Perhaps the most concise way to describe this emerging paradigm in science is the realization that consciousness, rather than being an accidental by-product of neurophysiological and biochemical processes in the brain, is an integral component of the universe itself.

Whereas one’s cosmology provides a context for ecology within the nature of the universe, one’s ontological assumptions and perspectives take into consideration the nature of being, existence, reality, and relationships between all things. One ontological or spiritual stance is that all individual minds, human and nonhuman, participate in a collect