To begin to understand the Sacred, therefore, we must be 'selfless', free of any bias, of any self-interest (other than for truth and beauty). One of the hallmarks of the great artists and scientists is this quality of selflessness when they are totally immersed and 'lost' in the process of what they are doing. I call this the transpersonal way to understanding through conscious communion with one or more dimensions of the Sacred. It demands total concentration, contemplation, and openness.

 One need not have to be such an artist or scientist in order to enjoy communion with the Sacred. We all share, to varying degrees, those childhood qualities (that so many civilizations have disoriented and inhibited rather than nurtured) of openness, curiosity, wonder and enthusiasm (en-theos). And depending on our culture and religious alignments, we have prayer and meditation that can help us engage in communion at various levels and modes of being: like wombs within wombs within wombs, as our personal selves are within a community and cultural self, that is within a planetary and cosmic self or whole.

 The religious 'eureka' experience of making a scientific discovery or proving a new theory, are like the ecstatic and joyful experiences that the arts can inspire, and that can also invoke introspection, sorrow and grief. These kinds of experiences are all derivative. They are derivative of our openness to engage in communion (or conscious oneness) with the unified field of Being at some level from the molecular microcosm to ecological macrocosm and from one realm and process of being to another.

  
 Such experiences can affirm our sense of the Sacred. I believe that our sensibility for the Sacred is an innate or inborn sense that is endangered today by the power and corrupting values of the dominant culture of unbridled capitalism, materialism, industrialism and consumerism.  If this sense is extinguished, we will no longer be human. Our sense and sensibility of the Sacred - of wholeness and holiness - is vitally important on many fronts, especially public and environmental health and sustainability of the emerging global economy. Without it we lack vision, moral imagination and the ability to establish ethical boundaries and bioethical principles. This sense of wholeness and appreciation of the holiness or sanctity of life is expressed as active and boundless compassion through unconditional empathy. It leads to an attitude of reverential respect for all life and to justice because all beings are accorded equally fair consideration.

 Such equalitarianism, the essence of a 'trans-species' democracy, is the central bioethical principle of planetary CPR (conservation, protection, and restoration of biosystems and bio-cultural diversity). Our inborn sense of the Sacred enables us to deal more effectively with the global problematique of planetary CPR. It liberates us from anthropocentrism (and egotism) and by so doing, gives us a more 'holistic' consciousness (and conscience) and therefore the opportunity to develop a more holistic paradigm or worldview for the good of all and for the integrity and future of earthly Creation. This inborn sense of the Sacred needs to be nurtured back to life, just as we need to bring life to ethics in order to end the suffering of animals associated with their exploitation and commoditization; and the demise of wildlife, wild lands, and indigenous peoples.

 Part of the awakening of our spiritual sensibility and sense of the Sacred is through communion with Nature and animals, which were often revered by civilizations past. The 'powers' of animals as totems, and of particularly hallowed places, were part of the religion, mythology and folklore of our ancestors. Some of this aboriginal cosmology and wisdom is being recovered today and integrated into a new worldview that is framed by our scientific understanding of living systems and processes: and enriched by a combination of what Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson calls 'biophilia', and by bioethics. The synthesis of biophilia and bioethics with the empirical knowledge of the biosciences leads to biosophy. This life-centered philosophy takes us out of the self-limiting and harmful confines of anthropocentrism and into the evolving new worldview of biocentrism. This emerging biocentric or life-centered paradigm is not, as some critics contend, a regression to primitive animism and pagan nature worship. It is based on sound science and ethics, and on reason and compassion. Biocentrism,  as Thomas Berry emphasized, is our way into the future and that future will only be secure when biophilia and biosophy are part of the educational system, and bioethics is incorporated into all institutions, from health care and governance to agriculture and world trade. When a sense of the Sacred is shared universally by all people, world peace, justice, and the integrity of Creation will be assured. 

 That which purports to be spiritual must translate into right action, right relationship and right understanding. If it does not, then it is not spiritual because the essence of spirituality is to live ethically, "in a sacred way," as Black Elk advised. The ethic of what Albert Schweitzer called reverence for life is the key directive. In our relationships with other animals, we have a duty to respect their fundamental entitlements of being: such as the freedom to be; and freedom from pain and fear arising from  how we humans so often treat them. Some moral philosophers call these entitlements 'animal rights.'

 I received the following question from a reader of my nationally syndicated newspaper column "Animal Doctor":

"A friend of mine says animals dont have souls. Even so, he says they should be treated humanely because otherwise its a sign of bad character. God gave us dominion over them, to use as we choose, but it should be kindly use."

Answer: "Kindly use" can be a slippery slope. I interpret dominion as loving kindness, as in God's dominion over us. If we are created in God's image, then we should treat animals as we would like God to treat us.
 
As Pope John Paul II has said, all creatures, like humans, are enspirited "with the same breath of Creation." Being part of the same Creation, we should therefore give animals equally fair consideration. In my recent book "Bringing Life to Ethics," I call this a cardinal bioethical principle: 'equalitarianism'.

 I don't believe animals 'have' souls. They, like humans and plants, 'are' living souls. In my metaphysics of what I call biospiritual realism, the spirit is not in the body. The body is in the spirit. Through this primal, sacred duality, souls are born to experience life in different forms. Many people embrace this spirituality of the oneness, individual sanctity and interdependence of all beings. But many don't. That is why some find it morally repugnant to put human genes into pigs, jelly fish genes into monkeys, and to conceive a biotechnology industry dedicated to cloning organ-donor pigs, endangered species and peoples' pets and children. But many don't, and I believe that these unfeeling and therefore unawakened people are the missing link between the beastly (or demonic) and the truly human. They are responsible, I believe, for what Charles Darwin implied in the title of his book The Descent of Man.

 The widely held view that the 'survival of the fittest' (that is linked with the inverted morality of 'might makes right') is biologically normative and a principle of Natural Law that is determined by power over others, needs to be dispelled. Charles Darwin's use of this term was in reference to environmental fitness or adaptability, not power and competition. He recognized how important cooperation was within and between species. Survival through fitness is quite different from survival of the strongest.  Yet his theory of evolution through natural selection and survival of the fittest was seized upon by a very class-conscious English society that condoned industrialisms power over nature and colonialism's imperial power over other cultures and nation-states. Darwin's theory was twisted out of context to give scientific credence to a 'survival of the fittest' (read superior) mentality that sanctified competitive individualism which was encouraged from kindergarten on. Coupled with the religious (Judeo-Christian) belief in mans superiority over lesser beings and nature (that were made by God for man's use), this mentality has made us the least fit species on Earth because of the harms done to others and ultimately to ourselves.

 A spirituality that does not bring love to life is like a philosophy that does not bring ethics to life: useless, like a religion that sees no spirituality in Nature, and a spirituality that has no immediate social and political relevance. The kind of ethics that we need to bring to life, like equalitarianism and reverential respect, are the intellectual fruits of reason that are ripened by emotion, especially our empathic and intuitive sympathies and passion for justice. If our love for fellow creatures and of Nature has no social and political relevance, then it is not true love but selfish attachment (for various reasons, emotional and pecuniary). It would be pedantic and preachy for me to document why: Why isn't everyone who lives with a dog  concerned about the welfare of all dogs and actively support at least one reputable animal protection organization or local animal shelter? Why isn't everyone who eats animals concerned about how factory-farmed food animals are generally raised for human consumption and how a meat-based diet impacts wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and then doing something about it?

 To love the Universal in the particular, and the particular in the Universal, is to embrace, nurture, and defend the freedom for the particular to be, and for the Universal to become. When we protect all our relations and ancestors with the same passion and commitment as we protect our own kith and kin, then the human will become a humane and ethical animal. Some call this 'self-realization,' others call this evolution.

 In other words, such love respects, protects, and nurtures the freedom to be of all particular beings, which leads to animal and human rights and liberation. It also seeks to secure the integrity and sanctity of Creation and Universal becoming, which is the spirit of the deep ecology, Earth First and holistic health movements. It is a love that gives rise to the egalitarian politics of spiritual anarchy, and to the metaphysics of panentheism and global bioethics, that our hearts inspire and our minds, through reason, embrace.