The following is an excerpt from "The Book of Secrets" by Deepak Chopra ... This is not an attempt to derail this thread but to blend two viewpoints that so far seem in opposition. I could do this in my own words stating my own belief but honestly he does a better job than I would, my metaphors can be a stretch at times

Secret #7 Every life is spiritual

One of the peculiarities of modern life is that people violently disagree over religious beliefs and then go on to lead similar lives. Nietzsche's famous remark the God is dead should be changed to God is optional. If the government kept round the clock surveillance on those that felt they were abiding by divine law and those who never gave a thought about God's rule book, I imagine the sum total of virtue and vice, love and hate, peace and violence, would look exactly the same. If anything, the balance of intolerance and lovelessness would probably tilt toward the most loudly religious people in any society.

I'm not mentioning this to be contentious. Rather, it's as if the universe has a sense of humor, since at a deep level it's impossible not t lead a spiritual life. You and I are as deeply engaged in making a world as a saint. You can't be fired from the job of creating a world, which is the essence of spirituality. And you can't resign from the job even when you refuse to show up. The universe is living through you at this moment. With or without the belief in God, the chain of events leading from silent awareness to physical reality remains intact. The operating system of the universe applies to everyone alike, and it works along principles that do not require your cooperation.

However, if you decide to lead a consciously spiritual life, a change occurs. The principles of the operating system, which means the rules of creation, become personal. We've already touched many of the rules of creation (sorry I am not typing the whole book you'll have to look those up for yourself) Lets take a look at how we can line up the universal with the personal.

Universal
1. The universe is a mirror of consciousness
Personal
1. The events in your life reflect who you are.

Nothing in these statements smacks of religion; there isn't any spiritual vocabulary involved. Yet this first principle is the whole basis for saying that religion (whose root words in Latin mean "to tie back") unites the Creator with his creation. The physical world mirrors a mind; it carries intention and intelligence in every atom.

Universal
2. Awareness is collective. We all draw it from a common source.
Personal
2. The people in your life reflect aspects of yourself.

In this principle, we see the beginnings of all myth and archetypes, all heroes and quests. the collective psyche shares a level of awareness that goes beyond individuals. When you see other people as aspects of yourself, you are actually seeing the faces of mythical types. We are one human being wearing countless masks. When all the masks are stripped off, what remains is essence, the soul, the divine spark.

Universal
3. Awareness expands within itself.
Personal
3. Whatever you pay attention to will grow.

In one reality, consciousness creates itself, which is the same as saying that God is inside his creation. There is no place outside creation for divinity to stand - omnipresence means that if any place exists, God is there. But whereas God can be attentive to an infinitude of worlds, human beings use attention selectively. We put it in one place and take it away from another. By paying attention we add the creative spark, and that part of our experience, either positive or negative, will grow. Violence begets violence but so too does love beget love.

Universal
4. Consciousness creates by design.
Personal
4. Nothing is random - your life is full of signs and symbols.

The war between science and religion is old and nearly exhausted, but on one point, neither side is willing to budge. Religion sees design in nature as proof of a creator. Science sees randomness in nature as proof of no design at all. Yet, there has never been a culture based upon chaos, including the subculture of science. Consciousness looks at the universe and sees design everywhere, even if the spaces in between look disorganized and random. For the individual, it's impossible not to see order - every aspect of life from the family outward is based upon it. Your brain is set up to perceive patterns (even an inkblot look like some kind of image, no matter how hard you try not to see one) because it took patterns of cells to make a brain. The mind is ultimately a machine for making meaning, even when it flirts with meaningless, as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have done so well.

Universal
5. Physical laws operate efficiently, with least effort.
Personal
5. At any given moment, the universe is giving you the best results possible.

Nature loves efficiency, which is very odd for something supposedly working at random. When you drop a ball, it falls straight down without taking unexpected detours. When two molecules with a potential for bonding meet, they always bond - there is no room for indecision. this expenditure of least energy, also called the law of least effort, covers human beings too. Certainly our bodies cannot escape the efficiency of the chemical process going on in each cell, so it is probable that our whole being is wrapped up in the same principle. Cause and effect aren't just linked; they are linked in the most efficient way possible. this argument also applies to personal growth - the idea is that everyone is doing the best he or she can from his or her own level of consciousness.

Universal
6. Simple forms grow into more complex forms.
Personal
6. Your inner awareness is always evolving.

This principle is baffling to the religious and scientific alike. Many religious people believe that God created the world in his image, which implies that creation has nowhere to go after that (except perhaps to devolve from its initial perfection). Scientists accept that entrophy in inexorable, entrophy being the tendency of energy to dissipate. Thus, in both systems it's a problem that DNA is a billion times more complex than the first primordial atoms, that the human cortex has vastly increased in size over the past 50,000 years, that life appeared out of inert chemicals, and that new thoughts appear every day out of the blue. Entropy still makes us grow old; it still causes cars to rust and stars to grow cold and die. But the drive of evolution is equally inexorable. Nature has decided to evolve, whatever our opinions about that may be.

Universal
7. Knowledge takes in more and more of the world
Personal
7. The direction of life is from duality to unity.

According to a commonly held idea, ancient cultures saw a unified creation, while we moderns look on a fragmented and divided world. The decline of faith has been blamed for this, as has the absence of myth, traditions and social bonding. But I believe the opposite is true: The ancient way of understanding could barely describe a sliver of all the phenomena in Nature, while physics today is on the verge of a "theory of everything." The eminent physicist John Wheeler makes a crucial point when he says that before Einstein, human beings thought they were looking at Nature "out there," as if through a plate glass window,trying to figure out what external reality was doing. Thanks to Einstein, we realize that we are embedded in Nature; the observer changes reality by the very act of observation. Therefore, despite a widespread feeling of psychological alienation (the result of technology's outstripping our ability to keep meaning alive), the duality of man and Nature is shrinking with each successive generation.

Universal
8. Evolution develops survival traits that perfectly match the environment.
Personal
8. If you open yourself to the force of evolution, it will carry you where you want to go.

Adaptation is a miraculous thing because it proceeds by quantum leaps. When some ancestral dinosaurs developed feathers,the hit upon an adaptation that would be perfect for winged flight. The cells on the outside of their bodies, which were hard and scaly, were useful as armor, but could not contribute to soaring aloft. It is as if evolution set itself a new problem and then took a creative leap to get there. The old use of scales was abandoned for a new world of winged flight (and those same scales would take a leap in a different direction when they turned into hair, allowing the development of furry mammals). Science and religion both worry about this. Science doesn't like the notion that evolution knows where it's going; Darwinian mutations are supposed to be random. Religion doesn't like the notion that God's perfect creation changes when something new is needed. Yet this is a case where explanations have taken a backseat. Without a doubt, the physical world adapts itself by creative leaps that take place at a deeper level - call this level genetic or conscious, as you will.

Universal
9. Chaos serves evolution
Personal
9. The fragmented mind cannot get you to unity, but you have to use it along the way.

Swirling chaos is a reality, but so is order and growth. Which is dominant? Science has yet to arrive at a conclusion because more than 90 percent of the universe is composed of mysterious dark matter. Since it has yet to be observed, it's an open question as to what the fate of the universe might be. Religion is firmly on the side of order, for the simple reason that God made the world out of chaos. According to science, there is a delicate balance between creation and destruction, with billions of years having elapsed in the maintenance of that balance. However, since cosmic forces on a huge scale haven't been able to rip apart the delicate fabric that wove the beginnings of life, a reasonable person might conclude that evolution is using chaos the way a painter uses the jumbled colors in his box. On the personal level, you can't reach unity while you're ruled by the whirling thoughts and impulses in your head, but still you can use you mind to find its own source. Unity is the hidden purpose that evolution is working toward, using the fragmented mind as a tool along the way. Like the cosmos, the surface of the mind looks chaotic, but there is a tidal pool of progress at work beneath.

Universal
10. Many invisible levels are enveloped in the physical world.
Personal
10. You are living in many dimensions at once; the appearance of being trapped in space and time is an illusion.

With all their hearts, the early quantum pioneers, including Einstein, did not want to create new dimensions beyond time and space. They wanted to explain the universe as it appeared. Yet the current super-string theories that descended from Einstein use at least eleven dimensions to explain a visible world. religion has always held that God inhabits a world beyond the five senses; science needs the same transcendent realm to explain how particles separated by billions of light years could act as mirror twins, how light can behave as both particle and wave, and how black holes can transfer matter beyond the clutches of gravity and time. Ultimately, the existence of multi dimensions is irrefutable. At the simplest level, there had to be somewhere that space and time came from during the Big Bang, and by definition that somewhere can't be in time and space. Accepting that you, as a citizen of a multidimensional universe, are a multidimensional being is far from mystical, then. It's the best hypothesis one can make given the facts as we know them.

These ten principles arguably represent ways to conceive of the operating system that keeps one reality going. In truth, the whole thing is inconceivable, and our brains aren't set up to operate on inconceivable lines. They can adapt, however, to living unconsciously. Every creature on earth is subject to the laws of nature; only humans think,"what does this matter to me?" If you opt out and decide to live as if duality is real, you won't see that these ten principles have any bearing on you. The cosmic joke is that the same laws will continue to uphold your life even though you don't recognize them.

So long story short ... mostly because I am extremely tired form a 12 hour school day and now far too much typing ...

Yes we are all connected, in many ways, and these connections are mystical, and they are scientifically proven.
Yes we create, not just our own reality, but are co creators with each other, in this unified reality. If you still doubt that, than try this...
Prove to me that the material world actually exists without an observer! (any neurologist will tell you that it is not possible to do so...)
You want proof of a creator? (aka God) then touch yourself and you have felt God.
Religion and science are moving toward each other and yet still battling for supremacy or legitimacy over the other...

Don't like how Deepak or I or other spiritual orators word things? than check out quantum physics ...heres a great place to start: watch the movie "What the bleep do we know."

And above all ... I am not trying to convince you of anything, believe what you want, I just like provide another way to look at things

Besides with my love of Tai Chi I have to admit a bias toward Taoism, which is one of those silly fairy tales I suppose, that lines up perfectly, in my truth, with all thats written above.

I hope I have provided you, or more honestly your divine spark, something to help find balance in this apparent opposition.

Respectfully,
Tantric