There is a theory that suggests that space time and the world that we see around us is basically the universe talking to itself, a symbolic representation of consciousness.
…selfhood is not limited just to animals with brains. Plants are also selves. Nor is it coterminous with a physically bounded organism. That is, selfhood can be distributed over bodies (a seminar, a crowd, or an ant colony can act as a self ), or it can be one of many other selves within a body (individual cells have a kind of minimal selfhood). Self is both the origin and the product of an interpretive process; it is a waypoint in semiosis (see chapter 1). A self does not stand outside the semiotic dynamic as “Nature,” evolution, watchmaker, homuncular vital spirit, or (human) observer. Rather, selfhood emerges from within this semiotic dynamic as the outcome of a process that produces a new sign that interprets a prior one. It is for this reason that it is appropriate to consider nonhuman organisms as selves and biotic life as a sign process, albeit one that is often highly embodied and nonsymbolic.
—Kohn (2013)
If consciousness is an emergent property of organic organisms and exists ecologically and sustain life, a certain degree of consciousness probably exists in everything, and what we call our own consciousness is always embedded in another one or other ones. Talking about interior and exteriors, boundaries, divisions, is scientific and not not fully useful in getting to know otherness, it is limited by language and communication. It can be useful to start talking in terms of association and dissociation, thought it might be just one way. It continues the line of thought of individualization principle (veil of maya, Anattā) vs panta rhei (πάντα ῥεῖ, Atman), I just mention a few of these concepts here, not dualistic in intention.
What we call our own (dissociated) consciousness, can associate itself with the whole through coming in contact or communicating in many ways, through many forms. We usually conceptualize these as dual, such as external and internal.
Words and letters in a book or a webiste (!) are part of the technology that contacts other consciousness — they are magical ! because since they are way more than just physical forms, atomic patterns, pixels in the physical world. The world contains ‘tracks’ like footprints in a sand, which for us have value – objects participate in meaning-making, the visible carries the invisible, they link the past with the future, they give meaning and direction, they have the ability to influence our mind, choices, actions, all the things consciousness propagates.