Mind, understood in the contemporary sense as generalised information processing does not have any boundaries between part and whole. It would appear then that individuation emerges with life, that it is living entities that require skins, boundaries or blankets enclosing them and mediating their interactions with the outside. But again isolated life makes no sense and living individuals are more than ever integrated within larger and unlimited unities. Instead of flows of information through a system what appears at this stage are flows of will or intention. The boundaries are porous but in a more complex and asymmetric fashion, and so nothing prevents the unit from merging into the whole. It is only when consciousness is added that there appears to be enduring individuation. This is paradoxical because nothing is more impersonal or wholistic than consciousness. It is only in its 'couplement' with these other embodied system that hard divisions arise, but they only arise virtually, that is, within the evolving internal realisations of consciousness and just because of its intrinsic self-reflectedness.