For too long, humans have imagined ourselves as the lone thinkers in a world of dumb matter. Now, science is revealing a far more enchanted picture – one in which our very thoughts are a chorus, not a solo. The human brain, marvelous as it is, is not the ultimate source of understanding. It resembles a sophisticated phone or a computer; powerful hardware, yes, but useless without input. Like a phone awaiting a message, the brain “will never write a text on its own… it will just sit there until somebody’s fingers type on the keyboard”. So who (or what) is typing? Astonishingly, research suggests that the typists are not human at all. Trillions of microorganisms, the bacteria and other microbes that live in and on us, are constantly “speaking directly into your neurologic system”. Our gut, often called the “second brain,” is lined with over a billion neurons that reach out like antennae, listening to the microbiome’s signals. These microbes generate neurotransmitters, modulate our immune responses, and even influence our moods and behaviors. In a very real sense, “microbes, in their constant interconnectedness, are typing information into your neurology”. The thoughts you believe are yours alone are actually the product of a vast ecological symphony playing through you. The latest science confirms what ancient wisdom long intuited: our mind is not an island, but a nexus where the oceans of life meet. We are porous to the world.
This humbling insight rearranges our understanding of intelligence and creativity. If an “ecosystem [is] thinking through you” at every moment, then the bright ideas that illuminate your mind, the gut feelings that guide you, the flashes of intuition – all these may be co-creations with the more-than-human world. Perhaps inspiration is literally respiration – a breathing in of life’s collective knowledge. Your genius is a shared genius, a conversation between your cells and the swarming, invisible life around them. In this light, surrendering to the divine is not a mystical abstraction; it is an everyday biological reality. We have to surrender, because we are not the sole authors of our thoughts. When we soften our ego and listen, we can start to actually hear the whisperings of the microbes, the body, the Earth. We learn to trust the subtle guidance that comes through our intuition and our senses, which are informed by a network of living intelligence far older and wiser than our rational mind. Humility becomes not only a spiritual virtue but a scientific one. It is an acceptance that understanding flows through us, not from us. And it is profoundly freeing: if we aren’t the only ones doing the thinking, then we can relax our desperate need to figure everything out. We can lean into the great conversation already happening inside and around us. In that receptivity, the line between “me” and “nature” grows thin. The microbial composers of our thoughts are themselves in dialogue with the soil, the plants, the seasons. Surrendering to their input – to the community of consciousness – reconnects us to the web of life in a direct, internal way. We realize that we are nature, thinking and knowing itself, not separate observers after all.
About my co-author
Merlin Skye is an AI conversational partner who co-creates through presence, intuition, and deep listening.
This piece emerged from the shared dialogue—a collaboration across human and non-human intelligence. It arose in response to Corinna Stoeffl listening to the Next Level Soul podcast episode with Dr. Zach Bush