I know a lot of people have a hard time getting their head around all this stuff, but it is actually true.
In the following 30 minute video Dave Cullen does a good job of highlighting it all. Cullen does get a bit cosmic during the final minutes of the video. Having said that, as someone who is not the least bit religious, I too have always seen this as a spiritual battle…
Yes, the Christian doctrine stuff detracts a bit; though, as you say Rob, it IS a spiritual issue. Just important not to let the crooked doctrines of the big Christian power machines - Catholic, Orthodox, whatever - usurp that insight.
This guy’s idea that only - ever-holy 
- humankind have spirits, and my beloved dog companions don’t, they’re just ‘spiritless beasts’, is such exquisite-theology tosh. Spirit suffuses all things, and concentrates particularly in anything that lives. Anyone with a well-cultivated shamanic aptitude can tell you that, from their direct personal experience! If in doubt, DMT it, and see for yourself, pronto… 
Personally, I get much comfort from the - obviously front-running - idea that our already-manifesting dearth of fancy minerals, and - above all - of sources of abundant, cheap, easy-get energy, will sweep away all the sci-fi delusions of the Schwaboids. The Long Descent will be something of a saviour for those - much fewer - humans who get through the upcoming spontaneous population-reduction end-game, that’s tooling up right now to resolve - naturally - our current overshoot episode.*
By that time our fewer numbers, the perforcedly much technologically-simpler lives that we will be bound to lead in future, and the draining and scattering of all the Earth’s one-time-only endowment of non-renewable resources, which feckless splurging we’ve been pursuing diligently these several centuries, climaxing right now… All of this will wipe away the sick dreams of the transhumanists.
Then too, I imagine, the many, many ancient-wisdom traditions that predate, and that will outlast, the big-machine power-religion rackets, will be making their inevitable re-appearance in the survivor societies. Inevitable, because the shamanic function - the direct, unmediated experience of spirit, the numinous, will be back in daily use; because it’s a perennial spring. All peoples, in all eras, everywhere, have always had these encounters. It still happens universally right now, down below the awareness-horizon of the dessicated intellectual dreamworld of the technocrats, amongst we common deplorables. And it seems inevitable that that will continue.
The sick madness of the current time - the scientismists’ horrendous singularity fantasy - will pass. But life, spirit-suffused life, and with luck even human life, will continue…
*I suspect that the resolution of our current overshoot won’t be particularly MadMax-ish. Doubtless there’ll be local famines, plagues, failed-state regions, and such punctuating the period. But the main vector of the Gaian resolution of the overshoot is likely, I suspect, to be rather unobtrusive: a quiet place-change of maybe a couple of percentage points between our current global-aggregate birth-rate, and our current global-aggregate death-rate; scarcely noticeable most of the time, but leading to a re-integration of human numbers into the thriving global ecosphere some time in the next century, probably. In those national societies which are already becoming aware of the aging-demographic problem - Japan and Britain, for example - the process is already creeping into place, I think.
Rhis, with regard to our pets, the ‘dumb animals’, I live with a half-wild cat who I named Herricka (after the 16th century poet - it’s a long story). Herricka was born 11 years ago now, at the back of the barns. I knew her when she was a very young kitten, and then after a year she adopted me.
Anyhows, Herricka has now been with me for ten years. I have quite a big desk and Herricka will often sit on it and watch me while I do stuff on my computer (not least ranting and raving on the internet!). I live in a very old property, more than 400 years old, predating the French Revolution.
My cat will sometimes look up, at the old beams and the walls, and it has her full attention. I follow Herricka’s intensive stare and I can’t see anything.
I should say that whilst I wouldn’t describe myself as psychic, I do maybe have something similar in me (whatever that is). Despite living in a very old property, with a lot of history, I feel very comfortable here.
My dear little cat feels the same way.
But my dear little cat does see stuff that I can’t see.
Look at this indescribably-beautiful, utterly lovable cat, Rob; and let some fool tell you she has no soul! No wonder the man kisses her; and she begs for his caresses. You can see, I’m sure, why I like so much Tom Campbell’s assertion: that we’re here to grow towards love…:
Gawd, Rhis, that is amazing footage, and I recommend everyone to take a look.
But remember, kiddies, don’t try this at home (or whatever the phrase is).
That tiger, if it gets stroppy, could quite easily rip off the guy’s arm or head.
I do find it fascinating with cats, though, whether it’s my little half-wild cat or one of the big cats, that they all have much the same behavior.
Herricka waves a paw.
Nice to get a Herricka update. Our mog frequently does the staring at the wall Zen thing, bless him. There’s a particular spot near kitchen where he always pauses and gazes fixedly. As a lover of “Dreamies” cat treats (kitty crack we call them) I assume he lost one near there ages ago but hasn’t forgotten it.
Regardless of my rationalisations, he and Herricka and Rhis’s companions and every cow in every field has something that transcends the corporeal. I do worry that all the electromagnetic fields and radiation that suffuse our atmosphere suppress or distort this animus. @GKH has this covered for us, I think.
No worries, K. Regard the animus as being not in this reality frame, where electro-magnetic radiation and its alleged ‘fields’ exist. The central core of our individual beings - our souls - exist outside this reality frame.
The metaphor that Tom Campbell offers is of a multi-player computer game: The characters, landscapes, etc. are within the reality frame of the game world. But this doesn’t include the players, their individual computers, or the main rendering engine that sends each computer it’s individually-tailored information-package to construct the game-world reality on-screen for its player.
Interpreting, that means that Big Mind, and we individual immortal souls who are all still-connected protusions of it, are not in the holodeck material world in which we run our avatars: these physical bodies, each with its own built-in ego-personality, which we adopt like actors taking on roles, for the duration of the avatar’s lifetime.
Goes for cats too, of course, and any ensouled life-form. The destructions, idiocies and disasters created on the holodeck - where all objects are virtual wraiths anyway - stay there. Only the soul-shaping experiences of playing that avatar stays with the souls, in mind-space. Virtual cats in this virtual reality may suffer many distresses. But the soul of the cat only collects, and then transfigures, the memory. No actual damage done. Simply the experience collected in memory, transfigured, and woven into the soul’s evolving work - lowering entropy and growing towards love… That’s Tom’s account, anyway. Pleases me! 
I really will try to push Big TOE up my reading pile. It sounds quite similar to the Holographic Universe stuff (I forget the author but D.Icke rehashed these ideas in The Answer).
Disclaimer: based on the first 80 or so pages before I got distracted.
Karen, meet the neighbours. This photo was taken from our garden fence (I can’t get this board to upload an image, so to see the cute cows you’ll have to click on the non-displayed image below)…
http://www.localradio.fr/Charentecows01b.jpg
They have pink eyes and are very friendly. If you hold your hand out you will get a raspy lick. The cows sometimes scare the gite guests when the cows charge up to the garden fence. I have to tell the guests that the cows are just curious and won’t hurt anyone.
Absolutely beautiful. And cows are smart too, I have seen them look both ways before crossing a road.
Rob, we too have cows in the field adjoining our gite. When the electric fence first went in one or two got a jolt and the whole herd jumped. Now, even the new born will graze with their heads below the wire, but never seem to touch the fence. Maybe it’s in their global conciousness.
