Spiritual mechanism is insidious because for the most part, it’s unintentional. It happens when we are pushing our philosophical boundaries away from mechanistic frameworks but we fall short. Other times, it is intentional and it’s used to distract well-intentioned people into failing and allowing business as usual to continue. In the criterion below, I will share with you five core markers and five secondary markers that frequently appear within the fundamental logical architecture of spiritual mechanism. There may be more, my research is currently based on two reference pieces. The first being ‘The Conscious Cosmos: A Framework for Unifying Information and Consciousness’ and the the second, ‘Ways of Being’ by James Bridle. ## Substrate Substitution with Preserved Architecture - Happens when the text replaces the standard mechanistic frame (matter, energy, particles) with an eco-spiritual (or spiritual) one. The logic remains the same, aggegation, linear causality, threshold emergence, etc. but the vocabulary shifts toward the eco-spiritual, the cosmic, etc. even though it’s still Cartesian. Example: The universe is a quantum information processing system. ### Diagnostic Questions - If you remove all the spiritual or cosmic language, does the argument collapse or remain intact? - Are the new substrates or frames defined in essentially computational or structural terms? - Does the text acknowledge any differences between the frames and mechanistic matter? ## Aggregative Emergence - Relation is seen as external and accidental instead of constitutive. Phenomena are stacked until a threshold of complexity is crossed. If frames are used that look like Process Philosophy, it is generally an inversion of it. - Example: Consciousness emerges as the pinnacle of informational complexity. Life is what happens when informational complexity crosses a threshold for self-replication. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text posit a threshold or a leap at which consciousness or spirit first appears? - Is relation described as external or constitutive? - Could the lowest-level entities in this framework have any form of experience? ## Teleology without History or Contigency - Cosmic directionality towards complexity, consciousness, unity, and / or awakening is treated as an algorithm or law rather than real novelty, loss, or failture. It’s computational and mechanistic in the guise of evolution. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text’s teleology allow for failure, extinction of value, or cosmic loss? - Is directionality inherent or is it inevitable or algorithmic? - Is it even possible for the universe to fail to become more conscious? ## Passive / Magical Agency - Spiritual mechanism cannot create genuine agency because the substrate is deterministic. It also bounces between two poles: - 1. The subject is dissolved into the cosmic network. - 2. The subject is assigned magical efficacy. It can somehow focus intention to collapse wave functions, heal at a distance, influence the cosmos. Two is an attempt at spirituality but instead of allowing for true spiritual experience, it comes off as ingenuine veneer. This one can be difficult to parse or glaringly obvious. It depends on if the text is referencing a specic religious philosophy or if it’s tacking on similar phrasing outside of a cohesive system. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text simultaneously dissolve the individual into a field and grant individual intention special cosmic efficacy? - Is there any coherent account of how individual agency is constrained by the same framework that empowers it? - Is ‘intention’ subjected to the same analysis as physical processes or left open ended? ## Quantum Laundering - Uses genuine features of quantum mechanics and / or theoretical physics such as, observer effect, nonlocality, entanglement, superposition etc. to validate itself. It will smuggle any claims it can about consciousness, intention, or spirit through this backdoor. Pretending to present physics and valid science, when it really is presenting metaphysics. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text use quantum mechanics as evidence or to validate it’s claims? - Are quantum phenomena described with enough precisions that the analogy is constrainted by quantum mechanics? - Does the text acknowledge the decoherence problem? ## Dissolution Without Genuine Relationality - The text will claim to dissolve dualism such as, mind/matter, observer/observed, self/cosmos, etc. But it does it by saying that both sides have the same underlying relation. ### Diagnostic Questions - When the text ‘dissolves’ a dualism, does it explain the mechanism of unity or simply assert it? - Is the unity relational or reductive? - Does the dissolution actually explain anything or does it relocate the problem? ## Veneer Test - Remove all spiritual, cosmic, mystical, and ecological language from the text. Does the underlying argument collapse, change, or remain intact? In spiritual mechanism, the mechanism is load-bearing and the spiritual vocabulary is aesthetic. ### Diagnostic Questions - Can you restate the core argument without any spiritual/ecological vocabulary and lose nothing essential? - Do spiritual terms appear as conclusions rather than as operative concepts in the argument? - Would this text be publishable in a complexity-theory journal with only minor edits? ## Abstraction As Concreteness - The text invokes concrete sounding terms like, the universe, web of life, cosmic consciousness, informational fabric of reality, etc. while operating at a level of abstraction that erases real differentiation in historical, social, ecological, and biological spheres. It depicts the appearance of radical holism while papering over genuine differences and specific processes. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text’s holism require erasing real historical, biological, or social differences? - Are key terms applied uniformly across radically different phenomena without any type of explanation? - Does the cosmic narrative substitute for concrete analysis? ## Reverential Extraction The text expresses genuine admiration or awe for nonhuman species. It validates their intelligence, personhood, intrinsic value etc. But the purpose of doing so is instrumental; the nonhuman world is to be studied, celebrated, granted status etc. in order to extract princples, patterns, or models that can be applied elsewhere. Reverence cannot be a substitute for relationship. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does recognition of nonhuman intelligence serve primarily to authorize human extraction? - Is the nonhuman world changed or protected by the text’s argument or only appreciated? - Does the text ever consider what genuine reciprocity with nonhuman species would require of humans? ## Technological Management As Ecological Solution The text diagnoses genuine ecological or social crises produced by our existing systems, but proposed solutions that remain within the logic of technological management. It may recommend better designed systems, smarter algorithms, or more ecologically informed architectures. The structural relations that produced the crisis to begin with are not addressed, only administered ‘more wisely’. ### Diagnostic Questions - Does the text’s proposed solution require confronting existing power relations or just redesigning systems within them? - Who has the expertise and authority to implement the text’s proposals? Does this reproduce existing hierarchies? - Does the text distinguish between managing ecological systems better and transforming the social relations that destroy them?