Spirituality is something that has interested me ever since my experience many years ago with one of the most spiritual places on earth, the Grand Canyon as viewed from a raft rowing down the Colorado River. I want to know things like are spirits real? If so, how do they work? Do all creatures great and small have them? Can spirits interact? What is the connection between spirituality and religion?
My interest in the connection between spirituality and religion led me to pantheism, the belief that God is in every universal thing and all things are part of God. By this, the wind is not the voice of God. The wind is God. In this, pantheism holds that all things are connected by a vast universal web of which each individual human, animal and even plant are an integral part. One of the core principles of the religious organization I belong to, Unitarian Universalist, is "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part".
My search to understand spirituality has recently focused on finding out if this interdependent web of all existence is real, and, if so, does it encompass our spirits. So far, I have found some fairly convincing answers to these inquires in the interaction of three separate fields of science which on the surface would seem to have little, if anything, to do with each other. These are noetics, neurology and quantum physics. Noetics investigates things like psychic phenomena, whereas neurology studies the functioning of the nervous system, in particular the brain, and quantum physics deals with the structure and behaviors of sub-atomic particles. What all three have in common is 'entanglement'.
The phenomenon of entanglement arises from quantum mechanics, the core of quantum physics, and basically says that the action of a sub-atomic particle affects that of an entangled partner in a time-space independent manner. That is, entangled partners in essence behave as a single entity even if separated by an undetermined distance. The entangled partnered particle affects other entangled partners which affects other partners etc thereby entailing entanglement of all particles within the universe. Admittedly it sounds farfetched. Even Einstein, who first described quantum entanglement, called the phenomenon "spukhafte ferwirkung, which roughly translates to "spooky action at a distance". Subsequent to Einstein, a host of quantum physicists have shown entanglement to be real, and is presently forming the basis of new field of engineering known as quantum communication.
Researchers in neurology have recently realized that the basic mechanism of neural communication, the opening and closing of ion channels on single nerve cells, called neurons, operates at the quantum level. According to their relatively new brain/mind model of the nervous system, all nervous system directed actions, including purposeful thoughts and emotions, entail quantum entanglements that are projected beyond the individual and become a part of universal entanglement -- the web of all existence.
Noetic science has evidence that in addition to creating entanglements, the mind is capable of sensing them from any and all universal sources, including those coming from other minds and even from the action of any organism, plant, animal or human. Such entanglements, they feel, form the central mechanism of psychic phenomena, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, and that entanglement encompasses our spirits and is what connects our spiritual self to all things universal. Thus, entanglement seems to be the structure of the interdependent web of all existence.
Up until I learned about the phenomenon of entanglement, I subscribed to the western author Edward Abbey's notion that the wild places in nature (e.g., remote regions of the Grand Canyon) are the wellsprings of our spiritual selves. That is, nature is the source of our spirituality. I have since modified my take on this. Abbey's contention that nature provides our spiritual connections implies that our spirits come from an outside source, nature in Abbey's model. But if our spirits are a component of universal entanglements generated from our own being, then our spirits come from within, not from any outside source. However, purposeful interaction with things that are meaningful to us strengthens our spirits by enhancing entanglements to the point these can be brought to the level of awareness (e.g., the feeling of oneness with something beyond ourselves). For countless number of folks, myself included, interacting with nature nourishes our spirits and provides a good measure of spiritual strength. But for others it may be people, or religion, or curling up with a good book, or any number of things. But regardless of how you obtain spiritual nourishment the fact remains that the universal web of which we are all a part, and which encompasses our spirits, includes all of nature. Accordingly, any damage or destruction of nature weakens our spirits. This makes the protection of nature even more important than Abbey advocated.
Furthermore, since we are entangled with all living beings, the purposeful damage of any critter, human or otherwise, that is of no threat to us weakens our spirit. In dealing with other folks this would include everything from a hurtful word to a bullet in the head. For our fellow critters, this would include any number of forms of cruelty to animals ranging from not giving your pets proper food or health care to promoting factory farms where the likes of hogs, chickens and calves (raised for veal) spend their entire lives in cramped cages often without even enough room to turn around. On this note, organizations that promote brotherly love and the humane treatment of animals are not only beneficial to society, but, in addition, they collectively enrich us spirituality.
Although there is ample evidence that entanglement is a likely mechanism of things like psychic phenomena and strong feelings of spiritual encounters, there is very little, if any, evidence of how we become aware of them. That is, we don't know how the feelings of things like oneness with something outside ourselves are brought to the level of consciousness. Nor do we have any idea why some folks seem to be better at this than others. But it does seem that purposeful actions, like meditation, can enhance our spiritual awareness and enable us to be more spiritual in nature. That is what gurus and mystics with names a half dozen or more words long are doing when they do their thing. But you don't need to have an unpronounceable name a half dozen or so words long, or sit in an ungodly uncomfortable position, or chant meaningless gibberish over and over, or otherwise be a candidate for the funny farm, in order to meditate.
Indeed, meditation is much simpler than any self-appointed guru or spiritual retreat con artist would have you believe. Just put yourself in a situation that, for you, is spiritual, then relax and let your mind wander. Meditation will come to you rather than you forcing yourself on it, which usually doesn't work. I am fortunate to have discovered several situations and environments that will do it for me: horseback riding and caring for horses (mucking stalls is called barn therapy), the beach (the more sparsely populated the better) and just about any quiet outdoor/wilderness setting (again, the more devoid of people the better).
What happens when you relax mentally (i.e., meditate) is that your mind begins to sense the entanglements that are there all along but that are drowned out and blocked from reaching any level of awareness by the many day-to-day things that require your attention. With the mundane attention-grabbing distractions out of the way, you will then be able to sense things beyond yourself including a spiritual oneness with another being or even with the universe as a whole. But don't count on this happening very often. In fact, for most of us such occurrences are quite rare. Of the numerous times that I have meditated, via sitting on the beach and so on, I could count the number of times I have sensed a spiritual connection to something beyond myself on one hand.
In brief, present evidence from science combined with numerous personal testimonies indicate that all living beings, including us human types, have spirits that are as real as any physical part of us, but that they exist within the realm of quantum physics as an integral part of a phenomenon known as entanglement. The spiritual entanglement, that is part of all beings, encompasses a deeper and broader level of existence that lies beyond our classical understanding of reality. This deeper and broader level constitutes the structural framework of the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.