Where Does the Organism End?

Yesterday I was sitting on my couch drinking some lion’s mane tea with honey, reading a portion of my book The Joy Experiments, when I had the strange feeling that someone was watching me. I looked around and found the culprit. It was my 10 year old Australian Cattle Dog, Cash. He was just staring at me, and naturally I started staring back. Seeing him for what I believe him to be, my trusted companion who has been with me my entire adult life. He moved apartments with me, lived through different relationships alongside me, moved into homes with me, and watched different career changes. But he is also a friend and family member. That is how I perceive him. But how would he perceive me? Would I be a hero, a villain, the strange entity that gives him pets, or the servant that provides him meals and carries him to the bedroom when his arthritis flares up? To him I might simply be the creature that lifts him onto the bed and gives him a Tempur-Pedic mattress and blanket to sleep on. Whatever his perception is becomes his reality, and whatever my perception of him becomes mine. That thought reminds me of an old tale.

The Mountain That Moves

The story goes that on top of a mountain lived a wise man. Travelers came from miles away asking questions they believed impossible to answer.

One visitor traveled a long distance to reach the wise man and asked him a simple question.

“What is the meaning of life?”

The wise man closed his eyes, thought for a moment, and replied with a question of his own.

“To help you understand the meaning of life, you must first explain how mountains move.”

The man was confused.

A mountain moving?

Mountains are symbols of permanence a status of fortitude. Things move around mountains.

But the man tried.

Maybe erosion moves the mountain.

The wise man said could be an answer.

Then the visitor thought maybe the trees move when the wind blows. The leaves shift and the branches sway.

The wise man said could be an answer.

Then the visitor mentioned the animals that move across the mountain. But then paused, thinking it sounded foolish. In their mind those creatures were separate from the mountain itself.

The wise man smiled and said “That can also be an answer.”

Now frustrated, the man asked if everything could be an answer.

The wise man explained that the movement of the mountain is continuous. A mountain never stops moving. The only thing that stops the mountain from moving is our perception.

The visitor protested. These explanations might technically count as movement, but mountains still appear still.

The wise man responded that movement is all the mountain knows just because we cannot see the movement does not mean it is not happening. The mountain, like everything else in this universe, is made up of tiny atoms that contain electrons, and those electrons are always moving. Thus the mountain is always moving. That the mountain only moves and never stops the only thing that stops it is our perception.

Perception and the Organism

We are curated by what we experience and perceive in our lifetimes. Perception often becomes reality. I like this story because it attacks the premise of what something truly is. What is a mountain, where does it begin, and where does it end? In the story the only thing separating those definitions is perception. The wise man sees the individual atom as still part of the mountain, while the visitor tries to divide the mountain into boundaries. That leads to another question. Where does an organism begin, and where does it end?

With mushrooms what we see above the ground is called the fruiting body. A fly agaric, psilocybin cubensis, pink oyster mushrooms, these are the parts we pick and eat. But the mushroom itself is not just that visible structure. Beneath the soil lives a vast web of mycelium. This underground network, sometimes referred to as the Wood Wide Web, connects organisms in the forest in ways that resemble communication and cooperation. Nutrients move, signals move, trees and fungi interact imagine Eywa from Avatar as the protagonist move the ground lights up beneath in response (BTW The 2nd and 3rd were way too long). From above the ground it can look like separate mushrooms, but below the ground it is often one connected network, one organism.

Take Armillaria ostoyae, sometimes called the Humongous Fungus. It lives in Oregon and covers roughly 2,385 acres, about 3.8 square miles. Most of it cannot even be seen because the majority of the organism exists underground, spreading through mycelial threads. What we see above the soil are simply the fruiting bodies, expressions of something much larger. So again the question appears. Where does the organism actually begin, and where does it end?

The Human Web

That question makes me wonder something slightly uncomfortable. Is that what I am to you? Is that what I am to Cash? I perceive myself as an individual, but maybe that individuality is simply the visible expression of something larger that cannot be seen. In some African traditions, ancestor reverence carries the belief that individuals are extensions of those who came before them. Genetically speaking I am a continuation of my ancestors. My children will be a continuation of my DNA, and their children after them basically a bunch of clones of each other. So perhaps what we call individuality is just a temporary expression of a much longer biological thread.

Maybe we are the fruiting bodies of a much larger human network. If that is the case then individuality might be closer to perception than reality, just like the man who believed the mountain stood still because he refused to look deeper into what it was made of. The concept of self begins to feel fragile when you examine it like this. Maybe our “selves” are not as separate as we like to believe. Maybe they simply run deeper than we usually look. The mushroom above the soil is not the organism. It is simply the visible part we initially perceive. The real organism is the network underground. So if that is true in the forest, I cannot help but wonder if something similar is happening with us. Maybe the version of me sitting on the couch drinking lion’s mane tea while Cash stares at me is just the visible part of something much larger. Maybe the reason it is so difficult to answer where the organism begins or ends is because the answer might be the same one the wise man hinted at on the mountain.

It never really stops.

We just stop looking.