One does not lose one's self by conviviality-living together with other beings and things-in fact, one can only find one's self in it. In his famous essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson says: "For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source." The subjective sense of self is best experienced by being part of a greater choir, by blurring or blending of boundaries between human and animal, or between animals and vegetation, light and space. Natural scientists agree with the Aristotelian thesis of a great "chain of being" that connects all classes of living things (as well as nonliving things) along a gradual progression of differences.
From animals, to vegetation, to earth, and to air, all is continuous and homogeneous. This homogeneity is not just a matter of form but goes to the essence, just as water becomes homogeneous with earth in the plant. The world and everything in it are close or distant relatives. In Robert Sardello's recent book Facing the World with Soul, he says that our bodies reflect the body of the world. In this sense, the human body is a universal body. Our cells correspond to the particles of the environment. Molecules that make up a human body, a tree, and a river are very similar. As we eat fruits, vegetables, fish, chicken and mammals, they become part of us. Our muscles, skin, hearts, and brains are developed and maintained by what we eat. Ultimate processing and DNA differentiations are variations of the same existence. We are part of nature, no different from a bird being part of nature. At the natural end of life, our disintegrated remains have the same chemical components. We start with two mobile cell donations, and we end with millions of immobile ones. Although our ultimate shape is predetermined by the genes contained in these two original cells, the substance that sustains our spectacular growth comes from the environment. "We are what we eat" is literally correct, plus the two original cells.
