Last updated 3.20.26.
Prologue
If you are of a spiritual nature, the philosophy of the Way of the Universe also allows you to develop your own rational, science-grounded, and healthy metaphysics (a unique part of a complete philosophy). We strongly recommend that you read the Wikipedia definition of metaphysics before continuing, so that you better understand how this branch of philosophy can contribute to the development, enhancement, or evolution of personal spiritual positions or practices. The concepts of metaphysics help create a rational, broad space to explore the full range of benefits of a healthy personal spirituality.
We are still working on upgrading the page below, which was just transferred from our old website. In the meantime, we strongly suggest that you also start by learning and practicing the Universe Principles of Right Actions and Right Attitude. In one way or another, they are the practical, day-to-day core of a good life, of everything we do, and of most of what we teach.
Your Personalized Spiritual Way of the Universe
For those individuals of a spiritual nature, we also honor your open-ended search for the origin of the universe, your true identity, and the meaning of your life.
"The Way of the Universe" introduces a new form of personalized spirituality we call Universe Spirituality (also known as Evolution Spirituality in our older materials). Universe Spirituality provides a universal, science-grounded, life-affirming set of values and practices.
Universe Spirituality contains sub-influences from Open Source Spirituality, Eco-Spirituality, and Meta-Spirituality. Universe. These sub-influences reflect the growing global movement toward personalized spirituality versus traditional authoritarian religions
Universe Spirituality conscientiously avoids current spiritual and religious pathologies, contradictions, outdated or unhealthy dogma, and abuses while still preserving the best values and wisdom from those traditions.
When achieved in healthy ways, the benefits of a healthy, science-grounded, personal spiritual life can also profoundly contribute to furthering one's search for the best answers to life's most important questions, such as one's place in the universe, one's, one's purpose in life, one's true and deepest identity, and the optimal way to live successfully with others.
Why does The Way of the Universe also include the metaphysics option for personalized spiritual exploration?
Roy Bhaskar, the famous Oxford "philosopher of science," stated in his breakthrough work on Critical Realism that, in numerous ways, science would be far better served by adopting an "open systems" approach toward new areas of exploration that do not yet yield themselves to scientific experimentation, methodology, and falsification.
The new "Way of the Universe" on this website values Bhaskar's valid insights into open-system science. Therefore, The Way of the Universe, as a science-grounded philosophy, must also honor all personal open-system inquiries into spiritual possibilities as areas that current science cannot yet prove or disprove. We hold this position to honor and reflect the truth of the open-system Critical Realism that Roy Bhaskar demonstrated was essential to all rational scientific inquiry and factual presentation.
Being an open system does not mean that everything is the same or accepted without reality testing. Testing starts with determining that the new spiritual information, ideas, or processes are life-affirming, not some past spiritual or religious pathology, destructive contradiction, outdated dogma, or abuse.
Introduction to the ideas and practices of Universe Spirituality
Science and personal spirituality can coexist and can empower each other. When a person's spirituality is grounded in the realities of the universe and science, it offers benefits far beyond those of traditional religious beliefs, ideologies, and dogma. The new manifestation of science-grounded spirituality that we call Universe Spirituality transcends yet encompasses the best of all previous spiritual and religious movements while avoiding their worst.
The principles of Progressive Evolution (which are the core of Universe Spirituality) work to help "guide" and align your life with the great evolutionary flow and deepest success patterns of the universe. This Great Evolutionary Flow continually benefits the whole while doing whatever it can to improve the individual's well-being.
When recognized and valued, this guiding support from the universe's natural evolutionary processes will greatly assist you in developing life's most important values and qualities within your character and the success that those values and qualities will naturally bring.
We invite you to explore the possibilities of a dynamic, expanding, healthy, and universal spirituality by reading the following:
(The links below may take you to our older website while we are still under construction.)
What is the definition of evolution science and evolutionary science?
What general benefits can one expect to receive from the science-grounded Universe Spirituality? (B)
What science-grounded hope does Evolution Spirituality offer because it is derived in significant part from Evolution 2.0? (B)
How and why is evolutionary science the core foundation of this new Universe Spirituality, and this evolutionary emergence in spirituality? (B)
What does the balanced integration of science and spirituality mean in Universe Spirituality? (B)
What is the Universe Spirituality's Science-Grounded Genesis Story? (B)
What is the Relationship Between Universe Spirituality and Evolution 2.0? (B)
Does evolution have a progressive direction, and why is it critical to understanding how to create a successful and meaningful secular and spiritual life? (For information on what progressive evolution is, click here.) (I) (A)
What is the Universe Evolutionary Worldview's Relationship with Universe Spirituality
What is the summary overview of the Universe Evolutionary Worldview? (B)
Why is the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview so important to Universe Spirituality? (B)
Why is the Universe Evolutionary Worldview so Important to Our Future? (B)
Neo-Scientism at Universe Spirit
Anyone at Universe Spirit can choose and practice any form of personal spirituality they value, or choose to have and practice no personal spirituality or religion.
Universe Spirit holds or promotes no official religion. In part, this is because of the many historical problems, abuses, and irrational, destructive, and conflict-generating behavior of many organized religions.
In general, you will be a good fit at Universe Spirit if you are of a spiritual nature and if your current individual spiritual practices and beliefs are found on the third or fourth level defined in Fowler's Four Levels of Religious or Spiritual Faith. If your beliefs and practices are within Fowler's Four Levels of Religious or Spiritual Faith, you will most likely be very comfortable within our eco-community models.
(Click here to learn about Fowler's third and fourth religious and spiritual development levels.)
In all forms of personal spirituality potentially present in the Universe, Spirit, rationality, and the proven facts of science will always override personal individual faith, beliefs, dogma, and opinions, whether spiritual or not. In other words, healthy, balanced spiritual faith, beliefs, and opinions should always align naturally with the realities of science and rationality.
Or, as Saint Thomas Aquinas so famously said, "If a faith belief contradicts reality, then that faith belief is wrong."
Some members of Universe Spirit have adopted the Universe Spirituality metaphysics, a new form of Neo-Scientism grounded in the new Universe Evolutionary Worldview. Within the Universe Spirituality, you will also find many secular, traditional, modern, and evolutionary spiritual values. Universe Spirit also supports the principles and practices of Eco-Spirituality because of its applicability to our rapidly deteriorating environment.
No one will be excluded from the Universe Spirit community for not holding the Neo-Scientism, Universe Spirituality philosophy, or the principles of Eco-Spirituality. But, if your current religious or spiritual behaviors and actions strongly conflict with the values of the Universe Spirit community model and our principles of healthy spiritual practices described here and on this page in a similarly titled section, Universe Spirit will not be for you.
Furthermore, while Universe Spirit will protect an individual's right to have opinions and beliefs about anything, spiritual or otherwise, and without interference, behaviors arising from those opinions or beliefs are entirely subject to open community examination and limitation.
In many ways, at Universe Spirit, we also support the principles of a new and emerging Neo-Scientism as the basis of our philosophy of acceptable spiritual beliefs and practices within the community. Neo-scientism holds that science and scientific methodology are the best means of discovering objective truth about the world and reality. Accordingly, they provide a rational basis for any form of self-chosen personal spiritual inquiry and development.
Science demonstrates through an independently repeatable and verifiable methodology, the reality of reality, or what can be widely agreed upon by rational individuals as reality. History has repeatedly shown us that things go horribly wrong whenever a spiritual or religious practice or group loses touch with reality. Instead of healthy personal and personalized spiritual practices, we get destructive cults, authoritarian delusional religious leaders, and massive religious abuses and pathologies.
Neo-Scientism is far more than the closed classical definition of Scientism found here. Neo-scientism strongly includes the critical realist work of the philosopher Roy Bhaskar, particularly his concept that science (and the social sciences) must always function in an open system. This new open-systems concept would allow undiscovered or yet-to-be-proven possibilities outside science's standard methodology and falsification processes. Neo-Scientism aligns with Baskar's view of current science as an incomplete, ongoing process of increasing probabilities rather than absolute certainties.
Neo-scientism's open-system science principles allow for individual exploration of the many numinous and metaphoric possibilities of contemplating the mysteries of the universe and its origin, understanding the unknown Great Mystery, and all of the other great existential questions of existence and life, while still using the best of science and rationality as grounding points.
The good news of Neo-Scientism is that, when applied to a personally chosen spiritual or religious setting, it and rationality help prevent the group from being harmed by dangerous or harmful beliefs, faith revelations, dogma, practices, and leaders.
Classical Scientism at Universe Spirit
Classical Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best way to render truth about the world and reality. Classical scientism requires rationality. Rationality is based on the concept of reason, defined as the capacity to consciously apply logic to draw valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth.
Although we feel that scientism offers the best way to arrive at the truth about the world and reality, we do not believe it is the only possible way. In alignment with the work of the philosopher Roy Bhaskar, we adopt an open-systems approach to science and the scientific method. In the future, new ways may be discovered to determine the truth about the world.
The previous statements about our Neo-scientism imply that the Neo-scientism (personalized spirituality) found on our website does not rely upon faith, opinions, dogma, authoritarian declarations by religious authorities, revelations, spirit channeling, miracles, or beliefs that are not science-grounded or personal. The history of religion is overflowing with destructive and continuous abuses and pathologies surrounding these non-science-grounded beliefs or requirements of past or current religions. Despite these exclusions, personalized spirituality can be far more meaningful, productive, and beneficial than any traditional religious organization or practice.
As one comes to understand Neo-scientism, it will become a parent we are not trying to start a religion or become a religious organization in any form. We provide information on a healthy, science-grounded personalized spirituality solely for the educational benefit of our members who are also of a spiritual nature.
Here are some important additional factors to consider on this religion and spirituality topic:
1. Unfortunately, many beliefs and practices in today's or past religions harm or impede the creation of a sustainable, just, and equitable world for ALL. Therefore, self-selecting spiritual members should continually explore how to incorporate the safe and healthy values and ideas of existing religions into their personal spirituality, while also transcending the no longer applicable, unjust, biased, or unworkable religious practices, values, dogma, and beliefs from humanity's vast spiritual heritage.
2. Early on, Universe Spirit always educates every community member about actions of members or community managers that could harm individuals or the community by introducing or using these manipulative and harmful religious or spiritual practices within the community. We also proactively educate our members about the long-established principles of healthy spiritual practices, which apply to all religions and spiritual practices.
3. We allow any individual of any spiritual denomination to join our community. Likewise, any humanist, agnostic, or atheist may join. But if their current religious or spiritual practices or secular actions strongly conflict with our community's values, it will not work out well. For example, if a potential member's spirituality/religion is intolerant, authoritarian, or claims to be "is the only true religion," or requires them to aggressively recruit and preach to others, Universe Spirituality will not be a good fit.
4. Small communities with religious or spiritual affiliations frequently adopt one or more destructive cultish behaviors. To safeguard against this, educate every community member about actions by members or community managers that could harm individuals or the community, ensuring all members understand these fundamental tactics of destructive cults.
5. Universe One will protect an individual's right to have opinions and beliefs about anything, spiritual or otherwise, and without interference, behaviors springing from those opinions or beliefs are entirely subject to community examination and limitation.
Click here for what is meant by Eco-Spirituality.
Click here to learn more about the concepts of Meta-Spirituality.
Click here for a detailed explanation of the Universe Spirituality philosophy.
One of the most important goals for the Universe Spirit community is to help evolve a new universal form of personalized, healthy meta-spirituality that does not separate people from one another or foment religious conflicts among different peoples. That has been a significant sub-goal of the Universe Spirit organization for decades.
Much work remains to fully refine a workable, tested vision of a personalized universal meta-spirituality that would be hugely beneficial to the world. All Universe Spirit members will be invited to volunteer to help create, test, and refine this new vision.
Please sign up for our email list here or by clicking the image below.
You will receive Universe Spirit Community news, events, and updates.
Important upgrading note, we are still in the process of moving 25 years of all of the old Universe Spirit website materials (about 1,000 pages) to this new Universe Spirit website. During this upgrade process, we will eventually move all of the new Way of the Universe philosophy materials still on this universe Spirit website to its own website. We hope to be fully done with this extensive upgrade by January 2027.
For all the important information relating to this massive upgrade, click here. At some point we strongly recommend reading this detailed explanation of the massive upgrade going on right now so that you also understand our strategy and some of the confusion you might be experiencing with all types of edited in an unedited pages, broken links, links going to our old website, and sometimes conflicting terminology.
Showing 1 reaction