Low-level randomness: this is, to me, one of the most interesting things. If there’s too much randomness in the system, then you can’t get any self-organization. You just have molecules bouncing in a gas. Too little, though—you might get some self-organization, but if the environment changes, how can it change how it’s going to respond and self-organize in response to the changing environment? It can’t. Then it’s become—without any randomness—then, essentially, it’s become like a machine: always doing exactly the same thing. So you need this low level of randomness in the system which allows for the exploration of new possibilities.
Whether something appears like a thing or a phenomenon arising from smaller things depends on the level of scale you’re observing it. Is it an ant or is it a community of cells? Is it a colony or is it the individual ants? And so that depends on the scale of observation. And so you can look up in the sky and see a murmuration of starlings and it looks like this thing, this shape. But if you know what it is, you’re not puzzled. You go: “Oh, that’s a bunch of birds.” But if you go to the bird itself and look at that closely, that’s just a flock of cells self-organizing to look like a bird. And my finger pointing at the birds looks like a finger at this level of scale, but it’s just the community of cells that’s organizing itself to look like a finger pointing upwards.
Cells self-organize into bodies, which self-organize into communities.
Where is your boundary? At this level of scale, my boundary is my skin and we are separate beings bounded by our skins. But at the cellular level, every time you have shaken someone’s hand, hugged them, kissed them today, you’ve exchanged some of your microbiome. And, in fact, if you live with anyone at home (including your pets), you share a single living microbiome that’s a single entity. Within a few days everyone’s microbiome sort of flows into everyone else’s. So at the cellular level, your boundary is actually kind of the room you’re in.
At the atomic level there’s no atom in your body that you didn’t eat, drink, or breathe from the planet. So we usually think of ourselves as living beings that sit on the planet, but it’s just as reasonable to say—complementarity—that we are the planet that has self-organized its material into beings that think of themselves as separate.
We don’t live in the universe. The universe isn’t an empty box; it’s not a place in which we reside. We are, in fact, the universe: emanating from its substance, within itself.
If we are all part of one boundless body, what’s that like? In the realm of the boundless body, there’s nothing to give and nothing to receive. Compassion: I see someone’s hand stuck to a hot stove, I think, “Oh, the poor person!” And I go pull their hand off. But I had to think about it and make a judgment and a decision. My hand gets stuck to the stove, there’s no moment of thought because I’m one being. If you have this kind of wisdom as a deep experience, then compassion is just what arises; because everything is just you.