for example as a sound that gets louder and softer; and they can have patterns in space, perhaps as ripples on a pond. When multiple waves interfere with each other, their patterns do too. Their interfering patterns could have a very choppy result as a pond would have on a windy day, or they could have a very pure result like a note from a well-tuned musical instrument.

If properly timed and spaced, individual wave patterns that are perfect opposites of each other cancel each other out, such that the resulting superposition is no wave at all, in a phenomenon called _destructive interference_. Patterns that are perfect matches reinforce each other to produce even bigger waves, in a phenomenon called _constructive interference_.

While a wave's pattern travels with it, the superposition of interfering waves can sometimes result in a pattern that appears to stand still. These are known as _standing waves_ , when, for example, a guitar string plucked in its middle shows a pattern that does not move, always having a zero amplitude of the string at its ends and a large amplitude in its middle.

As a wave encounters each object on its passage through a connective, the amplitude of the wave determines whether the wave disturbs the object as a whole or whether it sublimates the object and disturbs the object's constituents instead. If it sublimates the object and its wavelength matches the size of the object, then its reflections inside the object can interfere constructively, so that the wave resonates inside the object. Constructive interferences of a wave resonating in an object may become strong enough to disrupt the object.

A combination of effect applies to connectives in general. The effect of multiple waves on an object is the net contribution of all the waves acting on the object. The effect of multiple forces on a participating object of a connective is the net combination of all the forces acting on the object. Compare this to the selection of some effects and a negation of others as happens in the contests of bonds and embraces.

#### Constellations

Spatial arrangements are sometimes chaotic - in aggregates as a jumble of rocks, for example, or in connectives as a river churning through rapids - but sometimes they are ordered, recognizable, beautiful, or meaningful to us - like the symmetry of a snowflake or the spiral of a galaxy - in which case I call them _constellations_.

Constellations in aggregates may endure, like a snowflake, or only appear at certain steps in a process, as a fractal picture becomes striking with a only a very particular set of parameters.

Constellations in connectives may appear as the connective changes shape, and then dissolve into chaos again. A cloud may momentarily constellate into the shape of a castle, or flare rainbow colours, or display a fine filigree. Connective constellations are likely to be fleeting.

#### Barriers and Containers

Objects participating in a connective may not all be the same. They may have different sizes or different masses or different charges, for example. If one object is bigger or more massive than its neighbours it will likely have a relatively muted response to a wave, while a smaller object may have a relatively exaggerated response. This would slow the wave down or speed it up or change its direction (in processes known as refraction and reflection).

An object participating in a connective might be so massive (in comparison to its neighbours) and its response to a wave so muted, that it would effectively prevent waves from propagating further into the connective. Large objects can serve as barriers to waves.

A massive aggregate could be constructed to take the shape of a closed shell or casing so that it completely encloses the other objects of a connective. In this case, the massive aggregate not only prevents disturbances propagating beyond the enclosure, it prevents the connective's other participating objects from moving outside the enclosure as well. The connective has been contained \- it cannot escape and any waves in it will not be able to escape either (assuming they do not sublimate the container).

Contrarily, a container may exclude a connective from a space rather than enclose it within one, or prevent waves from disturbing a contained connective. Containers may be used to separate one connective from another - and connectives may be used to isolate one aggregate from another.

A rigid container effectively holds a contained connective to a rigid figure. An external disturbance that imposes a motion on a rigid container imposes the motion on any contained connectives as well.

Containers may not be rigid. Containers constructed from bonds having limited flexibility can serve as membranes, like a balloon for example. Membranes too can separate one connective from another but cannot hold a connective to a rigid figure.

#### Connective Influence and Architectural Control

Containers and barriers extend the capacity of aggregates to exercise control.

An aggregate controls the motions of its internal objects by constraining them within definite ranges, it controls the hierarchical allegiances of all its internal objects and their ability to participate in external interactions, and it can also exercise control over waves and connectives as a barrier or container.

Connectives and waves, on the other hand, while having an effect, are incapable of having a precise control over their effects since they are always open to interference and disturbance. This does not mean that connectives are not capable of being precisely controlled, only that an aggregate needs to be in place to control them precisely. A light beam can be targeted very precisely but not without the intervention of a rigid collimating mechanism.

## Connectivity and Architectivity

Waves and connectives have features in common: They interfere or integrate with each other in the same space rather than exclude each other when they meet. They enjoy a freedom to move or change (that is complete if they are uncontained) and enjoy an absolute smoothness of flow. They are vaguely distinguishable rather than definitively separated from each other (unless they are in separate containers) and have no capacity to exercise precise control. These features characterize the mode of interaction I call _connectivity_.

Bonds and embraces too have features in common: The motions of their constituent objects are always constrained, they can maintain a lasting stasis, they can maintain lasting and unique identities, they exclude each other and separate when they meet, they can be defined and categorized with precision, they process in discrete steps rather than flow smoothly, they can aggregate into new objects, they can be disrupted, they display fixed hierarchies of rank and control, they can exercise precise control and can contest for hierarchical authority. These features characterize the mode of interaction I call _architectivity_.

Connectivity and architectivity have no features in common.

Architective interactions yield to stronger external interactions, after which they are no more. Connective interactions yield to all relevant external interactions, after which they continue.

#### Physical Examples of Connectivity and Architectivity

Physical objects interact architectively, for example, when subatomic objects aggregate into atoms, atoms into molecules and molecules eventually into rocky planets. Physical objects interact connectively, for example, as gasses or liquids such as clouds, streams, oceans and atmospheres.

Disturbances may propagate through gasses and liquids, and through sublimated solids, as do waves of sound and light. Disturbances can be muted or stopped by suitably sized or shaped aggregates, and we shelter in protective architective shells to escape the ravages of atmospheric storms.

Interactions between heavenly bodies are connective, for although the bodies may move in well-defined orbits around each other, their orbits will be affected by every comet passing nearby. In stars and between them, plasmas of protons and electrons flow freely in connective interaction, with waves of disturbance propagating through them. Gaseous planets such as Saturn and Jupiter display no architective behaviour at scales above the molecular, while Mars and Earth display architective behaviour at a planetary scale because they have planetary crusts.

Heat offers a good example of sublimation. A shipping container may offer protection from wind, rain and light, but unless it is well insulated it cannot prevent the temperature inside the container being affected by the temperature outside, as the molecules of the outside air vibrating with heat sublimate the container to act on its constituent molecules rather than on the container as a whole.

An apple falls to the ground connectively but its landing is architective. If it lands on a rock, the force of the impact is less than the binding strength of the rock so the rock does not break, but the apple may not be so strong and the figure of the apple is disrupted. If it lands on a bed of sand, the figurate strength among the sand grains may give way before the cells of the apple do and so the figurate arrangement of the sand processes before the apple can bruise.

Trees and grass waving in the wind, and kelp waving with the ocean currents, have sufficient flexibility for their leaves to vibrate connectively, while their roots are architectively anchored to the ground.

Floating boats and fish are in connective interaction with the water molecules of their host oceans, as are balloons, birds and aeroplanes with the molecules of the air. An anchor thrown by a boat establishes an architective embrace between the anchor and the earth, but it is not until the boat is so firmly tied up that it cannot move (say tied to a quay or in a dry dock) that the boat itself has established an architective embrace with the earth.

A ball on smooth ground is in contact with the ground, but is not in an embrace with it since it is free to bounce, roll and move. A shoe on the ground is in an embrace with it if it is not free to slide. When walking or running we put one foot in front of the other, processing from one embrace with the earth to another.

Stone, scissors, paper is a figurate, architective game.

Waves are highly susceptible to disturbance. Waves playing an undisturbed note must have been architectively controlled at some point (such as by the bridge of a guitar) or have passed through an architective filter. But because they display apparently fixed frequencies does not mean that they are architective, for their frequencies can be changed by encounters with other waves and objects, by passing through different media or by a Doppler effect.

Waves carry information because they mimic the disturbances that caused them. Information may be connectively encoded in the modulation of waves as is done in AM and FM radio. But the information waves carry may be garbled by interference with other waves or encounters with unusual objects in the medium they traverse. An architecture, on the other hand, such as a computer hard-drive, a printed page or a digitally encoded wave, offers a honeycomb of objects that are not disturbed by passing waves or by aggregation with other objects. Architectures can store information reliably, and they can transport that information and copy it faithfully. As long as they are not disrupted, architectures can preserve information with absolute fidelity while connectives cannot.

#### Functional Constructions

Useful functionality can be built into objects by mixing architective and connective features. For example, the architective construction of a peg fitting into a hole can have a dash of connectivity added to it by making the peg and hole round so they can rotate freely.

Functional constructions can be regarded as combinations of devices, simple or complex, architective or connective, with each device contributing one or more _functional properties_ to it. For example, a device may contribute a capacity for motion as a functional property, or a capacity for rigidity, or a capacity for aggregation at its location in the construction.

Each device, and the overall construction itself, can be regarded as a _functional object_ able to aggregate with other functional objects into more complex functional objects from which new functional properties emerge (and which in turn may aggregate with other functional objects).

For example, the functional properties of a double-ended peg are a capacity to maintain a separation between two holes, a capacity to rotate so that the holes have no fixed orientation to each other, or to the peg, and to aggregate with the holes to create a new functional object say of two-blocks-joined-by-a-swivelling-rod.

We can add architective devices such as barriers, shells, membranes and containers; and fill these with connective devices such as gasses and liquids, to create extremely complex functional objects. Contained connective devices may also host waves inside them.

The arrangement of the functional objects in a functional aggregate can be precisely mapped to describe its _functional hierarchy_. Functional objects are architective phenomena. They may or may not incorporate connective devices but they cannot be constructed using connective devices alone.

It may happen that a complex functional object is able to operate as a coherent and self-sustaining mechanism. Self-sustaining objects may in turn aggregate with others to become even more complex, and so on. For example, an air conditioning unit is a coherent, self-sustaining functional object, which may be incorporated into (and so aggregate with) a motor car – itself a complex functional object utilizing other complex functional objects such as a combustion engine. (And note how an air conditioning unit and a combustion engine incorporate connective devices such as expanding gasses.)

The human body, too, is a wonderful example of a complex functional object that is coherent and able to sustain itself.

#### Examples of Connectivity and Architectivity in Biology

While connectivity and architectivity cannot be used to explain how or why living beings have come about or why they have developed autonomy, the features of connectivity and architectivity are evident in all the mechanisms living organisms employ.

Life as we know it is built on a platform of complex molecular chemistry. An outstanding feature of this chemistry is the way that carbon atoms can aggregate with each other in arbitrarily long chains, from which a great variety of complex organic molecules, such as proteins, can emerge. Proteins, in turn, can take a great variety of different shapes, and the effects that emerge from the embracing of their figures play a significant role in the metabolisms of living things.

Proteins may aggregate into rigid skeletons (architective) that give biological cells their shape, or into less rigid membranes (architective) that separate cells from one another and contain their (connective) cytoplasms. Cells aggregate functionally into organs and organs aggregate functionally into organisms, even autonomous organisms such as ourselves.

An organism's bones or shell provide it with a rigid skeletal support (architective). Its blood cells (each a separate architective object) contain within them nutrients and energy and their connective flow distributes these through the organism via an architecture of veins and arteries. Eyes and ears sense (connective) vibrations in an organism's environment, nervous systems flow (connectively) and switch (architectively) to relay electrical information between organs, and endocrine systems relay protein hormones as architective messages using the blood's distribution function. Hearts, brains and lungs vibrate (connectively) to regulate the organism's subsystems, while the chemistry of switching molecular bonds turns food into energy for warmth and propulsion.

The bodies of biological organisms are complex functional objects that maintain their architectures in the face of disturbance. The architectures of their bodies, organs and cells can be disrupted by external forces that exceed their architective binding strengths.

Biological organisms store genetic information in the architecture of their DNA. They process by replicating their architectures and genetic information through mitosis and meiosis, one reconfiguration event at a time. The vulnerability to disruption of an architecture means that genetic information in DNA can be modified by the occasional disturbance that exceeds the DNA molecule's binding strength.

Every organism is a separate architective object. In that they are separate, each organism so capable has a different subjective experience and sensation.

Organisms can relate connectively with their environment. Humans have organs that are directly sensitive to physical waves such as sound and light and we are sensitive to the physical vibrations of heat. We can relate with connective behaviour directly, perhaps by surfing an ocean wave or by touching a purring cat.

We also relate with our environment architectively. We have organs sensitive to the chemical shifts of taste and smell. An embryo is figurately constrained within the body of its mother or inside an egg. We can be bodily constrained by a leash or by prison walls. We may be confined to living our lives in a particular country. Our limited lifespan confines our existence to a particular period in history. We are bodily distinct from each other and have distinct personal histories. We figurately fit shoes on our feet and hats on our heads. We clasp a pen between thumb and forefinger. Mammalian sexual organs are a perfect figurate match. Our physical figures decide which passages we can negotiate and what shapes would constitute a comfortable chair. We collide when our bodies meet. We may enter into contest with other organisms for our bodily resources (such as physical battles amongst ourselves or battles with bacteria attacking our bodies). Our bodies depend on their architective binding strengths for their survival.

Humans can intelligently employ connective and architective devices to manipulate their environments. We intentionally modulate our voices into connective harmonies or into architective words of information. We construct chairs and tables and shelters that suit our figures. We have configured languages to communicate exact data of information. We can architectively store that information in words and reproduce it exactly. We have constructed functional technologies that permit us to communicate using radio waves, to control the flow of rivers, synthesize new chemistries and build skyscrapers.

I suspect most of our felt experiences are connective vibrations in our brains responding to the sensations of our organs, whether these be connective or architective. For example I see both heat and cold as specific experiences, rather than cold being an absence of sensation since it is merely an absence of heat. In particular I regard our experiences of bodily pleasure and pain to be connective qualia in our brains regardless of whether the original stimuli were connective or architective. We can, after all, be anaesthetized.

Our brains may fix our experiences architectively as memories. They may store memories of felt experiences as capsules of vibration.

Orgasm can be both a profound connective experience and a defining moment in our reproductive procession as architective objects.

#### Examples of Social Connectivity and Architectivity

We cannot choose or change our parents and family - we are bound to specific people for our entire lives by the circumstance of our birth. This bond is disrupted only when we or they die. There is a fixed genealogical hierarchy in every family which processes in reconfiguration events - one birth or death at a time. Our family structures have all the hallmarks of architectivity.

We are also likely to enjoy the warmth and love of our family members, and they are likely to enjoy our acceptance and reciprocation of their love. These warm feelings may carry through to later life but they are not fixed – they may sour or become covered by layers of intrigue. This empathic aspect of family life I see as a connective behaviour – the feelings are inclusive of all whom we love - and cannot be presumed to be constant. Nor does the empathy (as I will use the word) recognize familial boundaries. As we grow up we relate empathically with non-family members, and will likely select a spouse on that basis.

Architective sociality is obvious: Families can aggregate into tribes and tribes into nations. We can be definitively identified and categorized by lineage or history, or by geographical location. Persons, families or tribes may also develop or inherit particular resources or skills by which they may be associated and categorized, say as smiths, soldiers or bankers; and which they may pass to their offspring.

Connective sociality is not quite so obvious: Empathic affinities may be fleeting and cannot be held to well-defined categories. Gossip and love are connective and beyond anyone's control. Yawning is contagious. Our movement in large numbers may display connective behaviour like herding, the flocking of birds, or the waves of decision running through a school of fish. An event experienced by a group may arouse an empathic affinity between its participants so that they display a group visage, but only a recorded description of the event or associating the event with an (architective) icon can give the group a well-defined identity.

Architective social groups can aggregate into a multi-faceted society such as a nation, having definite characteristics that make it different to other nations. Societies are hierarchically structured in a multitude of ways depending on how their members can be categorized, with those at the top of a hierarchy controlling those beneath them in respect to their activities within the hierarchy.

Societies constrain the behaviours of their members and act to preserve their hierarchies. They enforce the categorizations and definitions they have evolved. They architectively codify rules and roles into laws and traditions, violation of which could result in ostracism. These may intrude into the intimacy of personal life, and individual members are expected to play roles in their personal relations that are supportive of the traditions of the greater society.

A successful social hierarchy can crystallize into an institution, whereby all its offices persist independently of the empathies and idiosyncrasies of the people that hold them, as long as the officers conform to the defined roles of the architecture. A well-founded institution may continue its existence long after its originating founders have disappeared, with faceless individuals entering the institution and performing the roles that have been codified as necessary for its maintenance. Institutions emerge as new _social objects_ in their own right from the constrained _social interactions_ of their offices.

At every level of social ranking, each social object has a unique and enduring identity, definable in terms such as family, tribe, class, profession, wealth or power, depending on the properties by which the social category or society is structured. Every single human can be uniquely identified by lineage alone.

Empathic relationship does not recognize the ranks of social hierarchies or the boundaries of nations. It does not recognize the existence of social architectures at all. Empathic affinity takes place between individual people and not between categories.

When one group prefers association with another based on a commonality of interest, culture, or language – it is an architective association. While people may be averse to cross-boundary empathic affinity or not be willing to acknowledge it for fear of censure from their society, they cannot prevent it from happening.

In an institution there is no regard for empathic behaviour. Empathic content in the art and dance of an individual, for example, is replaced by iconography and ritual in an institution. It is also not uncommon for individuals to assume for themselves the identity of their institutional roles.

The traditions and laws of institutions and societies confirm the social identities of all their members from the very lowest to the very highest, as well as the identity of the institution or society itself. They are extremely conservative and resistant to change. If change becomes necessary for the survival of a society, it may be successfully resisted even to the detriment of the society.

The constraining rules that a society imposes on individual members may conflict with their connective behaviours, perhaps to a point where individuals revolt and the society responds oppressively in order to preserve its architecture.

Contests may arise between different societies having different traditions or laws. Contests may arise within a society or for control of an institution. When a contest arises between individual people it is either within a social context (whereby individuals are fighting for a nation or religion for example) or over an exclusive architective resource, such as a limited food supply.

#### Features of Architective Sociality

There are benefits and costs to architective sociality.

Individuals aggregating socially can increase their chances of winning and survival because the powers of an emergent social body as a whole may be greater than and different to the sum of its members' individual powers.

The members of a society or institution would serve the greater offices above them and control the lesser offices below them. In return for their service they could appeal for assistance from its greater offices, while wielding the concerted obedience of lesser offices in their own causes. Even those at the bottom of a hierarchy could at least fly the flag of a power much greater than their own, while the office at the very top of a hierarchy has hierarchical authority over all the institution's members.

Individuals may be able to increase their power by climbing the ranks of their social hierarchy and by external contest. Though individuals may know their places within a society and dutifully hold their stations, the possibility of switching offices opens the society to internal contest as well.

Architective hierarchies act to preserve themselves, so a social architecture necessarily encourages a sense of self-preservation among all its social objects.

Social architectures would likely be dominated by strong individuals engaging in contest with others within their own hierarchies or in contest with external foes.

Different social bodies may have different binding strengths and some could be judged to be more robust than others. A primary motivation to join a particular social body would be to participate in one offering the best survival strength and most powerful assistance.

The lower a member's position in an architective hierarchy, the more valuable is any leverage obtained from the benefice of a higher office, but there is also a greater number of authoritative offices to which the member must submit. As the member rises through the hierarchy, the value of the subservience due from those below rises, and the degree of submission to higher authorities decreases, so that when a member gets to the top of a hierarchy they are both all controlling within the hierarchy and not subject to any hierarchical authority.

Because of the top-down hierarchical authority of an architecture, the subservience of inferiors can be taken for granted while invocations for intervention from superiors requires their consent. As well, the relative value of a member's self-service gets more pronounced as the member rises up the hierarchy since their success becomes less dependent on their subservience to superiors while the support of more inferiors can be taken for granted.

Dispensing power or control in the service of an inferior becomes less likely as a member rises in hierarchical rank since there is less likely to be benefit to themselves, and will not happen at all if there is a cost that could jeopardize their own position. It is more likely that a superior will sacrifice an inferior in the superior's interest, and do so with the inferior's consent since the superior's interest is in the greater interest of the society. The object at the top of a social hierarchy is able to indulge its self-interest without recrimination. For those not at the very top, life is necessarily problematical, and the degree to which it is problematical increases with distance from the top. The position at the very top of a social hierarchy is particularly privileged and desirable.

Architective sociality also offers respite from the uncontrollable environment of empathic engagement by providing well-defined channels for empathy that can be more easily managed than the empathic relations themselves. While empathic relations may be important to individual people, empathy per se is not relevant to the offices of a social hierarchy - only the channels permitted by the architecture are relevant.

## The Relevance of Scale

While every phenomenon comprises connective or architective interactions or both, it often depends on the scale of our observation of the phenomenon as to which interaction is most obvious or relevant. In looking at a table, for example, its architective behaviour is what matters at the scale of a human observer and what distinguishes it from say a chair, to the point where any connectivity in the table is irrelevant. In fact, without the tools to make an observation at the smaller molecular scale (which humans have only acquired in recent technological history) we would be totally oblivious of any connective interaction inside a table.

The geometric shape of an atomic nucleus plays no role in its interaction with the atomic electrons, nor do we distinguish the figures of individual electrons in determining how they interact with each other. The same can be said of the entire sub-atomic menagerie - it is not meaningful to specify geometric figures for protons or quarks in describing how they relate to each other. There are no figurate embraces between sub-atomic objects.

Quantum mechanics tells us that it is however meaningful to specify wave properties such as wavelength in describing sub-atomic objects, and that they can establish bonds. Connective and binding interactions are common at sub-atomic scales.

As we go up the scale of things, it is only at the scale of atoms combining into molecules that aggregates acquire the uneven shapes that enable them to participate in figurate embraces. It is only at the molecular level of functional complexity that atoms aggregate into objects whose distinct geometrical shapes contribute to the properties of the material they constitute. Large molecules such as proteins can fold into shapes that play a crucial role in defining their material characteristics. Above the molecular scale, humans fashion materials into shapes (like pegs and holes and bricks and screws) where their figures can be the main factor determining meaning in their behaviour.

Interestingly, I can find no examples of architectivity at a cosmic scale. Connectivity is widely evident in the interactions between stars and galaxies, yet stars and galaxies seem to be incapable of establishing bonds and they are definitely not capable of aggregating into embraces having complex shapes. The largest architective interaction that I can imagine is a contact of rocky planets, or perhaps more realistically, a collision between a comet's core and a rocky planet. Meetings of gaseous planets such as Jupiter and Saturn, or between suns or galaxies, would exhibit connective integrations rather than architective collisions or aggregations. There appears to be a limit to the size that an object can take and still participate in an architective interaction.

Figurate interaction appears to be restricted to a window of scale residing between the molecular and the planetary, while bonds appear to become scarce at larger scales, and absent at very large scales. Connective interaction, on the other hand, is observable in abundance at every known scale.

#### Home

Importantly for us, the figurate window of scale is our home. The scale of human activity means that we live in the thick of figurate interaction. Our bodies are complex functional objects having figurate components. An arm is figurately different to a leg. Our foods have figurate components whether they are vegetable or animal. Our tools, homes and cities employ complex figurate shapes. We have become adept at figurate technologies.

All living organisms as we know them are figurate functional objects. If there are other functional life forms out in the cosmos they would be on a scale not too far removed from our own since they too would necessarily have a dependence on architective if not on figurate behaviour. They would likely share our figurate window of scale.

#### A Window of Pure Connectivity

The absence of physical architective interaction at very large scales occurs because none of the fundamental physical forces exhibit constraints at large distances so they cannot create very large objects or hold objects within very large containers. Some interactive forces themselves can operate, albeit weakly, over very large distances, but their associated constraining forces are effective only at relatively small distances.

As well, the electromagnetic interactions (which are responsible for all figurate activity) are bipolar and cancel each other out over large collections of objects, while gravity accumulates over large collections of objects. The result is that, at very large scales, gravity is the only fundamental force known to have any effect at all and is only strong enough to facilitate connective interactions.

It is not unreasonable to propose a window at a cosmic scale, say anything bigger than the planet Jupiter, in which all interaction is connective.

(It could be argued that a future human society, as an architective object, may span a number of planets, possibly even a number of solar systems, but it too would ultimately be limited by the capacity of its outposts to communicate with each other, so such an argument only pushes the boundary further out without eliminating it.)

What might such a purely connective window be like? Astronomical interactions between stars and galaxies are good examples. All the features of architective behaviour are absent from their interactions. Galaxies can integrate but not aggregate (and divide but not disrupt), and so cannot create new kinds of objects having properties they do not have, in the way that atoms can aggregate into molecules. That is, creation and extinction as a behavioural phenomenon would be absent from the window. A galaxy's visage may fade away as it loses stars but the underlying gravitational interaction between the stars remains, with the stars perhaps being distributed among other galaxies. The concept of identity is also not relevant in such a large-scale window - a galaxy displays only a variable visage rather than a lasting identity, so it can suffer no loss of identity because it had none in the first place. In the purely connective window, the concepts of creation, extinction and identity are meaningless. All is a flux of temporary visages.

To be precise, no architective interactions are available in a purely connective window of scale. The absence of static architectures means there can be no exactness of definition or specification, no permanent storing of information, no categorizations of identities, no ranks, no fixed hierarchies, no precise control, no contests and no stepped processions.

A purely connective window would be very alien to us.

There could be no definiteness of position or distance in a connective window of scale, since no two objects could be assumed to have a fixed distance between them to set a standard for measuring other positions. The concepts of relative position, distance and timespan would be meaningless; rather the concept of relative motion would be the standard measure for spatial and temporal reference. Think about flying or swimming without being able to see ground. You don't know where you are or even if you are moving. You are like a fish swimming with or against the current, with no land in sight, unaware that the tide may be taking you. Your only spatial references are the current and the relative motions of other fish. No ground to put your feet on. No "I am here". Only "I am aware of how you are moving relative to me".

#### Architective Isolation and Finitude

I refer to scales smaller than the purely connective window as the _architective window_ . These are the scales at which architective interaction is evident or at least possible. The architective window of course includes the figurate window mentioned above.

Consider that the largest architective object in our vicinity is planet Earth itself. It is at the very top of the physical architective hierarchy we live in and so is not in architective interaction with any other cosmic object, not even the moon. The moon does affect the Earth and things on and in it like the ocean tides, but these are connective influences. There is no aggregate of which the Earth is a constituent object. It participates in the solar system, yes, but that system is a connective. Earth is of course connectively related to every other cosmic object through the force of gravity but it is architectively isolated from all of them. All its external interactions are connective. It can really aggregate no more, close as it is to the maximum scale of the architective window.

The highly complex architecture of every planet would likely have emerged along a different path of aggregation and emergence to be different to every other and will be architectively isolated from all of them.

Even though the possibilities for architective complexity are infinite, every actual architecture has a finite size. This has an important implication for our understanding of bonds and embraces. It means that every binding interaction and every embrace has a finite number of constituent objects. It may not necessarily mean that the number of levels in an architective hierarchy is finite, but the number of objects in each level is finite.

Connective interactions may have an infinite number of participants. Connective phenomena are neither confined to a maximum size nor are they connectively isolated from each other (unless they are confined in an architective container). Scale is irrelevant to a purely connective behaviour.

# Part II : Modes of Meaning

Having become familiar with connective and architective interactions, you should notice them at work in yourself and in the world around you. If you look very carefully, you will see that every event, every relationship in your life, every phenomenon you encounter, whether physical, biological or social, is composed of connective and/or architective interactions.

The phenomena you encounter will have meaning for you. They may be meaningful because they are useful, interesting, beautiful, valuable or even scary, but some of their meaning will spring from the connective and architective features of their interactions. For example, you may find value in having a unique identity or in having things separate from each other - which arise from architectivity - or you may get pleasure from the flow and interference of a wave play like music - which arise from connectivity; or you may find both kinds of meaning in a compound phenomenon.

I use the term _serial meaning_ to describe the meaning that arises from the connectivity and architectivity of phenomena. Of course we may find many other meanings, such as the prices of things which would influence say our purchase of them, or the sentimental values in family heirlooms. Serial meanings that arise from architectivity, like having a unique identity, are of the architective mode, while those arising from connectivity are of the connective mode. That is, I can talk about connective and architective _modes of serial meaning_.

As I sit and write I happen to look up and notice some passing clouds and feel the breeze on my face through the open window – I momentarily skip into the connective mode of serial meaning from the architective activity of arranging words on a page.

For us, the main implications of serial meaning lie in the ways interactions sequence and arrange, in the patterns we discern and manipulate in these, and in the games we play with them. To give you an idea of just how significant serial meaning is in our world, here are some examples:

## Serial Meanings of the Architective Mode

#### Stasis

Stasis is a serial meaning arising from the endurance of objects and their arrangements. Objects such as houses, molecules, tables and societies, offer us meaning in their capacity to maintain themselves in a stasis, even if disturbed.

Stasis makes our sense of position and distance meaningful. We can say for example that two towns are fifteen kilometers apart and expect them to maintain that distance, as well as allowing us to compare that distance with the distances between other towns. Stasis allows us to play games based on position and distance such as football. Importantly, stasis allows us to manufacture an item to fit a space and expect that neither the space nor the item will have changed size during the manufacture of the item.

Stasis gives symbols enduring implications, such as letters in an alphabet and words in a language. Stasis allows us to store information with fidelity and endurance, such as in a written text, a DNA sequence or a computer memory.

Stasis allows us a sense of social position and orientation.

Stasis can only be provided by phenomena having an architective component. While purely connective phenomena are able to display temporarily enduring arrangements, they cannot be relied on to maintain them, especially in the presence of disturbance.

#### Exclusion, Separation, Distinctness, Identity and Category

Exclusion and separation are serial meanings that arise when objects exclude each other from their spatial volumes, and so maintain a separation between them.

Exclusion in turn offers serial meanings of distinctness and identity, whose significance lies in us being able to distinguish one object from another, uniquely, enduringly and with certainty.

Objects can be categorized according to their identities, and these categories too can be enduring since each identity is enduring.

Identity and category enjoy great possibilities for variety, and can develop even wider ranges of possibility by aggregation, as new identities are created having new properties which open further possibilities for classification.

Games of classification are many and can be arbitrary. People may be classified according to nationality, age, occupation or preferences in music, for example. Books in libraries are categorized for ease of access.

Games can attribute different values to different identities and categories, increasing and complicating the significance of their consequences for their players.

The collision and separation of billiard balls is a game of exclusion.

Serial meanings of exclusion, separation, identity and category can only be provided by phenomena having an architective component. Purely connective phenomena may be discernible by their visages, but these offer only temporary distinctions which are readily disturbed, are not exclusive and may even appear and disappear spontaneously.

#### Complexity, Emergence, Creativity and Destruction

Complexity and emergence are serial meanings arising from objects aggregating to create new and more complex objects. Aggregates may in turn aggregate with other objects, further extending the possibilities for novelty and complexity in their aggregation. Complexity and emergence permit enormous variety in the construction and distinction of objects, as evidenced by the endless possibilities in the design of buildings, furniture, textiles and organic molecules.

By generating difference, and difference of difference, emergence offers creativity as a serial meaning.

Fashions are games of complexity and creativity.

Capacities for complexity, emergence and creativity can only be provided by phenomena having an architective component. Purely connective phenomena may also compound but no different objects emerge from their integration, and their integrated arrangements are not necessarily more complex or different.

In contrast to creativity, architectivity also hosts destruction as a serial meaning, by which objects are disrupted and their identities lost.

#### Precise Enumeration and Enduring Count

Precise enumeration and enduring count are serial meanings by which objects can be allocated a number, or their total counted, precisely and enduringly.

Precise enumeration arises from the fact that objects can be separately identified, allowing each to be allocated a unique number, usually in an integer sequence.

Enduring counts can be taken of the constituent objects of a bond or embrace since each has a fixed and finite number of constituent objects which cannot be changed without disrupting or aggregating. Their constituent objects can be counted, and counted again and again every which way, to yield the exact same integer total.

This means that every aggregate has a fixed (and finite) number of constituent objects at each level of its hierarchy. I suspect (but cannot say for certain) that the number of levels in every aggregate is finite too. But starting at the top of any architective hierarchy, its levels can be enumerated, one by one, for as long as the internal objects are perceptible to the counter. Each of its perceived internal objects can be allocated a precise and enduring integer rank within its hierarchy, and the constituent objects at each level can be counted - allowing the total number of objects comprising an aggregate to be counted to any specified level.

In a figurate pattern too, starting at any arbitrary origin, objects can be enumerated or counted every which way along the threads of the pattern, for example horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

The count of objects in an aggregate or along a pattern can be numerically compared to the count along a different pattern, or to a count in a different aggregate, according to arbitrarily chosen rules. This allows us to make measurements of objects by comparing them to a standard like a ruler.

The hierarchical authority of an object in an architecture can also be enumerated as the number of objects subservient to it (to any specific depth in its hierarchy).

Objects participating in a connective may also be enumerated or counted, but not with an enduring or repeatable result, if only because its participating objects may move, or if any of its participating objects disrupt, their debris may be incorporated into the connective. External objects may join the connective and others may leave without altering the nature of the connective. Besides, connectives may have an infinite number of participating objects that simply can't be totalled.

Precise enumeration and enduring count are serial meanings only available to architectures.

#### Exact Reproduction

The precision of separation, identification, enumeration and ranking in aggregates permits their construction to be specified exactly; by written texts, maps or plans, thereby allowing them to be reproduced with absolute fidelity.

Reliably precise reproduction is an architective serial meaning. Connectives may be reproducible, but unless there is an architecture involved in their reproduction, not with a fidelity that can be termed exact.

#### Hierarchy and Rank

Hierarchy is a serial meaning based on the distinct levels at which objects occur in the hierarchy of an architecture. While the visages of connectives may display an apparent hierarchy, such as solar systems within galaxies, their rankings are not distinct, for there may be planets that do not orbit a sun, and star clusters and solar systems may come and go.

Unless an architecture is disrupted, the number of levels in its hierarchy does not change, while the rank of each level is both fixed and enumerable.

The ranks objects occupy in a hierarchy can be numerically compared allowing us to categorize objects according to their ranks. Many political and business organizations are structured on systems of rank. We play games in which objects are valued according to their rank.

#### Control

Constraint and control are serial meanings based on the ability of architectures to constrain their lower ranked objects and control them in matters of contest and allegiance; and on their ability to control and constrain connectives and waves by containing them or presenting barriers to their motions.

Hierarchical control is used by an army, for example, as officers direct the actions of subordinate soldiers. We see hierarchical control utilized in all our hierarchical social institutions.

Many musical instruments have architective objects anchoring strings or tubes to particular, fixed lengths so as to precisely control the tones produced.

A connective has the capacity to generally influence the motions of objects but cannot control them with certainty or precision.

#### Contest and Power

Contest is a serial meaning for interacting architectures.

Winning and losing are games of contest.

While connectives may be said to compete, the outcome is a superposition of the participating influences rather a contest for survival. There are no winners and losers. Games of contest are not available to connectives.

An architecture's binding strength is often dependent on properties that accumulate with aggregation, such as size and hierarchical authority, so that the biggest or most populous architecture will win a contest. Contests permit _games of power_ to be played between architectures, in which the contesting architectures strive to aggregate as much as they can so as to accumulate the contributions of more internal objects.

In games of power, expansion by aggregation has a positive value and contraction by disruption has a negative value. As well, objects having large size or high rank are more valued for their strength in contest. Players may increase their value by climbing the ladder of rank, or increasing their size or hierarchical authority, should the game permit them to do so. In games of power, big means powerful.

Games of contest can also be played using threats of extinction rather than actual vanquishments. After judging the possible outcomes of a contest, a player may choose safety by voluntarily submitting to an opponent rather than risking demise. A player may also be able to choose safety by retreating from a contest.

Besides size, skill, strategy and efficiency are tactics for conquest.

Losing a contest has repercussions in games of identity as well, since loss in a contest necessarily means the loss of an object's identity. In a game of power, loss of a high-ranking object would have wider repercussions than losing a lower ranked object.

Business and politics generally involve games of contest.

#### Procession

Procession is a serial meaning arising from architectures reconfiguring in discrete steps.

We utilize procession in the meshing of cogs in gear wheels (as one figurate embrace is replaced by another), it affords the quantum leaping of electrons switching orbitals in an atom, and we see it in the growth and shrinkage of our families as members are born or die.

In many card and board games, players are permitted to make one distinct move at a time.

## Serial Meanings of the Connective Mode

#### Unlimited Responsiveness, Flexibility and Uncertainty

The absence of internal constraint means that a purely connective phenomenon will respond to every relevant disturbance and there is no restriction on the degree to which it may respond. We use the serial meaning of unlimited connective flexibility, for example, in the vibration of a radio transmitter, which is free to mimic any and every voice in disturbance of its vibration.

The absolute responsiveness of connective phenomena also means that there is always a degree of uncertainty associated with them, and we have to live with that uncertainty, for example, in the changeability of the weather.

Connectives offer uncertainty in the numbers of their participating objects, in the vagueness and volatility of their visages, in their lack of precise control and in the fact that they may be indistinguishable from each other.

#### Unconstrained Smooth Motion

If not already in motion, the objects participating in a connective are always open to it, and that motion can never be constrained to definite boundaries by the host or any other connective (without architective intervention).

Since there are no constraints to restrict the responses of purely connective phenomena, their responses never occur in discrete steps between constrained positions as could occur in an architective procession. Their responses are always completely smooth.

Motion in an architective sense always occurs in steps as it switches from one static architecture to another. Unconstrained smooth motion (as opposed to a procession in discrete steps or constrained smooth motion) is a purely connective serial meaning.

We see unconstrained smooth motion in the trajectory of a ball through the air, in a flow of water, in the orbits of planets and the propagation of waves. Unless space-time itself is quantized (which I am not inclined to believe), flight, whether of birds or electrons, is absolutely smooth.

It is not only spatial movement that offers serial meaning in smooth motion. Other properties of connective phenomena may change smoothly, as for example would the frequency of a sound emitted by a source whose speed is changing smoothly.

#### Interference and Integration

The net effect of multiple connective influences is the combination of all the influences. No relevant influences are lost - they all interfere to affect the result to some degree. Compare this to the selection of some influences and the negation of others as happens in architective contexts.

Interference as a connective serial meaning can be seen in the way planetary orbits are affected by all heavenly bodies (even though the nearest have the stronger effects). It can also be seen in the way we hear multiple sounds simultaneously even though they may be played out on a single ear-drum.

The serial meanings of interference and integration are also utilized when multiple waves occupy the same space at the same time, affect the same objects at the same time and pass through rather than exclude each other. Multiple radio programs, for example, can be broadcast through the same geographic region at the same time.

#### Wave Play

The smooth periodicity of waves offers a wealth of serial meaning. There can be meaning in the variation in their frequency, in the different sounds we can hear, in their phase and in their amplitude (loud and soft, for example). There can be meaning in the patterns of their interference and superposition.

Music plays on the smooth periodicity of waves for its sounds and its harmonies. It plays on architective processions for its rhythms. Musical scores and recordings, in that they offer a capacity for exact reproduction, have architective rather than connective serial meanings. Nevertheless, reproduced music may be as connectively meaningful as its original production.

#### Infinite Subtlety and Grandeur

Under a microscope we can resolve architectures and connectives into their constituent and participating objects respectively. However, greater magnification of an architecture will eventually reveal definite and unavoidable gaps between its internal objects, inside of which no further internal objects can be found. While we will also ultimately see gaps between the participating objects of a connective, these gaps are not of a fixed size, and a moment later there may be a participating object in that gap, no matter how small a gap we are considering.

It is quite possible that there is a lower bound to every architecture, that is, there is a scale below which no objects exist. At the time of writing, the smallest known objects are quarks and leptons (bosons do not qualify as 'objects') and they are considered to be elementary, that is, to have no constituent objects, so their sizes define a current architective lower bound. It is therefore quite possible that architectures are not infinitely resolvable even when digging within them rather than between them.

Connectives are infinitely resolvable and architectures are not.

Waves too are infinitely resolvable, firstly in the sense that since a wave can be regarded as a superposition of multiple waves, every wave can be regarded as a superposition of an infinite number of waves. Secondly, a wave is infinitely resolvable in the sense that it travels smoothly and the motions or vibrations of the objects it disturbs are absolutely smooth.

The possibilities for architective complexity may be infinite but every actual architecture has a finite size. Connectives are not limited to finite sizes.

I say that connective phenomena offer a serial meaning of _infinite subtlety_ in their capacity for resolution and _infinite grandeur_ in their capacity for extent. Infinity of resolution and extent are not available in architective contexts.

## Features of Serial Meaning

#### Narratives

As we have seen, every phenomenon can be analyzed into component interactions that are either purely connective or purely architective. We have also seen that the connective and architective modes of interaction have no serial meanings in common. So while a phenomenon may appear continuous at junctions of its component interactions, its serial meaning will not be continuous if the junction is between interactions of different modes. That is, at a junction between components of different modes, the serial meaning of a phenomenon is necessarily broken even though the phenomenon itself may be continuous at the junction.

It is important to understand that a serial meaning of one mode is totally incomprehensible in the context of its opposite mode. To a wave or a flood of water, for example, the distinction between a chair and a table that it sweeps along is lost. In a compound phenomenon, the serial meaning in one component interaction will have no meaning in an adjoining component if the adjoining component is of a different mode. The serial meaning in a compound phenomenon will be interrupted as it skips from one mode to the other when crossing junctions between components of different modes.

It may happen that when a compound phenomenon skips back into a mode which was previously interrupted, the serial meaning that was interrupted can resume from where it left off. In this case I say that the serial meaning continues a _narrative_ across the interruption. The serial meaning skipping between modes may well be skipping between ongoing narratives in each mode, while its narratives in one mode are incomprehensible in the context of the other.

Of course it may also happen that an interrupted narrative cannot be resumed because relevant conditions were changed during the interruption. A narrative may be terminated by an interruption.

#### The Organization of Serial Meaning

When a new object emerges from an aggregation, it will participate in its own serial meanings and these may be different to those current among its constituent objects. That is, the serial meanings and narratives at each level in an architective hierarchy may be different.

As atoms emerge from nuclear aggregations, so the serial meanings of chemistry become available to them - while such chemistry is not available to their component nucleons. Biology and its serial meanings emerge in turn from chemical aggregations. 3D vision and its serial meanings emerge from the biology of eyes, and the serial meanings of art emerge from vision, and so on. Interactions at the level of art and interactions at the level of vision offer different serial meanings while interactions at the level of vision and interactions at the level of biology utilize different serial meanings, and so on.

We have seen the ways in which objects at higher levels of an architecture control the objects in their lower levels. The serial meanings in a higher architective level will also govern the serial meanings of its lower levels in order to maintain the integrity of those at the higher level - not replacing the lower levels of serial meaning but constraining them as necessary. I say that the serial meanings of higher levels in an architecture _organize_ the serial meanings in their lower levels. That is, serial meaning in an architecture is layered in hierarchical levels of organization in the same way that its objects are layered in hierarchical levels of control.

Higher levels of an architecture organize the serial meaning in their lower levels even though the higher levels have emerged from the lower ones. The serial meanings of art may emerge from the serial meanings of biological vision but the serial meaning in a work of art organizes the serial meaning in the vision that beholds it. It is the art that directs the eye to the picture.

Narratives in the serial meanings in the higher levels of an architecture organize narratives in the lower levels.

In conjunction with their ability to code, store and copy information with fidelity, this capacity to create higher levels of serial meaning by emergence which then organize the the lower levels that created them, facilitates architective hierarchies developing into self-organizing functional structures such as living organisms.

Purely connective phenomena feature neither emergence nor hierarchical control. There is no organization of one serial meaning by another in a purely connective context. It could be argued that the modulation of one wave by another so as to carry a signal is a connective organization of serial meaning. However, such modulation is an interference of the participating waves rather than a constraining of one by another, since the signal carries the serial meanings of all its contributing waves rather than having one serial meaning override any other. Each contributing serial meaning could subsequently be extracted from the modulated wave by using suitable filters, whereas once a serial meaning has been organized by higher levels of an architecture, at least some of the original lower level serial meaning can never be recovered.

#### Processional Narratives

It may happen that, as architectures step through a procession, some narratives of the topmost level at each step are continued; that is, at each step, narratives of the resulting topmost level continue narratives of the erstwhile topmost level despite the erstwhile architecture having been replaced. A processing architecture and its identity may be disrupted but narratives at its topmost level may be continued by the topmost level of the architecture that replaces it. For example, in a dynasty, narratives of the ruling family continue even though individual rulers have passed on. Such continuing narratives of processing architectures have an integrity of their own.

I say that such a procession of architectures has a _processional narrative_. As long as an architectural procession continues with at least one continuing narrative to its topmost levels, a processional narrative persists.

Since a narrative of the topmost level of each architecture organizes the narratives of all its lower levels, a processional narrative ensures some continuity of a serial meaning throughout the processing architectures. It may well be that narratives at lower levels of the processing architectures also have continuing narratives of their own.

Interestingly, the topmost level of each architecture is at the apex of control in its own architecture but is not at the apex of organization in the processing architectures, for its serial meaning is organized by the processional narrative. Conversely, this also means that though a processional narrative is at the apex of organization of its architectures, it does not control any of them. It is only the topmost level of each processing architecture that wields control, though only within its own architecture.

When there is a processional narrative to a functional organism I say that the organism constitutes a _narrative organism_. We ourselves are such narrative organisms since we each maintain a personal narrative even though the cells making up our bodies die and are replenished.

Processional narratives would probably require that the architectures making up the sequential steps in its procession have similar properties and that their differences are minor, but if the procession involves many steps the final architecture may bear little resemblance to the original. The old man holds little resemblance to the baby he once was.

## Sentience

Our brains are compound functional objects that utilize both modes of interaction and comprehend both modes of serial meaning.

Consider that in order to comprehend connective serial meaning our brains must be operating in the connective mode and in order to comprehend architective serial meaning they must be operating in the architective mode. As events present serial meanings to us in one mode or the other, our brains would need to operate in the corresponding mode to have us negotiate our world successfully.

I use the word 'sentience' to refer to the general capacity of mind to comprehend meaning, enjoy sensation and express intent, and so term our brains to afford both a connective and an architective _mode of sentience._

I suspect that our brains are able to operate both a connective and architective sentience concurrently, and have a mechanism prioritizing one sentience over the other, by which one is selected to be conscious and the other subconscious at any one moment. This would allow us to negotiate both modes of serial meaning simultaneously though only one consciously. When we are consciously aware of connectivity our awareness of architectivity is subconscious, and vice-versa. I see us enjoying either a connective or architective _mode of consciousness._

Whichever mode of consciousness one has engaged at any moment, it would not be possible to consciously experience or even understand serial meanings of the opposite mode. In the thick of one mode of consciousness one can at best have an approximate understanding of serial meanings of the opposite mode or cobble together only an approximation of what an experience of the other mode might be like, using what few concepts one's current mode can provide to convey something that is completely alien to it. The act of reading or writing this book, for example, is an architective one - no words on these pages can convey what music is like, while no (wordless) music can possibly convey the ideas presented in this book. Consciously, I either read a book or listen to music, or perhaps switch rapidly between them, but I cannot do both simultaneously and consciously. I can do both simultaneously, but one will be conscious and the other subconscious.

I see our conscious experience to comprise a switching from one sentience to the other and so from one mode of serial meaning to the other. The mode of serial meaning that is conscious completely flavours our conscious experience and sense of who and what we are at that moment, and it is only serial meanings of that mode that can be implemented by our conscious actions. At the same time, events of the opposite mode will be contributing to our subconscious sentience and we may become conscious of them when that mode is prioritized.

#### Connective and Architective Experience

The experiences of a connective sentience are of free flowing movements, the play of waves and vibrations, uncertainty and interference. Our connective sentience is able to appreciate infinite subtlety and grandeur.

An architective sentience experiences precision and exactness, is aware of having a distinct identity and of being different to others, responds to good or bad figurate fits, attends to contests and responds to loss or gain in a contest, takes steps towards definite goals (whether constructive or destructive), exercises control and plays games of rank and power. Our architective sentience is able to appreciate complexity in construction and its greatness.

An architective sentience is focused, probably on the item of greatest urgency or strength; while a connective sentience may be widely dispersed and allow simultaneous experiences to interfere with rather than eclipse each other. I can consciously or subconsciously attend to multiple musics simultaneously, whether in concert or noisy, but I cannot be reading two sentences at the same time.

Fear of extinction is an architective experience, for only architectures are subject to the possibility of demise. Our architective frailty necessarily imbues our lives with a sense of insecurity. I suspect that the entire gamut of our fears have an architective component.

Connectively we may have preferences regarding degrees or styles of subtlety, smoothness of motion, perhaps preferring one dance or one music rather another. Our architective preferences may be in regard to the straightness of lines and symmetry of visual forms, clarity of distinction, correctness in social interaction, comfort of fit, winning in contests, the soundness of constructions and in the reasonableness of an argument. Architective preferences may also develop for destruction, existential angst, physical and emotional discomfort, greed, or oppressive control and constraint.

We may develop a preference for one sentience rather than the other. We may prefer to see everything in its proper place, have well-charted avenues of social interaction, enjoy precision of expectation, fidelity of information, clear categorizations, respect for rank, and take pleasure in expressions of strength, control or subservience. Alternatively we may relish the connective interplay of feelings, colours and sounds, the excitements of resonances, and the surprises of uncertainty. Of course we may enjoy both. However, actions we may take that serve an intention of one sentience may well serve against an intention of the other.

#### Choice of Sentience

Our choice of which sentience to prioritize to consciousness is not a trivial one.

In many cases the net result of our actions or experiences may be the same in both modes, in which case the impact of our choice is trivial. But sometimes the effects can be contradictory, and in these cases the conscious contributor becomes very significant, for it will likely decide which of the contradicting modes our personal narrative will unfold along, and, through our actions, which of contradicting narratives in our external reality will be promoted.

I suggest below that we generally make that choice habitually, responding to our most urgent environmental or emotional pressures. But we sometimes make that choice thoughtfully, and the better we are informed the more often that choice can be thoughtful.

## The Architective Dominion

Our lives are dominated by architectivity.

There are good reasons for this.

Chief among these is our bodily placement in the figurate window of scale, where as functional objects we have an overriding concern for our bodily and social security and are compelled into architective strategies to preserve them, while connective matters appear to be of much lesser urgency.

Social institutions display no connective behaviour at all. Connectivity is evident in the relations between individual humans but the relations between offices or ranks of our institutions are purely architective. The serial meaning they contribute to our lives is purely architective and the sociality they promote is purely architective. They may sometimes promote connective sociality but only as a means of maintaining their architectures. Governments do not provide grand theatrical events with the intention of pleasuring their citizens – they do so in order to unify the citizenry, perhaps promote the values of the society, convey a message or promote the election prospects of a candidate. A political party will always put its own survival above any principles it espouses. Societies actively promote themselves to themselves in order to maintain their identities. In doing so, they elevate the preservation of identity to be the highest good among their citizenry at every level.

We can communicate amongst ourselves connectively with music, dance and colour, and physically and emotionally caress or agitate each other, but our repertoire for connective expression is limited when compared to our repertoire for architective manipulation. This is not only due to environmental and social reinforcement, for by their very nature, architective techniques can be precisely codified and stored, faithfully passed from generation to generation, built on and accumulated; while connective skills are not easily codified or handed down. Our societies and traditions reflect eons of accumulated architective knowledge (much of it faulty!) while a personal lifetime of connective nous is usually buried with the individual.

The architective domination of our social and cultural environment means that our personal connective interactions receive significantly less of our conscious attention than do our personal architective interactions. Even in the realm of love, we often align our personal satisfaction with our performance according to social norms rather than in the transitory and vague caprice of romance. Our connective interactions tend to melt into a subconscious background while our conscious attention is used overwhelmingly for the cultivation of our social identities.

An architective mode of consciousness also tends to enforce its own exclusiveness while a connective mode of consciousness is inclusive. It is much harder for one to consciously switch to a connective mode of consciousness from an architective mode than the other way round.

The architective dominion of our lives leads us to see the world with architective eyes only. Rather than participate directly in our connective experiences, we attempt to grasp them architectively and are then confounded by the impossibility of capturing them with architective means. We clothe our connective experiences in architective texts, icons and rituals, as, for example, we ritualize love in marriage. Doing so makes them more amenable to our control but frustrates their connective meaning.

Nowhere is the frustration of connective meaning more evident than in our social attitudes to sex. Sex is rarely socially exalted or promoted for its own sake, yet as individuals we are obsessed with it. One would have thought that if it played such an important role in our individual lives it would have been explored in depth and developed into a sophisticated social interaction, yet it is hidden in shame by almost every society. On the one hand it is the fundamental existential process by which we as architective objects reproduce, but on the other sexual orgasm is our most intense connective experience. We are socially unequipped to cope with its connective enormity. In desperation we confine it to an architective straitjacket until there is nothing left but a soulless rite of species propagation and a lure for selling motorcars.

This preoccupation with architectivity is not a failing of the human character. It is the natural result of our placement in the figurate window. Our architective discomforts do not arise from a moral laxity but from the necessity of coping with enormous architective pressures. Our individual lives are so pressured by the constant effort to maintain our bodily and social identities that we have little time and little motivation to appreciate what each other's lives are like, and our capacities for empathy and compassion are severely - but naturally - constrained.

Our lives may be dominated by architectivity but they are not totally controlled by it. Even within social constraints there is always some room for freedom of expression. Socially too, we may rebel against hierarchical control, though this usually occurs in the context of replacing one hierarchy with another.

#### A Matter of Perspective

Our cultures, history and traditions have been overwhelmingly shaped by the architective dominion. So much have we been conditioned by a past confined in a figurate window that we unquestioningly accept that stasis is the natural "rest state" of physical phenomena and that movement only arises when energy is imparted to an object that is otherwise naturally at rest.

This discussion has shown that a state of motion is at least equally entitled to being considered the natural state of things, one in which stasis only arises when constraints are imposed on objects that are naturally in motion.

Since connective phenomena are universal while architective phenomena are confined to a window of scale and inherently isolated, a state of motion (being the natural state of connective phenomena) could well be regarded as the primary state of things with stasis (being the natural state of architective phenomena) being a secondary state.

Were we to regard a state of motion as the primary state of things, we might also choose to distinguish between things based on the differences between their motions rather than differences in their position or composition.

We have come to regard stasis and constraint as the default condition of the world more generally. For example, we regard poverty, as a constraint on energy and resources, to be the natural state of human affairs, one that can only be overcome by conscientious hard labour. Many cultures believe suffering to be humankind's natural condition, only to be overcome by great effort or ingenuity or a benefice of the gods. If we were to see an unconstrained movement of resources as the primary state of affairs we might understand that our poverty and suffering arise out of our being cornered and constrained within a figurate window, and be more compassionate towards each other, for ultimately we all suffer through no fault of our own.

That said, all connective phenomena, even those in the purely connective window, are dependent on the presence of (architective) objects. So even if we did consider connectivity as the primary state of things, architectivity remains an essential ingredient of the cosmos. Confined to a window of scale and isolated in spatial localities, architectivity attains its cosmic significance as a contributor to the connectivity of the cosmos rather than through its marvels of figurate complexity. At every scale, connectivity plays with whatever objects architectivity provides.

# Part III : Modes of Spirituality

An understanding of connectivity and architectivity can inform our spiritual speculations. For spirits to have any effect on our lives they too must negotiate the flows of connectivity and the hierarchies of architectivity.

As well, a spirituality arising out of, or inherent in, our material world should not contradict a scientifically verifiable understanding of our world (though I am not saying that it should itself be scientifically verifiable).

#### Terminology

I need to define some terms I will be using regarding spirituality:

I use the term _spirit_ to describe any coherent being, principle, process or object that is considered to influence us but is beyond our control or description. In this sense, when we can both describe an influence and control it then it is no longer a spirit to us. I use the term _mundane_ to describe anything that is not considered a spirit.

I see _religions_ as collections of architective objects associated with, or representative of, one or more spirits, allowing the more enigmatic spirits to be identified, addressed and architectively 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 of, how they are to be addressed and the rituals through which engagement can take place. Empathic engagement with a deity cannot be circumscribed by a religion and remains connective.

Spirits may be sentient or mindless. I speak of a sentient spirit as a _deity_ , having an awareness and intent of its own.

These definitions are sufficiently wide to allow me to include as spirits the traditional deities of the world's great religions, the deities of natural religions and ancestor worship, the vague personal deities of individual agnostics as well as a simple awe of nature.

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.

In elevating the discussion to the spiritual I may be speaking of things that are necessarily hidden or unknowable, so I need to qualify that when I use terms such as 'the entire universe' and 'universal' I am referring only to the universe that we know in a mundane 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 religion is their offer of solace in the face of bodily demise, often in the form of a promise that our personal identities will not be disrupted with our bodily deaths. Such salvations from the dilemmas of architective existence are usually conditional upon our obedience to a religion's 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 possible 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 can be denoted as architectively active when 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 direct 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 intermediate priestly representation that is their parents' architective livelihood.

## Spiritual Possibilities

_Full fathom five thy father lies_ .

_Of his bones are coral made_ .

_Those are pearls that were his eyes_ .

_Nothing of him that doth fade_ ,

_But doth suffer a sea-change_

_Into something rich and strange_ .

Shakespeare (from 'The Tempest')

A dogma complying with the ideas of connectivity and architectivity would recognize that an architective 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.

A processional narrative continuing for a person beyond their death is consistent with these ideas, but remember that a processional narrative is a narrative of architectures. It would process through a person's children, through a lasting legacy such as a dynasty, a classic work or simply as a skeleton or a tombstone. One might try to see a soul as a processional narrative processing from a material architecture to a non-material one, but it would still be based on architectures, and therefore comply with the limitations of architectivity and so be susceptible to termination. Material processional narratives continuing beyond one's death are of course susceptible to termination (no more offspring, for example). A personal processional narrative can continue beyond one's physical death only through the architective success of what one leaves behind. In this sense, our own personal narratives may be seen as continuations of our ancestors'!

Below I suggest some spiritual possibilities consistent with connectivity and architectivity as well as not being in conflict with current scientific thinking. Ruling out spiritual possibilities not consistent with connectivity and architectivity means ruling out most of our traditional spiritual pantheons, leaving us with a small selection of more unusual spiritual concepts...

#### Natural Spirits

We can regard the laws of nature as spirits because they have an essential influence on us and we cannot control them. We may have learned to describe and manipulate them for our convenience but we cannot control or alter the laws themselves. In this sense, for example, the fundamental forces of physics can be regarded as spirits - they affect us and there is nothing we can do to alter their affecting us or the ways in which they do so. We can also, for example, regard the phenomenon of emergence, say of atoms from subatomic particles, as a natural spirit since there is nothing we can do to prevent it happening under the appropriate conditions. In fact, all natural processes that constitute unavoidable parameters of our being are spirits to us in this sense.

Our pantheon of natural spirits is not restricted to fundamentals such as gravity and emergence. We are confined to a planet (or perhaps in the future to a spaceship), to breathe air and search out or produce food and water. All these parameters are effectively natural spirits to us. Our biological processes, including such diverse processes as endocrine systems, gender expression and DNA replication, are also unavoidable parameters of our being and can be regarded as natural spirits. Much of our social interaction follows unavoidable natural guidelines, such as our family relationships, many gender roles and our subservience to or dominance of others. Jungian psychology has enumerated an extensive range of 'archetypes' considered to parameterize the behaviour of all humans, and I see these archetypes too as constituting natural spirits. (Many religions also offer spirits devoted to particular natural aspects of our lives - like Venus as a spirit of love and femininity - but these often have features contrary to the limitations of connectivity and architectivity.)

#### Holistic Spirits

Architective wholeness was described as the emergence from architective interaction of an object that is separately identifiable from its constituent objects and from any external objects it interacts with, having the ability to participate in external interactions as a single object in its own right. Such wholeness is not available to connective phenomena. Now although a connective in its entirety is not such a whole, the motions of any one of its participating objects cannot be fully described without considering the influences of _all_ the other objects participating in the connective, together with the influences that all the other objects have on each other. Furthermore, these influences vary as the objects move or change, whether in response to each other's motion or in response to disturbance. That is, the motion of any one participating object in a connective cannot be completely described without considering an effective influence of the connective in its entirety, including any waves that may be passing through it. To make the distinction with an architective whole, I say that a connective has a _holism_ rather than it being a 'whole'.

A connective participates in external interactions as the collection of the individual external interactions of all its participating objects. But once again, the net effect on an external object cannot be completely understood without recognizing that the individual participating objects of the connective are all influencing each other and these influences are changing. So the influence on an external object can also not be fully described without recognizing an influence by the holism of the connective. The holism of a connective thus influences its external interactions as well.

A holism is not a participating object of its host connective, it does not emerge as an object from the interaction between the connective's participating objects, it is not itself an identifiable object and is therefore not perceptible to tangible interaction. Though a holism has an influence on the participating objects of its host connective and any external objects they are interacting with (and they in turn influence it), the influence is not that of an interaction. For convenience I say that a holism is in _apprehension_ with its affected objects - the participating objects of its host connective and any external objects they are interacting with - rather than being in interaction with them.

The influence of a holism on any object it apprehends will always be less than the interactive influence of the nearest other objects in the connective, if not less than the interactive influences of all objects in the connective. It is likely to be extremely small and extremely subtle. The apprehensive influence of a holism will always be a lesser background to other influences. The influence of a holism is always hidden behind others.

From the point of view of any one object in a connective, the apprehensive influence of the connective's holism is the combined interactive influence of all the other objects of the connective on itself. The apprehensive influence of a holism thus interferes with (rather than say contests with) the interactive influences between any of its apprehended objects.

While an architective whole has hierarchical control over its internal objects and organizes their serial meaning, a connective holism has an influence on its apprehended objects but does not control them or organize their serial meaning. As in an interaction, the apprehensive influence is mutual, meaning that objects apprehended by a holism also influence the holism, since they contribute to it. But no one apprehended object can control the holism since it is only one of many contributors. And being so loosely connected, the objects of a connective cannot conspire sufficiently tightly to control its holism.

To describe a holism fully one would have to describe the motions of all its apprehended objects simultaneously and continuously. Describing a holism apprehending more than two objects is simply not feasible. It's like attempting to shoot a moving target when the slightest motion of one's gun makes the target move. A holism is not only uncontrollable, unidentifiable, intangible and hidden, it is _essentially indescribable_.The holism of any connective we participate in is therefore a spirit to us. In this role I refer to them as _holistic spirits_.

For those who are familiar with them, the n-body problem of physics and Mach's Principle illustrate the impossibility of describing a holism.

For example, the atmosphere of our planet has a holism and it is a holistic spirit to me. Why? Because the atmospheric holism influences me - through my connective interactions with the air molecules around me and their interactions with air molecules around them and so on, imaginably extending to all the air in the atmosphere. There are nuances of the holism as my body is touched by the wind, as air warms or cools me, in the fragrances reaching my nose, in the sounds reaching my ears, in the filling of my lungs and the pulsing of my breath. While I am able to manage these to some degree, the holism of the atmosphere is beyond my control. Many have conceived of the air as a natural spirit, but few (if any) have conceived of the holism of the atmosphere as a spirit. (This incidentally is a really nice example because the word 'spirit' is derived from the Latin for 'breath'.)

Similarly our solar system and galaxy have holisms that influence us (much more remotely of course) and are beyond our control, so we can consider them too as holistic spirits. When swimming in a lake or ocean, we could consider the holism of the lake or ocean to be a holistic spirit, and the fish that inhabit it could also consider the holism of a lake or ocean to be a holistic spirit, if they are capable of that consideration.

The serial meanings available to holistic spirits are necessarily purely connective, being those available to their host connectives. Holisms are not able to engage in interaction and specifically cannot engage in architective interaction.

The Gaia hypothesis comes very close to regarding our planet not only as a holism, but one that acts - as a spirit with intent - to provide an environment optimal for the maintenance of life. However, the Gaia hypothesis differs from this concept of a holistic spirit in that it includes architective elements as well.

I earlier described connectives as being 'discernible' (rather than 'identifiable'). In the light of the holism of every connective, I need to refine that description: A connective is discernible in the way that all its participating objects respond, and respond as separate _but interacting_ individuals, to a disturbance.

#### The Cosmic Holistic Spirit

It was noted earlier that at very large scales (larger than say the size of Jupiter) cosmic interactions are devoid of architectivity, and that we may speak of a window of scale in which only the connective mode of serial meaning is evident.

In this cosmic, purely connective window, all objects susceptible to gravity are joined in a single cosmic connective interaction, though they may be grouped in visages such as solar systems and galaxies. But many of these objects will be participating connectively in non-gravitational interactions as well (such as plasmic interactions in and around suns) so these non-gravitational interactions are also indirectly joined to the gravitational interaction in an even larger _connective system_. Thus, in the purely connective window, all components of all the contributing connective interactions may be regarded as participating in a _cosmic connective system_ , having discernible clusters appearing and disappearing with its flux.

This conjecture need not be confined to the cosmic scale. Even in its connective purity, the cosmic connective system has tendrils into scales smaller than the purely connective window. For example, objects such as asteroids, spaceships, interplanetary free-floating molecules and plasmic protons may all be considered to be participating in the cosmic connective system. In fact, any unbound object in any incompletely contained connective is participating in the cosmic connective system, including all the unbound molecules of planetary atmospheres, the unbound plasma particles of suns, all aircraft and birds that are flying (rather than grounded), the rocky planets themselves (as including their grounded aircraft and birds), the dust-motes floating in the air around us, the water molecules in all the oceans and the fish swimming in them (to name but a few!).

What may not be participating in that cosmic connective system are all their architectively constrained and contained components, such as the cells and molecules of which the birds and fish are constructed, or the molecules bound in rocks, and any connective systems that these bound components enclose completely. They can however be said to be participating indirectly, because their containing architectures are ultimately limited and those containing architectures are participating in the cosmic system. Architectively constrained components may also participate partially if they respond to limited extents within their bounds of constraint, as for example, trees and grass connectively wave in the wind to the limits of their ranges and my lungs inhale what air they are capable of. Such partial participation still permits an enormous capacity for connective serial meaning as the trees and my lungs may vibrate and resonate in their participation. They may also participate fully if they are sublimated, but then it is not them that are participating but their constituent objects. Waves can sublimate architectures if they have a sufficiently small amplitude and so can connect the constituent objects of the bound components and their contained connectives to each other and into the cosmic connective system. It is quite possible that all architectively internal objects are vibrating at some sublimate level within their host architectures and so are participating in the cosmic connective system.

So even in the figurate window of scale that is our home, the cosmic connective system is accessible to us. My breath, the flow of air in the room and out the open door into the garden with its trees and grass waving in the wind, the flying birds above, the clouds drifting in the sky, the other planets, suns and galaxies, all these are participating in the cosmic connective system.

The cosmic connective system encompasses the entire universe except perhaps for those pockets of architecture, some having connective systems inside them, that are constrained from fully participating in it. My body as a whole, as an object in itself, is not fully participating in the cosmic system when I am sitting on a chair and am in figurate contact with the earth. It is the earth-including-me-on-a-chair, as a whole and unbound object, that is participating fully. Alternatively, should I jump up off the chair and interrupt my figurate contact with the earth, then for that brief moment my body is participating fully in the cosmic connective system. However, even when not participating as a whole body, I participate through the connection of my breath, through my connective senses and through my brain's connective responses to my senses. And of course I participate fully through my bodily movements when not in figurate contact with the earth. (Oh, how I yearn to fly!)

The cosmic connective system has a holism. I call it the _cosmic holistic spirit_. The cosmic holistic spirit permeates the entire universe at every scale but its influence is limited inside isolated pockets of architecture.

The holisms of lesser connective systems, such as of individual galaxies or solar systems, suns, oceans or lakes, or even of our vibrating brains, are participants in the cosmic connective system and contribute to the cosmic holism. They can be considered visages of the cosmic holism. The only holisms that could be considered isolated from the cosmic holism might be found in connectives inside pockets of totally containing architecture.

#### Hierarchical Spirits

The relationship between a country's government and its citizens is architective. The offices of government are ranked in a hierarchy with its governed people at the bottom and its head of state at the top. Government officers control and organize its people and not the other way round. That is not to say that government regimes cannot be broken or changed - a democracy offers mechanisms whereby the individuals holding offices can be replaced according to the votes of its people and a regime can be broken by a superior military force or changed from within by sufficiently powerful individuals or groups; but any person exceeding the bounds of government control on their station and not able to muster the necessary power to change the regime could lose their office, be ostracized, imprisoned or even executed.

In the sense that I described spirits as both influencing us and being beyond our control, people can consider their governing offices as spirits. This may seem a little bizarre at first, but consider that social objects obey rather than interact with objects higher in their social hierarchy. Within their hierarchy, social objects only interact with their peers, that is, with objects of the same rank. Higher offices emerge from such interactions, but then control and organize the offices they have emerged from, rather than interacting with them. This is not to say that people occupying higher offices than one's own should be considered as spirits, only the offices themselves, for we can interact with individual people occupying higher or lower offices and even have empathic relations with them, but our official roles are ones of subservience or authority.

Similar regimes of subservience and authority can be found in business corporations and religious institutions, and we could really consider all institutional offices of a higher rank than our own as spirits. In this way a church leadership can be regarded as a spirit in its own right regardless of the spirits the church's dogma may advocate.

We are not only controlled and organized socially. We are controlled and/or organized by our environment, by our planet, by our houses and buildings, by the architecture of our bodies, by our languages and by our technologies. All these have hierarchical levels of control and serial meaning to which we are subservient.

In fact, all architective wholes, physical or social, can be considered spirits by their internal objects (assuming they are capable of such consideration) because the wholes control and organize their internal objects while their internal objects neither control nor organize them. In this role I refer to architective wholes as _hierarchical spirits_. A human body could be considered a hierarchical spirit by that body's gut bacteria, for example, should the bacteria be capable of such consideration. Looking down the tree of a hierarchy, those who consider an architective whole to be a hierarchical spirit, I call the spirit's _venerators_.

What we are seeing here is a possible ranking of hierarchical spirits: Architective wholes that we regard as hierarchical spirits may themselves have architective wholes ranked above them which they regard as hierarchical spirits and which regard them as venerators. That is, objects at any level in an architective hierarchy might regard higher ranked objects as hierarchical spirits, regard peer objects as mundane and regard lower level objects as venerators (if they are so capable).

Architective wholes can only be considered hierarchical spirits by their internal venerators. Any interaction they may participate in, whether with a peer inside their hierarchy or with an external object, is mutual and devoid of any element of control. A business corporation, a church or a government is a hierarchical spirit to an employee of that corporation, a member of that church or an inhabitant of that country, but not to anyone who is outside its hierarchy.

Since architective wholes can only be considered hierarchical spirits by their internal objects, all possible serial meaning as a hierarchical spirit is internal to its hierarchy and is architective, while all its possible serial meaning outside its hierarchy is mundane and connective.

#### Narrative Spirits

The organization of serial meaning in its lower echelons by a hierarchical spirit becomes particularly interesting when it, as an architecture, is a step in a processional narrative, that is, when one or more of its narratives continues even though it has metamorphosed into another hierarchical spirit. Those continuing narratives organize the serial meaning and narratives of all levels of all the architectures partaking in the procession.

Like a holism, a processional narrative is not an object. It does not maintain a lasting identity (unless associated with an object such as a name or an icon) though it may be seen as a sequence of identities. It is not perceptible by tangible interaction and is not controlled by any object. It is merely an ongoing architective organization of serial meaning. A processional narrative can be regarded as a _narrative spirit_ by all levels of all its processing architectures so capable, including by their hierarchical spirits, since it organizes their narratives to some extent. Processional narratives can only be considered narrative spirits by the objects comprising their processing architectures.

Thinking globally, here we have the possibility for all the architective phenomena in any one planetary locality to be organized by a single overarching entity - a narrative spirit of the entire planet - even though the contributing architective phenomena are not aggregated into a single architecture. We have the possibility of a singular _planetary narrative spirit_ organizing the serial meaning of an entire planet including everything on it, without losing the diversity of architective structure on that planet, and in particular, without losing the diversity of hierarchical spirits on that planet.

Like a hierarchical spirit, all the possible serial meaning of a narrative spirit within its processing architectures is architective, while all its possible connective serial meaning is external to its processing architectures. Unlike a hierarchical spirit, all its possible architective serial meaning is internal and all its possible external serial meaning is connective.

#### Unimodal Spirits

Many of our natural spirits display compound mixtures of connective and architective serial meaning but all the other spirits mentioned above - in their roles as spirits - employ only one mode of serial meaning. The serial meaning of holistic spirits would be purely connective, for holisms are not able to engage in interaction in their own right (and specifically not in architective interaction), while the internal serial meaning of all hierarchical and narrative spirits (which is the context in which they can be regarded as spirits) would be purely architective.

I refer to spirits capable of only one mode of serial meaning as _unimodal spirits._ Those whose serial meaning is purely connective I call _connective spirits_ and to those whose serial meaning is purely architective I call _architective spirits_.

Since the physical sizes and scopes of control of architectures are spatially limited, every architective spirit is limited to a bounded locality in the cosmos, and, since the events by which it emerged may have been different or sequenced differently to the events by which architective spirits in other localities emerged, their natures and identities will likely all be different. Together, a multitude of architective localities pepper the cosmos hosting a plethora of different architective spirits in a manifold of limited occurrences, each architectively isolated from the other. The cosmic holistic spirit, on the other hand, is spatially universal and universally scalable, and can be manifest everywhere and anywhere.

The apprehensive influences of holistic spirits are weak in comparison to the influences of other spirits. They are necessarily weaker than any interactive influences of natural spirits, whether connective or architective, and extremely weak in comparison to the controlling and organizational influences of hierarchical and narrative spirits, and could even be completely negated by these. Overall, the disproportionately weaker effects of holistic spirits would likely only ever be discernible in the absence of competing architective influences. Practices such as meditation specifically aim to provide an environment free of architective intrusion, where the extreme subtleties of holistic influences may be more easily discerned.

So although the cosmic holistic spirit is manifest everywhere, its influence is comparatively small, especially inside pockets of architecture. Though weak, the cosmic holism constitutes a perennial and universal background to everything. From a connective point of view the universe does not have an absolute emptiness as its ultimate background - it has the cosmic holism as its ultimate background. Absolute emptiness can only be construed in an architective sense.

Our appreciation of any unimodal spiritual influence would also be dependent on our mode of consciousness at the time. Our default mode of consciousness is architective thanks to the architective dominion, so our capacity to consciously appreciate the apprehensive influences of holistic spirits would be enfeebled not only by their relative weakness but by our own predilection for an architective mode of consciousness.

When discerned, our participation in the cosmic connective system permits us to share in a sense of infinity that architectivity cannot offer. Our participation in architective activity is always a contained experience due to the ultimate spatial limitation of every architecture.

Pure connectivity offers an arena from which all contest is absent and where bodily extinction is irrelevant. It also offers a sense of infinity and universality. In death our architecture is destroyed, but an underlying connective interaction continues, as does an underlying cosmic system and holism, if only through the free molecules that constituted our erstwhile bodies. Many religious myths converge on a state of connective purity.

## Unimodal Deities

Most of the spiritual possibilities mentioned above are unimodal. Only the natural spirits might employ mixtures of connective and architective serial meaning while the serial meanings employed by holistic spirits would be purely connective and those employed by hierarchical and narrative spirits would be purely architective.

Natural spirits are too straightforward or single-minded to be considered sentient, even though the possibility would accord with the ideas of connectivity and architectivity. Though natural spirits host spectacles of wonder and beauty, I see these as displays of intrinsic character and not as signs of sentience. Connectivity and architectivity themselves, as fundamental principles of interaction, can also be seen as natural spirits. In fact, meaning in general, the fact that the universe makes sense at all and can do so in so many ways, can also be seen as a fundamental natural spirit.

That leaves only holistic, hierarchical and narrative spirits for consideration as deities - as sentient spirits - and they are all unimodal. Able to operate meaningfully in only mode of serial meaning, a unimodal deity would have a correspondingly unimodal sentience.

Unimodal deities would display some very specific characteristics by virtue of their singularly connective or architective sentiences. In particular, their sentiences would be very different to our own since we are able to employ both modes and they are not. A unimodal deity would be completely oblivious to all serial meanings associated with its opposite mode, while we can appreciate serial meanings of both modes.

As events switch from one mode of serial meaning to the other, a unimodal deity would only comprehend the serial meaning of its own mode. It would experience the narratives of its own mode as seemingly seamless continuities of serial meaning, oblivious to any meaning in its opposite mode and giving no significance to interactions of its opposite mode. Should an interaction following the opposite mode alter reality so as to prevent a resumption of any of its narratives, the deity's comprehension would be that reality had unexpectedly performed a random and inexplicable adjustment.

I refer to unimodal deities whose mode is connective as _connective deities_ and to those whose mode is architective as _architective deities_.

#### Connective Deities

Connective deities would be capable of connective sentience only. They would comprehend only connective serial meaning, evaluate their experiences only in terms of connective serial meaning and would play only connective games. Architective events of any kind, though affecting their reality, would be meaningless and inexplicable to them. Objects, as they architectively emerge or disrupt, for example, would appear to come out of nowhere or disappear without reason.

In the absence of an understanding of architective serial meaning, concepts such as existence or extinction would be meaningless to them. The same can be said of contests and a fixed identity. No circumstance could be considered necessary to them, though they might have a preference for one connective circumstance over another. This does not mean that their being would be unproblematic, for storms may rage (or harmonies sing) through connective systems.

Connective deities could influence events but could not control them. And their influences could be negated by architective constraints or controls.

The indefiniteness inherent in their activities and their lack of precise control means that connective deities would be agents with an uncertain future, much as we are, rather than dictators of specific destinies.

There could also be no hierarchical control among connective deities, nor could games of power be played among them. Some connective deities may exert stronger influences than others (for a while, in some localities), but none is innately superior or subordinate to any other. Their influences would all be fully expressed and interfere with each other rather than a stronger negate a weaker.

A connective deity could possibly be embodied in a connective like the wind, the sun, a fire, an ocean, a gaseous planet like Jupiter, or the entire universe, but not in anything having an architecture such as a stone, a book, a person, an animal, the moon or a rocky planet like Mars, nor in any social institution. It could be symbolically represented by such objects but not embodied in them. Of course, it may not be embodied at all.

In the absence of architective organ-based bodies, connective deities, though sentient, could not have organ-based senses such as we have since our bodily senses all have architective functional elements.

Denizens of a figurate window, such as ourselves, experience and understand connective serial meaning, so the activities of connective deities, purely connective as they are, could be meaningful to us, though they would not cover the full gamut of our experience.

#### Architective Deities

An architective deity would only be capable of architective sentience. It would comprehend only architective serial meaning, could evaluate its experiences only in terms of architective serial meaning, and would play only architective games. Connective activity of any kind would be meaningless to it. The connective motions of objects, and the waves and vibrations they host, would appear to occur without rhyme or reason.

An architective deity would be occupied with matters of stasis, identity, contest, rank, power and control. It would be emoted by births and deaths, by clear category classifications, and by victories and defeats.

Architective deities would have an all or nothing attitude, a sense of absolute contrast - objects either exist or do not, are for them or against them; while connective deities would swim in a continuous spectrum of possibility, and host balances, compromises and harmonies between different positions in the spectrum.

An architective deity could be embodied as a physical object, as an organism, a person, a social object such as an institution or an office in an institution, but could not take on a purely connective embodiment such as a wind, a sun, a fire or ocean, or a gaseous planet like Jupiter. It may be embodied in a book, an icon, a moon, or a rocky planet like Mars, even though these may contain connective fluids at their core. It cannot be embodied as the entire universe, for interactions at that scale are purely connective. It too may not be embodied at all.

A hierarchical deity - a sentient hierarchical spirit - may participate in interactions as an object in its own right, but all its interactions will be mundane. Internally it can only interact with its peers in its hierarchy - to which it is mundane - while all its external interactions will be mundane.

A whole emerging from a hierarchical deity's internal architective interaction with its peers could be regarded as a greater hierarchical deity, should it consider the emerging whole to be sentient. Hierarchical deities may thus be tiered in levels where the deities at one level regard higher ranked objects as deities, regard peer objects as mundane and regard lower level objects as venerators of itself.

An architective deity would organize the serial meanings of all the subordinates in its hierarchy (or procession of hierarchies), including any connective spirits or deities completely contained within its architectures.

Being an architective whole, a hierarchical deity is subject to the possibility of demise. In the light of its sentience and the architective predisposition to preserve identity, a hierarchical deity would have a sense of insecurity and act intentionally to avoid its own demise. A narrative deity, though also architective, would not be as vulnerable to demise since it might persist across reconfigurations, and may even relish the destructions and reconstructions of its processing architectures. However, it too would strive to ensure the continuation of its narratives (and the sequence of architectures providing its narratives), in order that it may persist.

Reality following a connective serial meaning could threaten an architective deity's existence or narratives. This would heighten an architective deity's sense of insecurity and elicit from it preventive strategies.

A narrative deity is not subject to any architective control or organization, while it organizes the internal interactions of all its processing architectures. Narrative deities are able to indulge their intents absolutely. A hierarchical deity at the top of its architecture is also not subject to any architective control (though it may be subject to organization by a narrative deity), and controls and organizes all its internal interactions. Within their hierarchies, hierarchical deities at the top of their hierarchy are also able to indulge their intents without recrimination.

#### Unimodal Deities and Us

Architective deities would act on us through the constraints they impose on our behaviour. They would control us by constraining our physical and social interactions and organizing our serial meaning and that of our physical and social environment, while they themselves neither interact with us nor apprehend us.

Holistic deities would apprehend us but not interact with us, control us or organize our serial meaning.

The apprehensive influences of holistic deities would be extremely weak in comparison to the controls and organizations of hierarchical and narrative deities. Our awareness and appreciation of holistic influences would also be handicapped by our predisposition to an architective mode of consciousness (courtesy of the architective dominion).

Connective deities cannot be embodied as human beings since humans are architective functional objects. Architective deities could be embodied as human beings but only to non-human venerators - to other humans they would be peers in interaction. Our architective deities could be socially represented by human beings to other human beings as offices in an institution, in which case the person holding the office represents the deity to us but is not an embodiment of the deity. So our own deities, whether holistic, hierarchical or narrative, could be represented by but not be embodied as people.

A connective deity could not talk to us directly using a language such as English (or any other human language) for it has no speech or writing organs (since these are architective). As well, a connective deity would have difficulty constructing meaning by architectively composing words into a sentence, and its communications could have no architective serial meaning. Architective deities could conceivably be embodied as super-human organisms having speech organs of their own but they would more likely be hierarchical or narrative deities communicating with us through the speech organs and pens of their office bearers or of the humans they have organized to do so.

Though a connective deity could not talk to us using human language it could communicate with us through constellations of connective events or arrangements. Even though these constellations may be transient visages, we could find meaning in them as they pass. Such communications would become obvious when events or arrangements are highly constellated (synchronicity!) or when our capacity to discern their constellation is increased, say by meditation or the ingestion of a psychoactive drug. I regard my use of the I Ching as a spiritual communication via an architectively random but connectively constellated fall of coins.

Though without organ-based senses themselves, connective deities might participate indirectly in our organ-based sensations when we respond to these sensations connectively, for example as the sensations set up vibrations in our brains. I also imagine that, being sentient, a connective deity could have non-organ-based sensations of its own, which we in turn would not experience explicitly but may experience as a mood, for example.

Being architective wholes, hierarchical deities emerge from their lower levels. Our hierarchical deities emerge from us as their constituent objects. They in turn control us and organize our serial meaning. Thus the deities of many of our religions could be understood as having emerged from our own religious activities. The deities of our religions are not the only hierarchical deities to have emerged from us – hierarchical deities emerge from our political and corporate activities as well. Our hierarchical deities are the self-sustaining institutions we as their members create, and their sentience is reflected in our activities as their members, where these activities would have been different or organized differently in the absence of our membership of their institution.

Our hierarchical deities organize our serial meaning around their own existential angst. We might experience a depression or sense of existential insecurity not justified by our perceivable circumstances, perhaps suffering contests and social frictions organized for the deity's existential security rather than for our own. A narrative deity, being relatively invulnerable and suffering no immediate existential threat, may well organize contests and social frictions among its lower echelons simply as an amusement.

A hierarchical deity's human venerators are not purely architective in the way that it is. It may feel threatened by any uncontrolled and connective activities in its venerators and would likely attempt to constrain them.

A hierarchical deity would have an expectation of obedience from its venerators and if it was insecure would demand not only obedience, but symbolic demonstrations of obedience, perhaps even worship. Failure to deliver these may invoke acts of vengeance from the deity, to whatever degree of control and organization it can muster. Demonstrations of obedience would likely occur through the regular performance of appeasing rituals.

An architective deity is not likely to dispense power or control in the service of an inferior. It is much more likely that it will sacrifice its venerators, and do so with the venerators' consent since it organizes their serial meaning.

Obedience, worship, ritual and sacrifice would be meaningless to a connective deity.

#### The Preferences of Unimodal Deities

Being sentient, deities may have preferences and express themselves with the intention of serving their preferences.

An architective deity may develop ethics of strength, charity, chivalry, correctness, propriety, soundness and reasonableness. It may develop an aesthetic appreciation of constraint, of its mechanics and of the strategies to achieve it. It may develop an aesthetic appreciation of the complexities achievable through architective construction and novelty. But it may also develop a taste for power, challenge, destruction, corruption, deceit and trickery, and develop or exploit aesthetics of fear around existential insecurity.

The preferences of a religion's or institution's architective deities become evident in the activities of their human members, since the members express a serial meaning organized by their deities. For example, acts of charity carried out by a religion's adherents in the name of their religion reflect an ethic of charity in the religion as an institutional hierarchical deity (and probably an ethic of the deities advocated by its dogma), while atrocities committed in the name of a religion are also a reflection of the aesthetic of the religion as a deity (and probably of the deities of the religion's dogma).

A connective deity may express a liking for harmonies of motion, responsiveness to stimulation and constructive interferences. A connective deity may alternatively express a preference for dissonance, instability and turbulence.

An architective deity might enjoy the aggregational complexities of architectivity, while a connective deity might enjoy profundity in the subtleties, harmonies and grandeur of connectivity.

An architective deity may develop a taste for exactness and perfection while a connective deity may develop an enjoyment of surprise and uncertainty.

Perhaps using the word 'intent' with respect to a connective deity's sentience is misleading, for 'intent' suggests a view to a definite aim while the outlook of a connective deity would be less specific. Perhaps the words 'yearning' or 'desire' may be more appropriate when applied to the intent of a connective deity.

#### Conflicts between Unimodal Deities

While connective deities could compete amongst each other in the sense that one may have a stronger influence than another, the result of their competition is a proportioning of their influences rather than a selection of some and a negation of others. All the competing deities would have their intentions expressed. Contests among architective deities, on the other hand, would result in some contestants having their intentions expressed in full while others find no expression at all. Conflicts among architective deities are contests for existence.

The resources that connective and architective deities might utilize to promote their intents would be entirely different. Architective deities would have available to them the serial meanings of control, precision, organization, contest, categorization and power to achieve their ends; while connective deities could utilize the serial meanings of uncertainty, disturbance, interference and empathy.

In a conflict between architective deities alone or between connective deities alone, the competitors would be utilizing resources and strategies that each would understand. But in a conflict between an architective and a connective deity neither would be able to comprehend the tactics and strategies of the other or understand the value of each other's resources. More so, neither deity would be directly aware of the other's presence since each would experience reality as a seamless continuity of narratives in its own mode - with inexplicable interruptions. Both deities would be competing in the dark as it were, against an inscrutable and invisible opponent. The unexpected terminations of their narratives would be the only clues each had to the other's presence.

Any conflict between an architective and a connective deity comes down to a competition for serial meaning. This would arise when there is a contradiction in the possible unfolding of reality depending on the mode of serial meaning that reality can follow. An architective deity will likely feel that the expression of an architective rather than connective serial meaning is required to ensure its own existence, and will attempt to either eliminate the connective possibility or else contain it in an overarching architecture. For a connective deity, the conflict is only a matter of expressing a preferred aesthetic. There is no existential threat to itself and none is intended to its opponent. Questions of existence are meaningless to a connective deity, nor does it need to eliminate its architective opponent in order to have its aesthetic expressed.

An architective deity might frustrate the intent of a connective deity by constraining or containing its motions. A connective deity may yet achieve its aims by directing its motions around a constraint or by sublimating it.

Conflicts between architective and connective deities may result in terrifying contradictions for organisms like us, who can comprehend both modes of serial meaning and who find themselves having to choose between actions which appear equally sensible but whose meanings are contradictory.

There can be no conflicts among connective deities alone, not for existence and not for serial meaning. Conflict among unimodal deities requires an architective presence.

## A Personal Perspective

I think there is no question regarding the presence of spirits as I have described them. The big question is whether any of the deities I have outlined are realistic.

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 (for example to a 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 present some viable 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 an infinite world. We may argue over 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 considered 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.

What I am hoping this discussion has also illuminated is that an infinite reality does not mean that absolutely anything is possible. It has shown that our world comprises connective and architective interactions regardless of its extent or resolvability, and that the limitations of these modes apply. Infinity is not an excuse for a contradiction of empirical observation or of the limitations of connectivity and architectivity.

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. The ordering of pattern and serial meaning can be extraordinarily deep.(I must stress that I am using the word 'pattern' in the sense of a recurring motif rather than in the sense of a preconceived design.)

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 serial meaning.

I also see possibilities for spiritual sentience in capacities for wholeness - connectively in holisms and architectively in emergent wholes. Personally I am not inclined to attribute sentience to a holism such as that of a lake or a galaxy but I am inclined to attribute sentience to the holism of the universe in the form of the cosmic holistic spirit, which I then refer to as the _cosmic holistic Deity_. I am also inclined to attribute sentiences to the hierarchical spirits of many of our social institutions as architective wholes, even though their sentience is manifested through our expressions as their human office-bearers.

Most controversially, with no easy justification and with great reluctance on my part, I have come to accept our planetary narrative spirit to be sentient and acknowledge it as a _planetary narrative Deity_.

I do not imbue any natural spirits with an independent sentience.

In summary, I see our lives as being parameterized by a host of effectively dumb natural spirits, as being governed by hierarchical deities expressing themselves through their social organization and control of us, while we participate in an invisible apprehension with the cosmic holistic Deity and an obscure organization by a planetary narrative Deity, these latter two concealed in the higher orders of patterning, serial meaning and wholeness 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 - I cannot prove any of it - but it runs foul neither of the ideas of connectivity and architectivity nor of scientific possibility.

Significantly, these deities are unimodal. In the previous chapter I outlined some general inferences that can be made about unimodal deities by virtue of their connective and architective features. In this chapter I want to describe features of the cosmic holistic Deity and our planetary narrative Deity that I have become aware of through personal experience rather than being directly deducible from their connective and architective natures. I offer these personal insights not as matters of fact but as something against which you may compare your own experience.

#### The Cosmic Holistic Deity

Generally speaking, connective deities might equally express a preference for turbulence as for harmony. My experience is that the cosmic holistic Deity has a preference for harmony and that it takes pleasure in a profundity of harmony, while it bears dissonance and turbulence with equanimity.

My experience also tells me that the cosmic holistic Deity is generally unperturbed when its narratives are terminated by architectivity even though it cannot understand how or why. It appears to be quite happy with things even when they don't make sense to it. The only times I have seen it distressed is when an opportunity for a profound harmony is lost or when a profound connective narrative is terminated, since these are relatively rare, and nobody, not even a cosmic holistic Deity, can produce them at will. It may employ its influence to promote connective harmony but it does not have the precision of control to ensure it.

In keeping with its preference for harmony and its pleasure in profundity of harmony, I picture the influence of the cosmic holistic Deity as a very soft song reverberating through the cosmic connective system. It sings sweetly through an infinite spectrum of vibration in search of responses and harmonies, playing with them when it finds them.

Even though scale is irrelevant to a purely connective behaviour, I suspect that it has some relevance to the profundity available in the play of the cosmic holistic Deity. I'm guessing that the architective window, and probably even more so the figurate window of scale, offers an exceptional diversity of objects to play with. I suspect that the cosmic holistic Deity finds a very rich field for profundity in our earthly scale of reality, especially in the opportunities human and animal interaction have to offer.

#### Our Planetary Narrative 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 have varying mixtures of these. My experience tells me that the planetary narrative Deity of our own cosmic locality has a liking for challenge and obstruction, assisted by a delight in the complexities of deceit and trickery. It appears to indulge in confounding the creatures of its dominion as a means of its own amusement. It plays with us by concocting ever more ingenious devices 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 organisms are naturally heir to.

My experience also tells me that our planetary narrative Deity likes to have organizational mastery at all times. It is not happy when its narratives terminate unexpectedly. It is suspicious of any events it finds incomprehensible or unresponsive to its organization. It aims for an overarching architective serial meaning to everything, by attempting to constrain or eliminate all connective interaction. Of course, such an aim is not achievable but that does not deter it from trying. By doing so it aims to ensure that the highest level of serial meaning in any situation is architective, effectively ensuring its existence.

Our planetary narrative Deity's narratives are not broken by the demise of any one object. In fact the construction and demise of its partaking deities and architectures probably constitutes its primary narrative. It does not care what is being constructed or destroyed, as long as constructions and/or destructions are what is happening - that is, as long as the serial meaning along which reality is unfolding is architective.

To this end, I see our planetary narrative Deity organizing a fierceness to our individual 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 narrative Deity has developed an aesthetic of fierceness, a fierceness devoid even of the architective characteristics of chivalry and fairness.

Here, on our Earthly home in the cosmos, I see a conflict between the cosmic holistic Deity and our planetary narrative Deity, in that our planetary narrative Deity aims to ensure an overarching architective mode of serial meaning - and a fierce one at that - while the cosmic holistic Deity aims to enjoy the profounder expressions of connectivity our figurate world has to offer.

This is a very sad state of affairs for us, for there may well be more enlightened planetary narrative deities at other localities 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 a twist of fate so perverse that I can only explain it as fierceness on the part of our planetary narrative Deity. 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 narrative Deity's obsession with architective serial meaning is in the sense of it wanting me to give it attention. I personally am happy to perform the architective chores necessary to my existence and I do these dutifully and cheerfully, often delighting in many of the architective complexities I encounter. But performing my architective chores and participating in architective complexity is not sufficient to satisfy our planetary narrative Deity's requirement of my attention - it wants my attention to be exclusively architective, which means playing only its games, which means contesting with it and my fellow humans, and doing so with fierceness. I am of a liberal rather than warlike inclination 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 narrative Deity does not compromise - if you're not for it you're against it.

In spite of its aesthetic of fierceness I do not associate an aesthetic of pain with our planetary narrative Deity. I see our bodily experiences of pleasure and pain as being vibratory, connective phenomena in our brains, meaning that our experience of bodily pleasure or pain would be architectively meaningless. I see our planetary narrative Deity sustaining its warlike passions without any comprehension of the bodily pain and suffering it causes us. It just revels in our contests.

#### Them and Us

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

Our sentience is also not purely connective as the cosmic holistic 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.

Our sentient involvement in their narratives has meaning for both Deities. An agile human connective sentience can enrich the narratives of the cosmic holistic Deity while a powerful human architective sentience can play a deciding role in the narratives of our planetary narrative Deity. A thoughtful human architective consciousness can enhance the profundity of connective harmony while a fierce, wily or authoritative architective consciousness can exaggerate the intricacies 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 Deity and terminate a narrative of the other, our mode of consciousness becomes important for them, possibly deciding which narrative continues and which terminates.

For most of the time there is no contradiction between their narratives. Though regularly interrupting each other, for most of the time their narratives resume after interruption without terminating. Our connective and architective sentiences too operate concurrently and can follow narratives of both modes no matter which sentience we have conscious.

Veneration of our planetary narrative Deity is thus a matter of restricting our consciousness to the architective mode, while veneration of the cosmic holistic Deity requires only the continuity of our connective sentience.

Even when engaged in the architective mode of consciousness, we can put ingredients in place for connective harmony to occur, avoid terminating a harmony when it does occur, or architectively support one. Our veneration of the cosmic holistic Deity can comprise not only a thoughtful directing of our attention away from the architective default at critical times but a thoughtful consideration of connective harmony at others.

Unthinking submission to the architective dominion, which is our default condition as denizens of the architective window, is effectively a veneration of our planetary narrative Deity.

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

#### 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 holistic Deity is necessarily a deity to our planetary narrative 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 narrative deities associated with that architecture as deities. But the cosmic holistic Deity is not enclosed in any architecture, so it has no hierarchical or narrative deities even though it is unable to comprehend architective serial meaning.

It is interesting to note that from this perspective 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 holistic Deity is associated with a holism of the material world while that of the planetary narrative Deity is associated with narratives occurring on this material planet. These deities did not precede the material world. From this perspective, the fundamental forces of physics are dumb natural spirits, 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 spiritual deities, have arisen in it.

# Part IV : Changing the Paradigm

Religious endeavour is often couched in a dichotomy between spirituality and materiality, where the defining element of spirituality is the absence of material substance. The great religions variously describe spiritual deities living in a separate non-material world with the power to intercede in our material world, and it is to such a non-material world that we might proceed after death. The esoteric religious sects remove the separation and say that the spiritual world is coincident with the material world and is directly accessible by the living. This book suggests that the spiritual world is neither separate nor non-material, just hidden.

The esoteric sects, in their search for direct spiritual experience, tend to overshoot the mark. They teach that the human psyche is swamped by material distraction to the point that we are unable to perceive the spiritual world. They promote techniques that assist devotees to recognize their attachment to these distractions, which gives the devotee the power to see through them. Their ultimate aim being to eliminate all material distraction until one cannot but perceive the spiritual world. In deeper and deeper self examination, the devotee reveals and overcomes his/her attachments to wealth, pleasure, status, family, ego and even life itself, in pursuit of freedom from materiality. These techniques for overcoming material distraction are well suited for overcoming architective distraction as well. However, not all material experience is architective. Overcoming the architective distractions of wealth, status and identity are indeed helpful in bringing connective experience into consciousness, but denying connective sensation, pleasure and life itself is to throw the baby out with the bath water.

In particular, the esoteric traditions aim to to have us cease our internal chatter. While doing so helps bring our connective experience into consciousness, our veneration of the cosmic holistic Deity does not require that we stop the chatter entirely, for it constitutes the normal operation of our architective sentience - we need only prevent the chatter from terminating significant connective narratives.

A material basis to spirituality does not preclude a post-mortal spiritual participation. Relinquishing expectations of graduating to a separate non-material world after death does not necessarily imply an absence of post-mortal spiritual participation, and need not be a cause for concern. The material world hosts pattern and serial meaning in vast profundity whether we are alive or dead. As living beings we are both architective narrative organisms and visages of the cosmic holistic Deity, enjoying both architective and connective meaning in materiality (though in life our connective appreciation is largely eclipsed by the architective dominion). Our bodily deaths (and those of every architective organism) involve only the end of our architective participation and sentience, while our connective participation and sentience continues, free of the architective dominion, as a visage of the cosmic holistic Deity.

#### A Creator of the Universe and an All-encompassing Godhead

In the light of an understanding of connectivity and architectivity, propositions of all-powerful and all-knowing deities must be seen to be misleading:

A cosmic holistic Deity, universal as it may be, would be limited by its incapacity to comprehend architective serial meaning. Furthermore, a purely connective deity could influence but not control outcomes. Connectively unimodal deities, cosmic or otherwise, would be riders of change much as we are, adventuring in an uncertain universe. Connectively unimodal deities, cosmic or otherwise, would be neither omniscient nor omnipotent.

Architective deities, on the other hand, might be omnipotent, but only within their hierarchies or their processing architectures. They too could not be omniscient for there is a world of connectivity beyond their comprehension, and that world extends well beyond their spatial reach.

Autonomous, conscious organisms such as humans, though subject to hierarchical control, may be rebellious. We may have opportunities to switch from one hierarchy to another, say by changing religions. Perhaps more significantly, we may choose a connective activity over an architective one and thereby disregard the primary narrative of our planetary narrative Deity. So architective deities too, would be riders of uncertainty, but reluctant ones. They'd rather constrain the world to the certainty of their control and to the wishful certainty of their own permanence.

From the perspective of this book, our deities are of this world and parameterized by the same physical principles that we are. They, like us, are players, albeit grander players, in the natural free-for-all that is the universe. There is no designer of the underlying physical principles. Whatever these principles happen to be, spiritual sentiences arise from and play in them just as we do.

From the perspective of this book, the idea of a Creator of the universe is a contradiction in terms. The creative process by which new objects emerge into existence is an architective one and therefore limited in both scale and scope to isolated, non-universal occurrences.

While the idea of a universal (but non-creator) God is feasible from the perspective of this book, it is not feasible as a singular all-encompassing Godhead (even as advanced by proponents of non-duality), since a godhead that is universal would necessarily be purely connective and therefore not encompass architective meaning. And to a god that does not encompass architective meaning, the concept of exact enumeration and therefore of a specific singleness is meaningless.

The ideas that an all-encompassing Godhead created the material world as a means of overcoming the loneliness implied by its singular existence, or that humans are a means whereby an all-encompassing Godhead is becoming aware of itself, must also be criticized in this light - that a universal godhead would necessarily be purely connective and concepts such as singleness and loneliness would be meaningless to it.

If organisms such as humans are not the means of an all-encompassing Godhead becoming aware of itself, do we have a role to play in terms of a larger universal spirituality? Of course we have a role in terms of our own spiritual agendas to become aware of our larger spiritual context, but do we serve any higher purpose, as it were (apart from the architective higher purposes of our hierarchical deities)? I think that we do, in that we are consciously able to promote outcomes that are connectively harmonious and prevent terminations of existing harmonies, thereby not only actively contributing to harmony in the cosmic connective system but possibly increasing its profundity and thus deepening the pleasure that the cosmic holistic Deity derives from them.

There is also a huge philosophical conundrum associated with the idea of a creator God preceding the creation of the world, namely the existence of evil. Why would evil have been intentionally stitched into the fabric of life? Did God make a mistake in its construction? Is evil here to test us? To keep the riffraff out of heaven? A God that would intentionally create evil, even as a necessary price of Creation, is not benign.

From the perspective of this book, any idea of an omnipotent all-encompassing Godhead or a Creator of the universe is a myth. No God, no human, no anything, could create a galaxy in the shape of a chair and maintain it in that shape.

Even if we were to take universality out of the equation and restrict the scope of the discussion to our planet alone (or any other planet on its own), such that the idea of a singular architective Godhead or Creator becomes feasible and we might validly regard the evolution of life on our planet to have been organized by our planetary narrative Deity, such a singular Creator would still be uncomprehending of connective meaning and be connectively powerless (other than having a capacity to contain or constrain connectivity) and so still be neither absolutely omniscient nor omnipotent.

Our human urge to a unitary spirituality while following a multiplicity of different religions can be better understood when seen in terms of a unitary cosmic holistic spirit coexisting with a multiplicity of localized architective spirits.

Connective spirituality has remained so thoroughly mysterious because holistic spirits are so deeply hidden. We are also blinded to it by our thrall to the architective dominion. The question of spiritual mystery can of course be dismissed, by regarding spirituality as hallucinatory or as an intellectual misconception. Such dismissal is generally based on the absence of exact and repeatable proof. But we have seen that in the connective mode of serial meaning the concepts of definiteness and exact reproduction are meaningless, so a denial of spirituality based on the absence of repeatable proof really values only the architective mode of serial meaning.

## The Unsung Virtues of Sublimation

When presented with an unavoidable architective obstacle, our natural reaction is to try and forcibly overcome it, to disrupt it so that we will be free to penetrate it and perhaps harness its constituent objects to our cause, if that is our intention.

But there is another, subtler way to achieve this (though it is not always appropriate). If instead of attempting to apply overwhelming force to break an object, one sublimated it instead, applying only a very small force, one that was so small as to not challenge the internal constraints of the obstacle. The obstacle therefore does not respond as a whole and its constituent objects respond individually instead. While this approach may not have very dramatic effects, if the sublimating force carried a vibration the constituent objects could connectively mimic the vibration and any signal it carried, while the obstacle as a whole remained unresponsive to and unthreatened by it.

I have found, for example, that touching someone who is agitated - say by holding their hand - sometimes allows a gentle bodily vibration of my own to calm them down and assist their agitation to subside.

Meditation can also be understood in these terms - that as one eliminates extraneous factors from one's consciousness and allows one's mind to calm down, the gentler mental vibrations that arise can sublimate one's own body so as to allow one to experience one's body in purely vibrational and connective terms. Indeed, if touching another, one's gentler mental vibrations can sublimate someone else's body enabling one to listen to their somatic vibrations.

The influence of a holism is always less than that of the nearest participating objects of its host connective, as well as being less than any architective influences in the vicinity. The cosmic holistic Deity, being so very mild, is therefore capable of sublimating every and any object. I like to think that the cosmic holistic Deity expresses itself in a music, so that, in sublimating each object, even the smallest atom is subtly vibrating to a cosmic song.

#### Sublimation and Resonance

I used the term 'constructive interference' rather than 'resonance' when describing how, when waves interact with each other, if their peaks and troughs were suitably aligned their interference resulted in exaggerated oscillations in some positions and severely reduced ones in others, which are commonly known as 'nodes' and 'anti-nodes'.

In order for the nodes and anti-nodes to maintain absolutely static positions, as they would in the case of standing waves, the waves must be anchored to an architective object, perhaps by reflecting off one (or more) objects. The bridge and nut of a guitar are examples. It is only when a constructive interference is architectively anchored and the wave stands that I am happy using the term 'resonance'.

If a wave sublimating an object were to be internally reflected when attempting to exit the object, it would echo to and fro within the object with each reflection, and if its wavelength matched the physical size of the object then static nodes and anti-nodes would appear in the wave as it interfered with its echoes inside the object. That is, the object would resonate internally in response to the wave sublimating it.

Should the wave be of a sufficiently long duration, the resonance would get stronger and stronger, so that the difference between its nodes and anti-nodes became larger and larger, and if their difference got to exceed the binding constraints of the object, the object would disrupt.

That is, it is possible for a wave to disrupt an object if the amplitude of the wave is sufficiently small to allow it to sublimate the object, its wavelength resonated with the size of the object and the wave persisted for long enough.

I mentioned how touching someone who is agitated might allow a gentle bodily vibration of one's own to calm them down. While this can be very beneficial to both parties, one must take care when attempting such a sublimation, for one also has the capacity to tune the frequency of the vibration to facilitate a resonance, and while a mild resonance can be very pleasurable, pushing it to an extreme could cause something to break - and one does not always know what that will be. I counsel against taking sublimating resonances to extremes in all cases.

Learning how to sublimate can be an important step in one's spiritual development, to be followed by the equally important step of learning to be careful when letting a sublimation resonate.

## Morality

Let's return to the distinction made much earlier between encounters in which there is no differentiation between cause and an effect, such as occurs in mutual encounters facilitated by the fundamental physical forces, and encounters in which some objects can clearly be distinguished to be causes and others effects.

Consider that the line-up of objects going into, and those coming out of, an architective event will not be the same. Some objects will have been disrupted and/or some will have been created. This distinct before-and-after difference allows the definite identification of the objects that went into the event but did not come out and those that came out but did not go in, as being either causes or effects of the event. The definite before versus after distinction may also allow a specific direction to the event.

Contrarily, consider that the line-up of objects going into and those coming out of a connective event such as a meeting of waves or an integration of connectives does not change. Sure their arrangement and the visages thereof may change but there are no new objects created and no old ones have disappeared. No identities have changed. No object can definitively be said to be the cause of the event and none can be said to be the effect - all the participating objects, visages or waves, are both causes and effects - that is, the event is causally mutual. As well, depending on how the play of visages works out, it may not even be possible to pin-point what has been changed by the event so it may not even have a direction.

#### Upward and Downward Causation

Many physicists and chemists assert that everything can ultimately be described in terms of the four fundamental forces of physics, in the sense that understanding the fundamental forces of physics allows us to understand the behaviour of atoms which then allows us to understand the behaviour of molecules which then allows us to understand the behaviour of biological cells which then allows us to understand the behaviour of people, and so on. This line of thinking is known as 'upward causation'. Upward causation can be described in terms of this discussion as architective constraints on the fundamental forces giving rise to sub-atomic objects, the architective interactions between these giving rise to atoms from which molecules emerge and so on. The physicists' and chemists' assertion can be understood in terms of rising levels in an architective hierarchy.

But many biologists say that we cannot understand human intelligence and free will in this way. They argue that upward causation must be complemented by a downward causation, one in which a person's mind or brain can control its own organs such as its hands and feet. In terms of this discussion, the downward causation that biologists propose can be seen in the control and organization that higher level objects in an architective hierarchy impose on their lower levels.

Both upward and downward causation are relevant only within architective contexts. Connective contexts are causally mutual.

I mentioned earlier that architective deities act on us through the constraints they impose on us. Now we see that they utilize causation, both upward and downward, to effect those constraints, while connective deities act on us solely through constellations arising from connective apprehension.

#### Justice

Questions of justice require that someone or something can be identified as the perpetrator or cause of a crime. In a purely connective context identifying a cause is not possible. The concepts of justice, guilt and punishment are relevant only in architective contexts.

#### Morality

What about crime? What about Good and Evil? Certainly moral values can be architectively codified in a system of justice or social convention, but what about in the vagueness of purely connective situations? I personally believe in a cosmic holistic Deity that has a preference for harmony but does that mean that turbulence is morally wrong? Is there an absolute morality of what is right and what is wrong? Unless one is an adherent of a religion, its morals would appear to be arbitrary. For 17th century Europe, the realization that the morality of the Judeo-Christian complex was dogmatically defined rather than an absolute tenet of reality was traumatic for that society. Since then the prevailing opinion of Western philosophy has been that there is no absolute morality.

Of course there are moral consequences for us in our choices of action, for example we may act with regard to charity and propriety rather than self-interest and deceit, but these are morals of our own making rather than morals imposed by reality itself.

That there are connective and architective modes of meaning is imposed by reality itself, and these modes can constitute absolute moralities, in that we are required, as an absolute condition of reality, to act either with regard to architective serial meanings such as stasis, precision, and control, or to act with regard to connective serial meanings such as flexibility, indefiniteness and interference.

For unimodal deities there is no such moral choice, for connectively unimodal deities would necessarily follow the connective morality while architectively unimodal deities would necessarily follow the architective morality. But humans are sometimes faced with having to choose between an action whose serial meaning is architective and one whose serial meaning is connective, and when their serial meanings are contradictory there is a moral significance in their choice. Every time we choose between an action whose serial meaning is architective and one whose serial meaning is connective, we actualize only one serial meaning and we are then personally responsible for having chosen the narrative - and absolute morality - associated with the serial meaning that manifests in our locality. If, in addition, these meanings are significant to a deity, our choices would have spiritual consequences as well.

Not understanding that we have such a choice, and actualizing the architective morality by default of the architective dominion is also, for me, a moral failing (but in this case a human moral rather than an absolute one). I am not implying that choosing the architective rather than the connective morality is a moral failing, only that doing so habitually or unthinkingly is, for we have the intelligence to discern between them.

The human moral pickle is thus far more piquant than that of any unimodal deity, for while they may have choices within their absolute moralities, say between construction and destruction for an architective deity, they only have choices within their own moralities. We on the other hand may have similar choices within each absolute morality, but we may also be able to choose between absolute moralities. Choosing between them requires a moral balancing act of which the gods have no inkling.

Regarding bodily pain and pleasure as vibratory phenomena in our brains means that human morals can be relevant to the cosmic holistic Deity. Our pain detracts from the cosmic connective harmony which the cosmic holistic Deity so values, while our pleasure can enhance it. That is, there is a possible spiritual morality in our avoidance of pain and our pursuit of bodily pleasure. However, though our pleasurely vibrations may be harmonious within themselves, they may not be in concert in a wider cosmic context or in accord with our architective social environment, and this may lead to consequences that are neither spiritually nor humanly desirable. Seeking bodily pleasure is not always appropriate. The avoidance of pain, on the other hand, is always appropriate for both humans and the cosmic holistic Deity. Divining the appropriateness of pleasure is also a delicate balancing act.

#### Addressing the Architective Dominion

Though not an absolute moral necessity, we have a need to relieve the architective dominion of our lives. Our preoccupation with architectivity condemns connectivity to a subconscious background while we have a natural ability to consciously negotiate both modes. Directing the bulk of our conscious attention to architectivity results in an imbalance in our psyches which we are subconsciously motivated to redress.

Even when we recognize our overwhelming architective preoccupation, attempts to consciously explore connectivity have to be mounted in the face of an enormous social inclination to repress them. Nor does an exploration of connectivity bring any architective benefit, while explorers have little substance to show for their effort, making social recognition very difficult. Religions often attempt to offer a haven from architective pressures where connectivity can be addressed, but their havens are limited by the confines of their dogma. These limitations may be far more severe than the havens they offer, so while initiates may be drawn to a religion by a promise of unconditional love, for example, they may then be shackled to its exclusivity, its dogma and its authority.

Where then can we turn to broaden our connective participation? The quietude of meditation is a tried and trusted technique for tuning one's attention to the connective subtleties of one's own breath and blood flow. Nature offers a wealth of connective entertainments in the play of wind and leaves, the dissolution of clouds and the interlacing of waves on a beach. Human interactions like song and dance offer opportunities for connective play. Music offers a cavalcade of connective patterning, while our sense of touch, especially when reciprocated with a loving partner, can open orgasms of connective sensation.

A mindful pursuit of connectivity, even when balanced by a healthy respect for architectivity, isn't going to make one wealthy. What can be expected from the effort, apart from the value of the experience itself, is a greater diversity to one's experience, a contribution to the profundity of connective spirituality and a greater awareness of one's participation in the cosmos.

Many people turn to drugs as a means of overcoming the architective dominion. This is justifiable in terms of the suggested need to bring connective experience into consciousness and is a reason why drugs can be so attractive. Interpreting the drug experience in this way suggests that compulsive drug use can be alleviated by accepting it as a valid means of connective exploration when accompanied by an awareness of the necessity of maintaining one's architective capacity as well. Drug use that cannot be appropriately moderated can then be seen to be self-defeating. Enforced prohibition leads to a rebellious rejection of all architective behaviour by many drug users, including a rejection of the risks of cleanliness, dosage or even survival. Perhaps more can be achieved by assisting the re-habituation of a drug abuser to an architective sociality that permits careful drug use, rather than to one dominated by prohibition.

The question of architective compliance is a complex one for us. We are usually so behaviourally conditioned that our own choices only echo those of our architective organizers. Even when we are rebellious, the choices we usually discern are between one architective motivation and another - such as a switch from one hierarchy to another or between construction and destruction (as good vs evil). No matter which we choose, the result is likely to be architective. It is only when we choose a connective activity over an architective possibility and thereby terminate the architectivity of our narratives that we are seriously rebellious.

A better understanding of our place in the cosmos can relieve some pressures of the architective dominion. Comparing the finite reach of architectivity to the universal reach of connectivity assures us that the dominion is not universal. Understanding the natural bias towards architectivity and its overwhelming strength enables us to be more conscious of our choices. We can understand that our every act is controlled and organized by architective spirits, while the influences of holistic deities are subtle in the extreme and likely only to become noticeable in the absence of architective controls. The architective contests between corporations and governments may put whole nations at war, but the relevance of holistic spirits lies in scales of subtlety and grandeur beyond our everyday contemplation. Indeed we have only begun to physically conceive of these scales since the inventions of the telescope and microscope.

The architective dominion of our lives is compounded over the course of our lives, becoming increasingly complex through a longer personal history. But as very young children we were not so tightly constrained and many of the connective behaviours we acquired when the world was new to us continue into our adult lives. As adults we may still react with the same pleasure to an aroma that delighted us in childhood, for example. No matter how architectively complex our lives become, there remain a myriad things we do subconsciously that are not architective, and through these things we participate in the cosmic connective system - sometimes even singing along with the cosmic song. Being aware of this, we may consciously seek to widen our connective repertoire.

I am not advocating a single-minded pursuit of connectivity. Our reality here in the figurate window is dominated by architectivity and there is nothing we can do or say to avoid it, no matter how much we may dislike some of its facets. And many of its facets are essential for our well-being if not downright enjoyable. The architective structures of our societies provide channels and support for getting things done. We have developed architective institutions to constrain destructive architective behaviour and promote constructive behaviour. Remove these and our societies collapse, as is evident when the indigenous infrastructure of a colonized society disappears. Any attempts to suppress our architective natures would result in an equally unhealthy imbalance.

#### A Flitting Tale

I have just returned from a visit to a friend, having had an insight. She is in her late seventies and has been nursing an ankle she broke when jumping out of a window in order to escape from an orphanage as a child. On the run, her ankle was never repaired and she has been suffering repercussions to her hip and knee from accommodating the ankle for so long.

She has been waiting for surgery on her hip for some twenty months now and is in great pain - and she stubbornly refuses to take any but the mildest painkillers. Living in pain for that long has affected her mental state as much as the physical disability has affected her capacity to get things done.

But this morning she was smiling and laughing in spite of her surgery being postponed once again. Her son-in-law had given her a cheap mobility aid, a sort of chair come shopping trolley on wheels, and she was whizzing around her kitchen nimbly preparing coffee, chucking the odd twirl and bounce off the kitchen counter as she went. Even when she stopped, she was gently rocking herself to and fro on the smooth kitchen floor. What a difference this mobility had made to her demeanour!

It came to mind while watching her that she had been given an avenue to enjoy some connectivity, in which she could experience and express the subtleties of motion, and that this access had contributed to her positive state of mind.

As the day passed, other examples came to my mind - the pacifying effect of a baby being rocked in its mother's arms, or rolled around in a push chair or even taken for a drive in a car to get it to sleep. We probably have a similar response to dance or music generally. Even the appeal of a motor car - what makes driving a car sexy? What makes driving some cars more pleasurable than others? The variety, responsiveness and speed of their movement - their capacity to indulge in connectivity! In sport as well - some may enjoy the challenge of outwitting an opponent but there is always pleasure in the underlying motion and the opportunity it opens to express connective skill.

## Psychedelics in Perspective

We stand today on the cusp of a new era of scientific and spiritual symbiosis, for we now have the technology to summon direct spiritual experiences at will. I am speaking of the psychedelic or entheogenic chemical agents of LSD, mescalin, DMT and psilocybin, whose capacity to voluntarily generate human experiences describable as 'spiritual' has been widely acknowledged. Direct spiritual experiences are rare under normal circumstances, yet a sense of being at one with the universe, of identifying oneself with a cosmic consciousness, is a common report from psychedelic explorers.

I mentioned drugs as a means of overcoming the architective dominion. My own experience suggests that even a mild psychedelic like cannabis offers an enhanced appreciation of connective subtlety while a major psychedelic like LSD offers opportunities for profound connective exploration.

#### A Model for the Psychedelic Experience

I understand the psychedelic experience in terms of connectivity and architectivity as follows:

Our brains are compound functional objects and I suspect their operation includes a cyclic mechanism that mediates our perceptions of the world, such that the frequency of this cycle determines the maximum rate at which we can resolve change. I call this frequency our _brain speed._ According to this idea, one's architective sentience cannot resolve all the steps in a narrative processing faster than one's brain speed and one's connective sentience cannot cycle fast enough to fully perceive vibrations faster than one's brain speed. For example, if my brain cycled at say 100 cycles per second I could clearly discern events changing at a lower rate of 25 changes per second, but I would not be able to distinguish all the details of an event changing at 300 changes per second. According to this idea, the range of detail I could clearly distinguish would be widened if I could increase my brain speed to say 1000 cycles per second.

An increase in one's brain speed implies more than a widening of one's sensitivity to change, for there may be patterns in the changes and widening one's sensitivity also means being better able to distinguish the patterns. It also means being able to see more patterns and being able to discern patterns in the patterns. In other words, a widening of one's sensitivity to changes can be accompanied by a deepening appreciation of the order of both architective and connective patterning and serial meaning.

I see too that one's brain speed is not fixed. Many factors might affect it, such as genetic predisposition, training, diet, comfort and mood. I believe that my practice of meditation has developed a capacity to voluntarily flex my brain speed to some degree, while psychedelic drugs appear to forcibly induce brain speed changes.

In the case of meditation or a minor psychedelic like cannabis the experience is quite manageable. A modest increase in brain speed allows me to perform conceptual architective manipulations at a higher rate. Language and mathematics can systematize more readily. Architective ideas can process more quickly, conceptions of control and organization can be realized more clearly, and strategies for contest can be thought out more comprehensively. An increase in brain speed also increases my awareness of connective patterning and constellation. It increases my sensitivity to connective subtlety and order and allows me to be aware of and manipulate ever slighter amplitudes of interaction, thereby letting me sublimate architective constraints more easily.

However, while both modes of consciousness may be equally enhanced, proportionately it is my connective consciousness that is the major beneficiary since it is usually so under-represented in the normal state. In addition, since a connective consciousness is dispersed rather than focused and can absorb multiple perceptions simultaneously, the slightest widening of one's connective capability spawns a disproportionate expansion of one's connective awareness. Subjectively, both modes of sentience become more interesting, but my connective sentience becomes much more interesting, even to the point of overwhelming the architective dominion of my attention.

Increasing one's brain speed not only promotes awareness of connectivity in one's external environment but in one's internal constitution as well. Physically one might become aware of the flows in one's physical body such as pulse and breath, and of the subtle motions of one's constituent physical organs, even as constrained within their architective boundaries - and perhaps delve into the organs' constituent motions as well. Mentally one might become more aware of the fluctuations in one's mood, and of the mental components of one's architective habits, which in turn assist to overcome habits preventing connective expansion.

A major psychedelic like LSD propels one's brain speed so far beyond normal experience that the flood of new information renders one's usual mental controls ineffective and conceptual architective manipulations become difficult if not impossible. The experience can be terrifying until one adapts to the impossibility of maintaining one's mental control. One's connective experience is not based on a maintenance of control and the increase in connective information is easier to accommodate.

LSD is so powerful a psychedelic and our connective capacity so enhanced that one's appreciation of connective subtlety, constellation and order blooms exponentially while one's architective capacities remain relatively stilted. Indeed, for first-time users, the comparative explosion of connective awareness is often misread as a total banishment of architectivity, leading to a misplaced belief that getting high offers a complete salvation from one's architective woes.

Increasing one's brain speed also widens the scope of one's imagination. Normally our imaginations utilize and extend our past experiences or suggestions we have received (say through reading, discussion, art or theatre). But as our appreciation of connective patterning expands, we are able to incorporate novel patterns into our imaginations, possibly extrapolating them beyond the sensitivities of our organs and beyond our personal histories. The stuff of our normal imaginations, based on experiences at a lower brain speed, is not nearly as rich.

Visages constellate in the hyper-patterning of our subjective experience, real or imagined, and they may have their own contextual meaning. This, I believe, is the essence of "getting high", when we are not only able to discern higher orders of pattern and meaning but can consciously navigate and negotiate with them on their terms. (This bears comparison too with a state of paranoia, but in that case the constellations and their meanings are still strongly architective, having significant elements of existential threat. It is not uncommon for users of psychedelics to report bouts of paranoia, especially in the early stages of an experience.)

Exceptionally high order visages may present to us as a cosmic theatre, real or imagined, into which we can enter and coherently interact with the visages, for example with DMT entities or with synchronistic material constellations. Should our appreciation of connectivity extend as to include the cosmic connective system, that system's deepest orders of patterning become accessible to us. The boundaries of our awareness and imaginations may be extended to the point where temporal and spatial constraints become irrelevant. Amazingly, our minds appear to be perfectly capable of managing such extremes and negotiating these alien topographies.

Even with only a modest increase in brain speed, the comparative connective advantage permits a noticeable diminution of the architective dominion of one's consciousness. Psychedelic drugs can be a powerful tool for overcoming the architective dominion (at least for a short while).

One's own brain speed may also serve as a reference frequency against which other vibratory signals can be compared, and that other vibratory signals may interfere and possibly resonate with. Changing one's brain speed can change one's mood and change one's subjective flavouring of the external world. Since our brain speeds are not fixed, different classes of drugs, different doses of the same drug and even similar doses at different times could have quite different subjective effects.

Even in our normal states of mind we would each likely have different brain speeds, and so have different subjective experiences of the world while sharing a common objective reality. I suspect that one person would find another more empathic when their brain speeds match or harmonize. I suspect the feat of great art is to tune the brain speeds of an audience to that of the artist.

#### The Psychedelic Journey

It is widely accepted that a successful psychedelic journey will include an experience of cosmic consciousness, or in the parlance of this discussion, a merging of one's consciousness with that of the cosmic holistic Deity. It has also become the accepted wisdom that to achieve such success, the participant will have been able to "lose their ego", or in the parlance of this discussion, relinquish their habitual invocation of architective consciousness. In relinquishing architective consciousness, one's mind no longer constitutes an object in its own right and becomes transparent - is sublimated, allowing one's personal expression to integrate with the dynamics of the cosmic connective system without architective hindrance. Relinquishing the habits of a lifetime of architective dominion is not easy, and to this end intrepid psychedelic explorers will embark on extensive psychological and spiritual training.

In the context of this model, the terror of relinquishing one's architective consciousness is equated with the impossibility of maintaining architective control of one's own mind when it has been accelerated to the extreme speeds of a major psychedelic. As one's brain speed reaches ever greater heights, an expectation may develop that one's mind will burst and one may die. Relinquishing architective control requires that the burst be allowed to occur, and this can be made a little easier by remembering that it is only one's architective sense of self-identity that is susceptible to bursting - one's connective sentience persists unthreatened. If one has the fortitude, one should not fear the burst.

Freeing oneself of one's architective habits is not sufficient to achieve the desired cosmic integration, for our architectivity persists even during the psychedelic session (since we continue to inhabit our bodies) and continues to present bodily challenges that need to be managed (like going to the toilet). It is only in the absence of bodily urgency as well as in the absence of one's architective habits that we can freely participate in the cosmic connective system. Spiritual training helps to lose our architective habits but a suitable setting for our psychedelic explorations, where all foreseen architective needs have been catered for, will reduce the likelihood of architective intrusion.

Overcoming our habitual behaviours and provision of a suitable setting is still not enough to provide a successful experience, for we also have to overcome the determination of our planetary narrative Deity to maintain its control over us, to which end it endeavours to have our consciousness remain architective. It is important to understand just how terrifying the approach to ego loss can be, for it is not only one's ego that fights to preserve itself but our planetary narrative Deity fights to defend itself as well. Our planetary narrative Deity will do all in its power to prevent one's abandonment of architective consciousness since one's mind is then beyond its control and organization. If it can engineer an urgent external intrusion it will; if it can invoke a habitual ego response it will; if it can distract one with images of fear and loathing it will; if it can engender a state of paranoia it will. It is only when we can negotiate even these tactical distractions by our planetary narrative Deity that we are free to enter the universal connective union.

As glimmerings of the connective enormity become evident, one must beware of thinking that one has to prove one's connective purity by any architective act of self-denial, for any architective act at this stage is only another strategic architective distraction, as is the soul-searching accompanying such an act.

One must also beware of overdoing the spiritual training and expectation. The idea that rigorous spiritual training is the only condition on which spiritual achievement or success in psychedelic exploration depends is not only misleading but harmful, for it can lead to an obsession with cleansing one's psyche when it may well have been sufficiently cleansed to avoid habitual responses, and it is only the ongoing challenges of the architective dominion or the pointed distraction of our planetary narrative Deity that still prevents one's participation in the cosmic unity. Effort that could be directed towards managing the architective dominion or overcoming the tactics of our planetary narrative Deity is instead diverted to what becomes an architective distraction with perfection in the cleansing of one's body and one's psyche.

Much of the imagery encountered in a psychedelic session is fast moving and kaleidoscopic. This is consistent with the dynamics of connectives where objects fluidly move in and out of constellations. Should the imagery get stuck in a rut or become inescapably constraining one must immediately suspect the presence of an architective influence, for purely connective processes will always move on.

Bursting the ego does not have to be excessively unpleasant. If architective resistance becomes too nasty, one may defend oneself, architectively if need be, but without compounding the architective distraction by fighting back or attacking someone else. Change the subject, so as to avoid confrontation or so as to be confronted in a different, perhaps less challenging manner.

When one is able to adequately manage one's architective habits, one's bodily demands and the distractions of our planetary narrative Deity, one becomes free to explore pure connective serial meaning in all its subtlety and grandeur. Among the many bouquets of connective serial meaning in that garden of cosmic splendour there will be one that is supremely significant and most deeply hidden - the song of the cosmic holism. Should one find and follow that songline, one's consciousness spontaneously constellates to the cosmic holistic awareness.

Such moments of grace must be awaited with patience: One has worked hard to overcome all architective obstruction but there is nothing one can do to coerce a revelation of the cosmic presence. However, being free of distraction, should one find it one will recognize it immediately and integrate without hindrance or reservation.

It is well to recall that a disregard of architective serial meaning involves a disregard for any precise or enduring meaning in symbols, specifically as found in language. Purely connective serial meaning is not conveyed through words, symbols, rationality or logic. We feel it rather than think it. And here, where I argue that spirituality arises in the material world, I suggest that we experience cosmic integration as a wordless, somatic, feeling of love. Knowing this, during a psychedelic session or when meditating, it pays to follow one's bodily feelings rather than one's thoughts or ideas.

An experience of cosmic integration does not mean that we can actually see the forces interacting to hold the cosmic connective system together, but that we become aware of the motions of the system, their concert, their subtlety and their grandeur. We see the dance of all objects responding to each other, and the intimacy in which we dance with them.

One should not equate an enjoyment of the natural beauty and harmonies of connectivity, especially as enhanced under psychedelic drugs, with the direct experience of spirituality. For the direct experience of spirituality involves being conscious of one's participation in the cosmic connective system, if not a merging of one's consciousness with that of the cosmic holistic Deity, to the degree of actually feeling one's universal connection as a somatic bodily sensation, rather than as a detached aesthetic appreciation of connective beauty.

In my normal state as a separate human consciousness, I think of the holism of the cosmos as being "the rest of the connective universe without me", and relate to the cosmic holistic Deity as the personification of that holism. When integrated with the cosmos I am the cosmos and my consciousness is that of the cosmic holistic Deity.

#### Psychedelics and Sex

While the reward of cosmic union is truly wondrous, it can nonetheless be enhanced by the company of others, especially if they too find cosmic integration, and the sharing of the experience creates a bond among participants that persists through their return to normality. Sexual engagement at such a time offers an even greater well of empathic harmony (though the accomplishment of intercourse may be a little tricky in such a kaleidoscopic state of mind).

While cosmic union may be our greatest spiritual ambition, it is not necessarily that of the cosmic holistic Deity. The Deity's intent does not coincide with our own - its ambition is directed to profundity in connective harmony rather than a gathering human celebrants, profound as that may be. My experience has convinced me that our participation in a harmonious sexual encounter is more likely to provide the profundity of harmony that the cosmic holistic Deity seeks than achieving cosmic union on one's own. The Deity is appreciative of our cosmic union - but is more appreciative of profundities we can bring to the occasion.

Regardless of whether a psychedelic experience contributes to the profundity of cosmic harmony, it remains valuable from a human standpoint, for the enhanced appreciation of connectivity it offers us allows us to weight our serial meaning to the connective mode (if only for the duration of the psychedelic session) and so direct our personal reality according to connective rather than architective serial meaning. That said, we must keep in mind that the cosmic connective system is often turbulent, in which case the enhanced appreciation of connectivity permitted by a psychedelic can be unpalatable from a human point of view.

Many believe that our sexuality arises from a habitual ego response and that it needs to be overcome in order to achieve cosmic union. I see it rather as an important element in our connective repertoire to be embraced as a powerful means of somatic communion. I explicitly seek the availability of a sexual partner when preparing for a psychedelic session in case the session should turn in that direction.

#### "It's All in the Mind"

A strong impression of psychedelic experience is that of the power of mind, in the sense that one's mind, at least when cosmically integrated, has the power to shape material reality without physical application of any kind. Such a sense is valid, for one's now holistic mind has the ability to apprehend material reality without interaction. But by remembering the purely connective nature of the state one is in, one can keep it in perspective, namely that only connective serial meaning can be influenced in this way, that reality can be influenced but not controlled, that the influence is likely to be extremely mild and that the influence will be weaker (though much more agile and subtle) than architective influences. Direct architective manipulation will still require direct architective application.

Sitting in the lap of pure connectivity, the concreteness of architectivity is indeed likely to appear an illusion from one's viewpoint as a purely connective consciousness. In the exaltation of cosmic integration it is easy to forget the now purely connective nature of one's consciousness and believe that "its all in the mind", that ultimately reality in its entirety springs from mind, or even that mind is a precursor to material reality. But it's only the connective component of reality, extensive as it is, that is now "all in the mind".

In everyday terms, believing that one's reality is all in one's mind can engender a sense of guilt, for one then becomes personally responsible for all one's misfortunes and those of others. Understanding that one assumes such a mantle of responsibility for only the connective component of reality and only when attaining cosmic integration leaves one (and the cosmic holistic Deity) innocent of the architective component of our suffering. The cosmic holistic Deity is not responsible for, nor can it even comprehend, the architective pressures of our existence, and when integrated with it neither can we. It is also necessary to understand that one's apprehension of material reality in this state is only possible because of the coincidence of one's personal intent with that of the cosmic holistic Deity. One need have no fear that any flaw in one's personal intent is causing misfortune through the apprehension, for there is no way that one can coerce the Deity to one's personal intent; rather it is one's personal intent that has come to coincide with that of the Deity. None of our suffering arises from any one person's inability to mind-generate a perfect world.

#### Psychedelics on the Horizon

At the time of writing, it has become fashionable to promote ritualized psychedelic ceremonies as being a more acceptable means of psychedelic activity, removed from the image of "party drugs", the pleasures of getting high or the unnaturalness of synthesized drugs. I am thinking for example, of the traditional ayahuasca ceremonies of South America and peyote ceremonies of North America. While this promotion may seem a reasonable step on the thorny path to the legalization of psychedelic drugs, we should be aware that it effectively encloses what should be an unbounded connective exploration within an architective shell of ceremony and expectation.

The same can be said of restricting a future legal use of psychedelics to licensed institutions. While this may make the legalization of psychedelics more palatable to its sceptics, and even make the contemplation of a psychedelic experience less daunting, it can result in experiences that are architectively framed to commercial, religious or institutional brands, or their power ascribed to particular methodologies, allowing conflicts to arise between competing providers. We've been there before and we don't need to go there again.

#### The Limits of Psychedelic Expectation

At the time of writing I see proponents of psychedelics having exaggerated expectations of what psychedelics can deliver in terms of mental and physical health, improvement of one's social relationships and material well-being.

Certainly there is much evidence of improvements in the mental well-being of psychedelic users, especially in terms of the comfort of understanding one's wider cosmic context, though there have also been casualties when issues of set and setting have not been properly addressed.

But even when properly addressed and a psychedelic session is entirely successful, this discussion indicates that there are limits to their possible benefits:

First is that the any merging of one's consciousness with the cosmic holistic Deity will necessarily be temporary. However, understanding that the experience is temporary permits a reconciliation with its everyday absence and this I see as positive in terms of both one's spiritual growth and mental well-being. Such understanding will also avoid any obsession with repeating psychedelic sessions with the ambition of making one's cosmic merger permanent.

Secondly, the benefits of a cosmic merging can only be purely connective. Expectations of material wealth or improved social status are well beyond the scope of connectivity, while even in terms of one's personal health, benefits might only come from a more harmonious connective tuning to one's environment. Talk of "medicine" and "healing" should be understood to be connectively relevant only. Similarly, improvements regarding one's social relationships will only be found in one's abilities for connective harmony - resolutions of architective political or business issues will not be forthcoming. Such understanding will also avoid any obsession with repeating psychedelic sessions in the hope of eliminating one's everyday problems, aches and pains.

## Faith and Reason

One cannot discuss religion without addressing the problem of faith. Though many regard faith to be a simple statement of belief, I often encounter a stronger religious attitude, one of faith for faith's sake - that if one believes in something strongly enough it will become true. Positive thinking. Affirmations. To change the world one simply has to have a strong enough faith. This attitude is possibly the essence of fundamentalism, where the personal battle of the fundamentalist is to demonstrate, to themselves and to others, the strength of their faith in order that they may facilitate the promise of their religion.

The danger of this attitude is illustrated in the legacy of St Augustine, who propounded that only faith could create his "City of God", and that the real test of one's faith came when it conflicted with reason. It was the Church's acceptance of this proposition that blinded Europe to the Greek legacy of reason and enveloped Europe in an intellectual darkness that persisted for some 1200 years.

More recently, I have encountered this propensity to act on faith alone within the depths of a psychedelic experience, when the newly perceived extents of connectivity so overwhelm one's habitual architective consciousness that one is willing to discount architectivity entirely. Wrapped in a purely connective sentience, one's mind appears to be able to shape material reality, which carries an implication that the reality one experiences is dependent on where one's faith is directed, and is so at all times, not only when under a psychedelic influence. One may be inclined to test that prospect dramatically - with possibly catastrophic consequences - or one may spend years attempting to perfect one's faith.

Just as it is necessary to remember that it is only connective reality responding to the apprehension of one's mind in the psychedelic state, it is only connective reality that can be responsive to any corresponding faith - and then only if one's faith happens to coincide with the intent of the cosmic holistic Deity - which can at best be momentary since a faith tends to be static. Even in the psychedelic state of mind such power of faith is extremely limited, and in a normal state of mind it is even more unlikely.

I do not discount faith but I am wary of it being consciously expressed. It often happens that, where there is uncertainty, or where our knowledge of the terrain is poor, an intuition, a "leap of faith", shows the way forward. However, reason must remain the dominant means of evaluation in one's normal state of mind and should continue to be valued in the psychedelically enhanced state - without letting its habitual invocation be a barrier to experiences of holistic apprehension.

Testing one's faith in one's personal and social capacities is of immense value, but testing the law of gravity is not. When one's inclination is to act on faith alone, especially in the context of a psychedelic session, it is prudent to test reason gently at first rather than crashing through blindly.

When one's sentience is firmly entrenched in one mode, faith in that mode could be seen to be of greater value than reason in the other. I have suggested prudently recognizing the value of both modes when negotiating both psychedelic and normal states of mind. But our unimodal deities are not capable of valuing both modes. Their sentiences are entrenched in only one mode and are incapable of understanding their opposite mode. Actions they may suggest to us are likely to discount if not ignore meaning outside their own mode.

## Connectivity, Architectivity, Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang are poles of a principle of opposition believed to underlie all opposites - female/male, dark/light, strong/weak, hard/soft etc. adopted as a fundament of ancient Chinese philosophy and religion. It plays an important role in the I Ching, a collection of Chinese texts now popularized in the West that has been used as an Oracle and a book of wisdom for thousands of years. I have taken a deep interest in the I Ching, and along with my grounding in physics, this interest significantly informed the ideas of this book. But the ideas of this book have in turn redirected my understanding of the I Ching, to the point where I felt compelled re-evaluate the I Ching in a more modern context, published as the Oracle of Love. I recount below how the ideas of connectivity and architectivity have influenced that re-evaluation:

The Oracle of Love and the I Ching employ randomly cast hexagrams as a means of divining one's situation in a spiritual context. Both provide interpretive texts for the hexagrams. In the context of this book, this reliance on randomness can be understood to ensure that architective serial meaning plays no role in the process of casting a hexagram, that the divination is purely connective. The hexagram interpretations of both the Oracle of Love and the I Ching laud the virtues of being flexible. However, the I Ching interpretations also reflect a Confucian penchant for a strict social structuring of family and state which the Oracle of Love does not. The Oracle of Love has a much stronger focus on connectivity. Through the absence of architective serial meaning in the casting of a hexagram and its focus on connectivity in interpretation, the Oracle of Love attempts to refine the connective meaning out of a situation, allowing one to judge one's situation, not only in terms of one's more familiar architective outlook, but in terms of the connective subtlety that we so easily overlook.

The Oracle of Love significantly differs from the I Ching in another important respect. As an Oracle, the Oracle of Love acknowledges that it is not omniscient while the I Ching does not. My many years following the I Ching showed it to have a blind spot: While its messages were often uncannily relevant to my experience, it also appeared to take no interest in some experiences that were of significance to me. I put great effort into trying to delineate where and when its messages were relevant and the conclusion that I came to was that it had an almost absolute focus on love, in a sense that closely aligns with the idea of connectivity. A commentary to the Oracle of Love warns: "The Oracle is not all-seeing. I have found that there are many situations it is blind to, as if its world does not coincide exactly with our own. Its preoccupation with Love appears to be out of step with our own overwhelming experience of material suffering. It does not understand any of our socially developed institutional structures and imperatives, in much the same way as a baby does not. It cannot respond to culturally based humour, or take account of social convention, or negotiate the intricacies of business and politics. One should be aware of these limitations when accepting Oracular advice. But, like a baby, it is very sensitive to direct sensual and emotional engagement."

I continued to search for a more precise context of its relevance. In another commentary to the Oracle of Love the dynamic between Yang and Yin is explored: I describe how Yang provides the motivation for things to change while Yin allows the changes to occur. The image given is of Yang initiating a constant stream of initiatives which Yin cannot but accept. I describe how Yin's willing acceptance of an initiative can result in a fluid oscillation which the Oracle regards as "great", while a reluctant acceptance results in the confinement of an initiative within static boundaries, which the Oracle regards as "obstructive". It is the fluidity of the oscillation that forms the basis of the Oracle's concept of Love (and to which most of its hexagrams are devoted) while the obstructive result appears to hold little interest for the Oracle.

That static, neglected, obstructive result germinated the idea of architectivity. From a mental image of a motion that is hyperbolically or otherwise confined within a fixed range as opposed to say a sinusoid in a continuous flow, I eventually extracted the entire suite of architective behaviours. I could then understand why the philosophy of both the Oracle of Love and the I Ching favoured fluidity and flexibility. It also resonated with the idea of the I Ching as a "Book of Changes" rather than a book of fixed laws (as many religions are), and appeared to validate my removing from the Oracle of Love the Confucian predilection for rigid social structure. The spirituality that the Oracle advocates is a purely connective one.

This, however, is also its weakness, for the Oracle is insensitive to architective serial meaning. By focusing on the free flow of Yang and Yin, the Oracle effectively misses an entire hemisphere of their interaction.

Another way in which the Oracle of Love differs significantly from the I Ching is in the relationship between the Oracle and its enquirers. The I Ching is understood to make singular pronouncements in response to specific questions and enquirers are asked not to abuse its largesse. Users of the Oracle of Love are rather encouraged to look for themes in a string of hexagrams, allowing the hexagrams to constellate into narratives (termed 'conversations') that allow the Oracle to speak its mind rather than respond to interrogation. Besides, the enquirer's questions are likely to concern their architective dilemmas which the Oracle probably can't address or even comprehend. Users of the Oracle of Love are encouraged to harmonize their activities with the Oracular narratives rather than use it as an agony aunt.

This book also gives a clearer picture of how the word 'love' is used by the Oracle, for we can see that the Oracle uses the word in a purely connective sense. It is used to describe harmonies of motion, feeling and vibration rather than any lasting devotion. An unremitting devotion can perhaps be seen as an architective sense of the word 'love'. We could also see 'love' in an architective sense to mean altruism, kindness towards one's inferiors and using one's strength for the benefit of those less privileged than oneself, rather than a blind implementation of the architective dominion.

Another important implication of this book for users of the Oracle is that, since the wisdom of the Oracle is not cognizant of the architective content of our lives, there may be an entirely other spirituality pertaining to that architective content. Possible architective spiritualities such as the hierarchical deities of our societies and the planetary narrative Deity would have ambitions and means entirely unrelated to those of the Oracle.

One must also beware of confusing the spirituality of the Oracle with connectivity itself, for although the Oracle is purely connective and capable of comprehending connective phenomena, it does not represent a spirit of connectivity per se or the source of all connectivity. Rather, it is a connective spirit, one I associate with the cosmic holism, or, being sentient, with the cosmic holistic Deity. In my many years of using the I Ching / Oracle of Love, I have found the nature of the Oracle to be entirely consistent with the limitations I have described for the cosmic holistic Deity. It, like us, is a product of the material world and is able to influence the world (albeit only connectively), but is not responsible for the phenomenon of connectivity per se. As well, as a holism its influence would be at the extremities of subtlety, so that holding it responsible say for a storm (in that wind is a connective phenomenon) would be misplaced.

There is also an important implication in one's evaluation of _who_ it is one is addressing when using the Oracle. If one accepts associating the Oracle with the cosmic holistic Deity then one should keep in mind that not only is the Oracle a player in the unfolding of reality in the same way that we are, but it is learning as it goes. In my own experience I find the Oracle extremely childish - in its innocence, in its mercurial, empathic, and unreasoned expectations, and in its ignorance of "the ways of the world".

In another commentary to the Oracle of Love I have suggested that the Oracle expresses a particular agenda in its communication with us which, in the context of this book, corresponds to the intent and preferences of the cosmic holistic Deity. What I could not say in the limited context of the Oracle of Love, is that its agenda is not the only thing the Oracle can communicate with us, for it is sensitive to all connective behaviour and may well be describing the general connective weather of the universe, as it were. That is, while the Oracle has no sensitivity to architectivity at all, it is capable of communicating its appreciation of the connective portion of the cosmic turbulence as well as its agenda for deriving harmony from that turbulence.

At a personal level, assigning sentience to the cosmic holistic Deity has an implication that is both simple and profound: If one is at an extreme of loneliness, unable to consort meaningfully with one's peers (perhaps due to the social constrictions of the architective dominion), one is always able to consort meaningfully with the universe as whole through the person of the cosmic holistic Deity. This is what the Oracle of Love offers me. Here we arrive at the nub of what religions have always promised - a spiritual companion who never leaves you, who never rejects you, who suffers with you and with whom you are always reconciled.

That spiritual companion, however, is purely connective.

## Cosmic Consciousness in Perspective

In the early days of the psychedelic subculture, no guidance to the psychedelic experience (other than prohibition) was offered by any of the western religions or western science, while esoteric Hinduism and Buddhism appeared to offer not only an understanding of cosmic consciousness but very detailed roadmaps of how to do it. In particular, they offered spiritual practices that promised to develop one's consciousness to be permanently cosmic rather than having to rely on the ingestion of a strong psychedelic to provide a temporary experience. Besides, drug ingestion did not guarantee a cosmic experience every time, each journey involved an uncomfortable battle with one's ego, a drug induced high was considered unnatural, and the forces of prohibition were intense. Many westerners sought out a guru from the east who could provide them with a permanent, natural, legal high.

According to the ideas in this book, cosmic consciousness is associated only with the connective mode of sentience, so the Hindu and Buddhist ideas of a gradual spiritual development towards permanent cosmic integration would entail the end of one's architective sentience and the end of one's architective existence. Although these religions offer an understanding of cosmic consciousness, they are on a par with western religions in that their promises also come at the price of one's earthly existence (and in fact many explicitly seek it - not meaning suicide, but the termination of one's participation in the cycle of reincarnation).

This book suggests that a continuing architective existence is not incompatible with cosmic consciousness as long as the trappings of architectivity are not permitted to distract from experiences of cosmic consciousness. That is, we may validly enjoy both without having to sacrifice either. But since cosmic consciousness can only be experienced in the connective mode of sentience, a life that includes both modes requires that our experiences of cosmic consciousness be temporary, enjoyed in bouts interspersed between periods of architective normalcy. Cosmic consciousness is a valid human, earthly experience, but it cannot be an uninterrupted flow of cosmic awareness.

#### Spiritual Equilibrium

Human spiritual ambition can be understood in a number of ways.

For Christians and Muslims, spiritual ambition is to be rewarded with a place in a post-mortal paradise. For Jews the spiritual reward comes in this life, in the form of well-being and material prosperity. For Daoists the spiritual reward also comes in this life, in the form of a long life of natural simplicity. For Buddhists and Hindus the spiritual reward is to escape life and its travails.

For all these expression of human spiritual ambition, attainment of their corresponding reward is served by perfecting the rituals and practices promoted by their associated dogmas and traditions. The more assiduous one's practice the closer one gets to the perfection that will necessitate one's spiritual attainment.

Even in the context of psychedelic spirituality, where the reward of cosmic integration requires the absenting of personal ego, progress is measured by perfection in eliminating one's ego. This may require assiduous spiritual practice (like meditation) or repeated psychedelic sessions to reveal and release the egotistical behaviours preventing one's cosmic integration.

This book suggests that perfection is unnecessary in one's connective spiritual practice: While the total abandonment of architective consciousness is required for a conscious appreciation of cosmic unity, one's aim need not be for a permanent transit into that consciousness, for it is quite possible, indeed acceptable and quite desirable, to enjoy cosmic consciousness temporarily, even momentarily, perhaps repeatedly or episodically. Besides, if one wishes to maintain one's architective existence, a purity of connective consciousness would need to be temporary.

My extensive use of the Oracle of Love (in the belief that I am interacting with the cosmic holistic Deity) indicates that the Deity realizes that we (as living human organisms) are subject to forces that it does not understand, and it allows for this, primarily by accepting that its intentions for us will not be satisfied perfectly and that our compromised offers are usually the best we can do under the circumstances. Remember too, that while cosmic union may be our personal spiritual ambition, it is not necessarily that of the cosmic holistic Deity. The Deity's ambition is for profundity in connective harmony rather than an abundance of human integrations. Abetting the cosmic ambition does not require our elimination of ego, only an awareness of the Deity's ambition and a desire to assist that ambition when we are able to. In other words, service to the cosmic holistic Deity on our part requires an equilibrium of spiritual and mundane practice rather than any kind of perfection.

Our planetary narrative Deity, on the other hand, does require perfection. It requires that our consciousnesses be perfectly architective and that we strive for perfection in our service to our architective spirits and Deities.

The process of connective spiritual growth is learning to balance these contrary spiritual ambitions. It is a process of developing one's connective sensibilities so as to assist one's connective spiritual integration and promote profundity of connective harmony. It does not require that one's activities and consciousness be connective at all times, only that they not impede one's connective sentience, prevent occasions of connective profundity or unnecessarily terminate connective narratives.

## To Sleep, to Dream

The sun and the moon are major influences in our lives, specifically in the diurnal and lunar cycles we respond to. We move between sleep and wakefulness with the cycle of night and day while womens' reproductivity cycles with the moon, for example.

Our interactions with both these heavenly bodies are purely connective. No architective interaction with either is possible except indirectly, say through our construction of calendars and clocks, and secondary items like bill payment deadlines. It is only our connective sentience that engages with these bodies directly. In particular, I suggest that it is our connective sentience that is most affected by sleep.

In the chapter on psychedelics I suggested that by increasing our brain speed psychedelics increase our ability to resolve detail, which expands our connective sentience more than it expands our architective sentience. I suspect that when we sleep our brain speed decreases and it is our connective sentience that is most diminished. Our architective sentience continues relatively unabated but without any connective input from our senses and with little (if any) connective contribution from our intelligence. I see my dreams to be even more dominated by architectivity than my waking life. While the dream state appears to offer a different reality to our waking reality, that different reality is one of a more concerted architectivity. My dreams are generally dominated by logistics - navigating cities, buildings, train and road networks; usually accompanied by a need to reach a specific goal, the path to which is littered with obstacles or my own bodily incapacity. Scenarios can humorous, horrendous or satisfying, but they are never loving or harmonious. I also seem to able to commit the most heinous crimes in my dreams without compassion - or suffer them without feeling pain. My dreams are mostly about getting the right pieces into the right places, accompanied by satisfaction or frustration, but never accompanied by pleasure or pain. We are put to sleep for surgery.

Meditation is possibly a means of getting one's architective sentience to quiesce rather than one's connective sentience. One night I had a dream in which I swallowed LSD and tripped. I woke up immediately afterward and noted that although I had been enjoying the trip, it was nothing like tripping as I have consciously come to know it. I suggest it is not possible to replicate the psychedelic experience in a dream state because of the paucity of connectivity in that state.

We should take care when imparting a spiritual significance to our sleeping dreams, for that significance is likely to be largely if not entirely architective. We should take even greater care when attempting to apply dreamtime revelations to our waking lives for they are likely to be seriously imbalanced, and if they do serve a spiritual purpose it is likely to be an architective one. Our dreams do not reflect a connective spirituality at all.

I am toying too with the idea that this even greater architective preponderance in dreaming is a clue to the identity of our planetary narrative Deity. Jungian psychology places great value on our dreams being a gateway to a "collective unconscious". Jung populated this collective unconscious with the symbols, archetypes and myths that have accumulated through the eons of human history, even through the experience of our evolutionary predecessors. In the light of the present discussion, this collective unconscious could be regarded as the narrative spirit of our species or even of our planet. It may even constitute the personification of our planetary narrative Deity that I find so elusive. Interestingly, it also means that the collective unconscious Jung has described is confined to our planet (or, looking into the future, to within the scope of human architective reach) and that other planets together with their resident organisms would each host a completely separate and different collective unconscious.

The Jungian connection is also interesting in that Jung interpreted dreams in terms of their symbolism. Regarding dreams as being rich in architectivity makes it easy to see why they would easily lend themselves to symbolic expression.

## Conclusion

This book has suggested some novel ways of understanding spirituality.

It has asserted 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 speculations in the same way that it guides our scientific explorations.

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

By highlighting the architective dominion of our lives, it has shown that our traditional experiences of spirituality are overwhelmingly architective, being expressions of veneration for our architective deities.

It has shown that we may venerate a hierarchical 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 experience its full-blown weirdness we would have to maintain a connective consciousness long enough to comprehend 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 devoutly religious childhood, I never did until I started dabbling in psychedelic drugs, and I suspect that if I had not so dabbled I would not have experienced it in my lifetime.

This book has suggested that one may widen one's connective consciousness so far as to become aware of the cosmic connective system, perhaps of the cosmic holism, and even of one's own connective consciousness as a visage of a greater cosmic holistic 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 spiritual practice.

This book has also suggested the possibility of a planetary narrative Deity, and that our normal mundane behaviour is a de-facto veneration of our planetary narrative Deity.

An experience of profound connective harmony - being joyful for the cosmic holistic Deity and an epiphanic experience for us - would be experienced as being beautiful both by it and by ourselves. Complex architective structure and symmetry, on the other hand, would only be a source of beauty to us and to an architective deity when we and it have a preference for construction. We often have such a preference but our planetary narrative Deity does not. All the beauty to be found in the complexity of our architective environment arises only out of our own human appreciation, whether it be in the complexity of a molecule, a monumental cathedral, a landscape, a crystal or a human face. What I am trying to say is that any sense of beauty in architective complexity (at least here on planet Earth) is limited to us and to our more benign cultural institutions (in their roles as hierarchical deities).

#### 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 say 'cosmic spirituality' from 'local spirituality', reflecting the connective and 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 ritual and dogma.

Acceptance of a spirit as a deity carries the implication that the deity has an intent of its own, an intent that does not generally coincide with our own. Service to a deity should be understood as serving the deity's intent rather than one's own. Our own spiritual intent may take many forms, perhaps wanting to be healed of one's travails or a desire to participate in 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 holistic Deity is primarily 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'.

#### 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 own suffering, by far the major contributor is the accident of our placement in the figurate window and the consequent architective dominion. Most of our suffering is not of our own making.

Though they may intend to alleviate our suffering, architectively active religions will prioritize their own well-being above our own. Hierarchical and narrative deities control us – our prayers and supplications do not control them. Holistic deities neither understand our architective dilemmas nor are 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 be a reflection of discord among our connective spirits. In these situations a holistic deity may be sympathetic to our suffering but the most it could do is to soften the edges; while architective deities would be blind to our connective distress. At least our architective preoccupation 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 holistic 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 narrative 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. We are caught in the middle. Knowledge of our ultimate cosmic nature makes our architective tribulations easier to bear but we so desperately need salvation from a heartless and overbearing planetary narrative Deity. The accident of our placement in the figurate window of scale together with our residence on the planet of a particularly aggressive planetary narrative Deity makes any outlook for architective salvation 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.

I do see straws to clutch at: Consider that if our architective incarceration were due only to a blind architective dominion, our oppression would grind on ad infinitum. The fact that there may be a sentience (namely that of our planetary narrative Deity) behind the most oppressive elements of our despair means that there is at least a possibility that things may improve - that the Deity may change its mind. Remote as this possibility may be, it is a sliver of hope.

We ourselves can also take some of the edge off our suffering by better managing the balance of connectivity and architectivity in our spiritual economies. Our planetary narrative 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 somewhat. 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 it is not quite so simple, since they are ingrained in our cultures and will fight for their survival). Consider too that reducing the power of our planetary narrative Deity means proportionately increasing the influence of the cosmic holistic Deity. The cosmic influence would remain in the background but comparatively speaking would not be quite as weak. There can be a spiritual benefit to weakening our planetary narrative Deity in addition to any benefit to ourselves.

Death is a salvation from architective suffering but at the cost of our architective existence. Our connectivity on the other hand continues, even 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.

#### 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 narrative 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 too in connective spiritual activity. Experiences of connectivity may not always be harmonious but they are never excluding, they never constrain and never contest.

Do we benefit in any way from appeasement of our planetary narrative 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 holistic Deity? Indeed at such moments I have experienced a sense of increased harmony with my environment, with other people and with the cosmic holistic 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.

Conscious experiences of cosmic connectedness 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 narrative 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 the 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.

## The Post Planetary Age

The relevance of scale has been an important theme in this book, especially regarding the significant divide at the planetary level where larger scales become entirely devoid of architectivity. It appears to me that humanity is in the process of crossing this divide, most notably with the advent of space travel in the 1960's. This crossing is a process, not a singular event. It probably started with the intellectual understanding of the Earth as a participant in a greater solar system together with the circumnavigation of the planet in the 16th century, and extending to our appreciation of galaxies and humanity's first steps on the moon in the 20th century. And it is happening not only in a geophysical sense - commerce, culture and communication are rapidly approaching to a full globalization of the planet.

I believe there is a momentous consequence of this, for it means we are also approaching the spatial limit of architectivity. Beyond this limit the architective features of newness, complexity and creativity become increasingly meaningless. Even the idea of individual identity fades. Approaching this limit, concepts of authority and control will fragment and disappear, as I believe we are currently experiencing with the rise of scepticism in institutional authority, religious, political, academic and corporate. The internet has all but obliterated any sense of authority in traditional media. We are also witnessing a backlash - a last stand by religious conservatives in the US, Islamic jihadists and extremes of political censorship in Russia and China.

Humanity is on the cusp of what might be called a "post planetary age", not only because we are extending ourselves beyond our planet but because we are extending ourselves beyond the limit of architective possibility. To go any further we are going to have to learn how to manage situations at a planetary and extra-planetary scale without it. Of course, at the scale of our individual bodies we will still be architectively coherent and susceptible to its forces, but we are going to have to learn to do without these in our cosmic enterprises.

This, of course, we have already started to do. The cosmic consciousness afforded us by psychedelic drugs has given many of us a taste of things to come, for to negotiate that consciousness successfully requires an abandonment of architectivity. Cosmic school has opened. We just have to overcome the architective backlash and legalize it.

# Appendix

I have made my argument in simple, stark, black-and-white terms in order to convey it more easily. No special cases, no ifs-and-buts were addressed and someone with a knowledge of physics would probably be aghast at my brevity. I ask you please to read between the lines. For example, I have not used the term 'force' in its strict physics textbook definition nor should the constraint of a bond be understood to apply only to the distance between its constituent objects - it could well be their momenta or energies that are the subject of their constraint - and so on.

I am happy to address questions you may have by email (my email address is on the title page of this book), and would rather you email me than abandon the main argument, for the argument may deliver overall outcomes that are not dependent on the missing details.

However, there is one matter of detail that I feel should be covered here: I might have conveyed the idea that the spatial volumes of bonds are completely rigid and that connectives are completely flexible, but things are not quite so simple. Bonds can have some flexibility - but only some.

#### The Limited Flexibility of Bonds

The main text describes how a bond prevents its constituent objects from participating in external interactions as the bond's constraints negate the forces of the external interaction. The external interaction then affects the bond as a whole instead of affecting its constituent objects, and behaves as if the interaction was with the bond as a single object rather than with its individual constituents.

Now the constraints of a bond hold its constituent objects to a range of values rather than to a single value, meaning that there can be some response by the constituent objects to the external interaction within the range allowed by the constraints, however small that may be. That is, a bond need not completely negate the effect of an external interaction on its constituent objects. The external interaction could affect both the bond's constituent objects and the bond-as-a-whole, and the bond-as-a-whole only responds to the external force to the degree that it negates the force on its constituent objects. The more that the effect of the external force on the constituent objects exceeds the constraining range of the bond, the greater is its effect on the bond as a whole.

The degree of the negation may of course be so great, or the range of a constraint so narrow, that for all practical purposes, the bond's constituent objects are comparatively undisturbed by the external interaction and the bond as a whole appears to respond fully to the external force. On the other hand, if the constituent objects are allowed a significant response to the external interaction, then both the bond and its constituent objects can respond to the external interaction.

Every interacting object displays a spatial volume from which it excludes all other objects participating in the interaction. So in the case of a partially negated external interaction a bond displays a spatial volume of its own as well as the spatial volumes of its constituent objects (and perhaps those of their internal objects if they are partially negated). Outside objects are excluded from the spatial volume of the bond-as-a-whole as well as from the spatial volumes of its constituent objects. In this case only some of the volume from which the external objects are excluded is rigid since the the bond's constituent objects can move within their constraints.

(When a bond utilizes one of its new emergent properties in an interaction, that is, it utilizes a property that none of its constituent objects have, then the constituent objects are not affected by the external interaction - only the bond is. So a bond utilizing a new emergent property in interaction may display a completely rigid spatial volume.)

While there may be a degree of flexibility in the spatial volume of a bond, it is only a degree. The group volume of its constituent objects may vary but it is ultimately limited by the bond's constraints. A bond can never be as flexible as a connective, for in a connective there are no constraints at all, meaning that the flexibility of a connective is limitless while any flexibility to a bond, even when sublimated, is limited.

In the discussion below, I describe how bonds can be made very flexible, like rubber bands, by chaining them together indirectly.

#### Indirect Bonds

Objects may participate in more than one interaction simultaneously.

In the case of connective interactions, multiplicitity is straightforward, allowing objects to be linked in a network of different interactions rather than all being direct participants in the same interaction. Though there may be an ultimate connection between all the objects in a network, the connection between some objects is mediated through others.

In the case of a bond, its constraints may prevent its constituent objects from participating in external interactions. But this is so only if the external interaction utilizes properties that the bond is constraining. If it utilizes unconstrained properties, the constraints of the bond are not challenged and the external interaction is not negated. So the constituent objects of a bond may yet participate in an external interaction if that interaction utilizes properties not constrained by the bond - and that second interaction may well also be a bond. In this way bonds can bond with each other in horizontal chains rather than in vertical hierarchies, where bonds at either end of a chain are linked together through the mediation of other bonds.

Both connective and binding interactions can thus also be indirect, that is, mediated through a chain of interacting objects.

An indirect bond too can interact as an object in its own right with its own emergent properties. But the overall constraint of an indirect bond is a composite of the constraints of its composite bonds, so any leeway in each component constraint adds to the leeway in the indirect bond. The greater the number of bonds in the chain, the more the composite constraint can widen. A very long indirect bond can be very flexible indeed, like a balloon or a long organic molecule, though its flexibility still remains ultimately limited.

Since an indirect bond can interact as a single object in its own right, it may be a constituent object of a direct bond, and so reside within its hierarchy, while the whole hierarchy of a direct bond may be just one link in the chain of an indirect bond.

The architective hierarchy of an aggregate offers a clearly defined and fixed map of all the direct and indirect bonds in its construction. Indirect bonds may be more flexible, but their architectures remain fixed.
