Have you ever been entranced by a flock of birds flying in formation and wondered about their togetherness? Recently, I watched a documentary entitled “The Migration of Penguins.” These birds do not fly, but they know how to huddle together in defiance of the subzero cold and turbulent wintry gusts of the Antarctic. Their togetherness defines their survival. The ducks below my window are also together: they arrive and depart the local pond as one unit. I never see a lone duck there. And, of course, ducks fly in triangular formation just like migratory birds. Canadian Geese, for example, traverse my sky twice per year. The lead bird at the point of the triangle always points due north or south according to the season and the promise of warmer venues. But birds are not alone in finding security in cooperative groups. There are elk, deer, zebra, buffalo, and so on, that find security in herds, as well as social animals that feel compelled to live in tribes and communities. We humans, like all primates, are amongst the later. As I pondered this fact, I thought of the word “congregation.” It comes from two Latin words—con-, “together” and grex, “flock, herd, crowd”—that capture this symbiotic relationship. My initial association was that of a simile: we are like other animals in our need to form close structured relationships with our own kind. We may not always find it necessary to huddle together against the cold, march in formation, or line up together in subways or food courts. But we do have a basic need and compulsion to organize ourselves with rules, customs, and conventions that keep us together as a functioning society. We are like other congregations of life forms or species on our planet.

But there is more than a simile here. Did you know that the human body contains many life forms that are not human? In fact, our human genes are outnumbered 10 to 1 by the genes of other species cohabitating in our bodies. These parasitical species that live in us actually serve us, enabling many functions of our vital organs. Without them, we could not survive. (As a parenthetical note, recent studies have pointed out the threat antibiotics pose to these cohabiting life forms and, therefore, to us.) You see, the simile can be seen as a metaphor: each one of us is a congregation of life forms. A scientist, however, would not find a metaphor here, but a statement of fact: each of us is a colony of life forms. So what metaphor do I find in this fact? And how does my metaphor differ from the obvious simile with other animals?

The fact that we individuals are many is conceptual, but not experiential. I know that microbes and bacteria live in my body, but I experience myself as one person in mind, body and soul. My introspection uncovers only my lone existence. But is not this experience a microcosm of the world in which we live: one supreme consciousness, but myriad forms, both organic and inorganic. Now you might not “believe” in a world consciousness aware of itself. Physicists, however, have no better explanation for the quantum transformations at the heart of the universe. You might call this new physics metaphysics for it looks to a non-physical dimension to explain the discontinuity and non-locality of the forces underlying the visible world. It is because I can use the term “metaphysics” that I can see a metaphor in the collective existence of an individual composed of some 200 genomes, including the human genome. You see, each one of us mirrors the world: outwardly, the congregations of many life forms make up the world we inhabit; inwardly, we are a congregation composed of many life forms. Yet, upon reflection, each one of us is only aware of his/her self. Would the creative consciousness at the heart of quantum physics be aware of anything other than itself as the dynamic source of everything?

If you can accept a non-physical dimension—a quantum consciousness—at the heart of everything, then you can see the metaphor I see in the human individual as a congregation of life forms. Every human being is reflective of all that is. Perhaps the best expression of this metaphor is the ancient Sanskrit often quoted by Joseph Campbell: “Thou art that.”