To fully understand the Universal Mind, I had to realize that there are three fundamental illusions that most of us use to navigate this world: the illusion of individuality, the illusion of time, and the illusion of free will. They’re necessary constructs, useful fictions that allow us to function in our daily lives. But they are fictions nonetheless—and recognizing them as such opens the door to a profoundly different way of experiencing reality.

The first of the great illusions is the illusion of identity.

Have you ever paused to truly contemplate your identity? When you think of who you are as an individual, what comes to mind? Is it your physical form—your hands, your arms, your hair? Perhaps you consider your clothes, or if you’re near-sighted like me, your glasses or contact lenses? Or does your sense of self extend beyond your physical body, encompassing your job, your family, your home, and other aspects of your life?

Let’s break down this concept of identity, beginning with the most tangible aspect: our physical body.

Generally, when we think of ourselves as individuals, we think about our body. It seems straightforward enough—this body is me, and I am this body. But even this apparently simple concept becomes murky upon closer examination.

Consider your body for a moment. Is it made up solely of the living cells created from your DNA? If so, what about the parts of your body that aren’t living, like your hair’s split ends or your nails? We trim and cut these parts without much concern, yet the thought of cutting off a finger would be an entirely different matter. This simple observation already begins to blur the lines of what we consider to be “us” and what parts we are willing to discard or keep.

The complexity deepens when we consider the dynamic nature of our physical form. Our bodies are not static entities but constantly changing systems. As we process energy through daily activities, matter and energy flow in and through us ceaselessly. In fact, the atoms and molecules that compose our bodies will completely change multiple times throughout our lives. By the time you finish reading this very sentence, at least some of the molecules in your body will have changed as you breathe new ones in and old ones out.

This constant flux challenges our notion of a fixed, unchanging physical identity. If the very matter that composes us is in constant transition, what does that mean for our sense of self?

But the story of our physical identity becomes even more intriguing when we consider the microbiome—the vast community of microorganisms that call our body home. Prepare to be amazed: there are approximately 39 trillion microbes living in and on our bodies. To put this into perspective, there are just as many bacteria, fungi, and viruses coexisting with us as there are human cells. As a proportion of our body mass, these tiny “invaders” make up about 1-3 percent of our weight.

You mean to tell me that I could be six pounds lighter if it weren’t for all these pesky bacteria and fungi living in me? Yep.

But these microorganisms aren’t just hitchhikers. They play crucial roles in our bodily functions, residing in our gut, up our noses, in our armpits, on our skin, and throughout our body. They aid in digestion, bolster our immune system, and even influence our mood and behavior. Interestingly, people living together in the same household tend to have similar microbes, not just because of the food they eat, but also due to shared exposure to the air, furniture, and surroundings that these microbes inhabit.

So let’s take a moment to truly absorb this: the human body—your body—the individual that you think of when you think of “you,” is actually a complex ecosystem. It’s not just your human DNA and organic matter, but also a thriving colony of other creatures and creations. Like all cell-based life, these microbes have their own unique DNA. They are living organisms in their own right, yet they are an integral part of you. In some ways, you are “Mother Earth” for 39 trillion life forms.

This realization prompts a profound question: where does the boundary of the individual begin and end? If our bodies are not solely “ours” but shared habitats for trillions of other organisms, how does this affect our understanding of our physical identity?

As we grapple with these questions, we find ourselves drawn to the nervous system. Think about it: we don’t lose sleep over a haircut because our nervous system ends at the hair root. Similarly, the nervous system generally aligns with the boundary just below our skin. Any severe damage to the nervous system, like losing a limb, feels like losing a part of ourselves.

This alignment between our sense of self and our nervous system is no coincidence. In fact, our sense of individuality can be understood as an evolutionary protective measure of our nervous system. Our sense of self extends to where our nervous system’s pain receptors are located. This makes perfect sense from a survival standpoint—we need to be acutely aware of and protective of the parts of us that can feel pain and potential damage.

This connection between our nervous system and our sense of self opens up fascinating possibilities. What would happen if we had the ability to extend that nervous system? Imagine if we could graft a pair of wings onto our back or fins onto our feet. Or perhaps, in a future melding of man and machine, we could extend our nervous system and pain receptors into a robotic body, multiplying our strength by multiple orders of magnitude. Our sense of identity would hypothetically change to include these new features once our nervous system was rewired to accept them.

In the future, we might extend our nervous system even further—into digital realms. Imagine connecting your consciousness directly to Instagram, the worldwide web, or yes, even the Matrix. You could argue this is already happening through our phones, but the bandwidth is limited. Data flows from screen to eye, from fingertip to touchscreen. A direct neural interface would increase that flow by orders of magnitude—thoughts transmitted instantaneously, information absorbed without the bottleneck of our senses.

Just imagine how our consciousness and sense of self will transform when our nervous system merges with computer systems. How does a computer perceive time? Does it experience feelings? Consciousness? Probably vastly different from how we do—and that difference will reshape our own perceptions.

This may sound like science fiction, perhaps even frightening, but I believe it’s inevitable.

But you don’t need advanced technology to experience the dissolution of these boundaries. Sometimes, events occur that temporarily alter or soften the rigid borders of our nervous system, offering us glimpses beyond the illusion of individuality. Strokes, for instance, can dramatically change a person’s experience of the boundaries between self and world. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who experienced a severe stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain, described feeling a profound sense of peace and oneness with the universe as her left hemisphere shut down. Near-death experiences often produce similar reports—people describing their consciousness expanding beyond their physical body, feeling connected to everything around them.

Psychedelic substances can produce similar effects by temporarily softening the rigid boundaries maintained by our nervous system. Compounds like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT appear to quiet the brain’s default mode network—the neural circuitry responsible for maintaining our sense of separate self. When this network quiets, the boundaries that normally define “me” versus “not me” become permeable. Users feel themselves merging with their surroundings, with other people, with the universe itself. This is precisely what happened to me at Bonnaroo—the rigid boundary maintained by my nervous system softened, and I experienced directly what had always been true: that my individuality was a useful fiction, and underneath it, I was everything.

As we explore the concept of identity, we begin to see that our sense of an individual unified consciousness is also the sum of many collective consciousnesses working in harmony. The left and right hemispheres of our brain, for instance, have distinct capabilities and even separate awarenesses, as revealed by split-brain studies conducted by Dr. Roger Sperry in the 1960s.

Sperry’s research on patients who had undergone corpus callosotomy—severing the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres—revealed something astonishing: when the connection between the brain’s hemispheres was severed, it appeared as though two separate streams of consciousness emerged. When an object was shown only to the left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere), patients could not name it verbally (a function typically controlled by the left hemisphere). However, they could identify the object by selecting it with their left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere).

These findings led to the idea that perhaps we all have two consciousnesses, one for each half of our brain, but because they share so much information and the bandwidth between them is so high, it’s impossible for us to recognize these distinct consciousnesses within our skull under normal circumstances.

But why stop at two? Could each lobe of the brain, each wrinkle of nerves and memories, each group of neurons and synapses be its own consciousness if we were able to somehow divide and separate the neurons of our brain?

Recent research increasingly suggests that this might indeed be the case. What we perceive as our singular consciousness might actually be the collective consciousness of all the different parts of our brain and nervous system. The amount of information passed through these individual systems is so high and fast that to us, the collective sum of all these different consciousnesses feels like one unified consciousness.

It’s like a symphony orchestra—each instrument plays its own part, but together they create a harmonious whole that we perceive as a single piece of music.

Similarly, our minds can be understood as a collaboration between different levels of awareness: the conscious mind, capable of rational thought and decision-making; the subconscious mind, processing emotions, memories, and intuitions; and the unconscious mind, governing bodily functions and instinctive responses. Each of these “minds” has its own form of awareness and functionality, yet we perceive them as a single, cohesive self.

This illusion of unity allows us to function effectively in the world, making decisions and navigating complex situations without being overwhelmed by the multitude of processes occurring within us.

Just as we are composed of multiple consciousnesses, we are also part of larger collective consciousnesses. Consider a simple example from daily life. When my wife and I wake up, we immediately and instinctively enter a routine. I wake up my daughters and get them dressed for school while she showers. Then we handover and she does the girls’ hair, and she prepares them breakfast while I shower. Finally, I brush their teeth and take them to school. We do this routine instinctively, without any direct communication between us. We each understand our role in the children’s morning routine.

In this simple example, we have developed a kind of shared consciousness around childcare. This concept extends further in long-term relationships. If you’ve been married for a long time, you’ve likely experienced countless ways in which you and your spouse instinctively become part of a shared consciousness. While you remain distinct individuals, you also become part of a new collective consciousness made up of both spouses.

This is why grieving the loss of a spouse can feel like losing a part of yourself. Because when you’re part of a collective consciousness, you actually do lose a part of yourself when that collective is disrupted, much like a patient who’s lost a limb.

The example of a couple as part of a collective consciousness might seem like a stretch, and in many ways it is, because the bandwidth of information exchange between two people is relatively low compared to the information flow within a single brain. You can talk back and forth to each other all day long, for decades, and the information shared between the two of you would never even come close to the information shared between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

However, advances in information technology are beginning to come close to replicating this level of information exchange. The internet, social media, and instant global communication are creating new forms of collective consciousness on a scale never before seen in human history. We’re increasingly becoming part of a global brain, sharing information, ideas, and experiences at an unprecedented rate.

Imagine for a moment, if our sense of self did not end at the edge of our nervous system. Where would it end? Would it extend to the objects closest to us that we are touching, the chair we sit on, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe? Or perhaps it would reach further, encompassing the people and places we influence—our loved ones, our workplaces, our communities.

What if our sense of self had no definitive boundary at all? Maybe, just maybe, you are not who you think you are. Maybe you are something profoundly greater.