Genre and place in the book. An exercise of the EXERCISEcontemplation of nature (φυσιολογία): to look into the simultaneity of countless processes — in the microcosm (each of us) and in the macrocosm (the Whole). The principal discipline is desire: the understood structure of the Whole dispels bewilderment and strengthens trust in it.

The microcosm. "Consider (ἐνθυμήθητι) how many things happen at once, in the same indivisible instant (ἀκαριαῖον χρόνον), in each of us — bodily (σωματικά) and psychic (ψυχικά)." The instant is dense: breath, blood-flow, sensations, impressions, impulses — all flowing together. The human being is a small cosmos of interlocking processes.

The macrocosm. From this, "you will not wonder (οὐ θαυμάσεις)" that in the "One and All" (ἓν καὶ σύμπαν) which we call the DOGMACosmos, all that comes to be subsists (ἐνυφίσταται) together at once. A move from the small to the great: if the tiny "I" holds a multitude of coordinated processes, all the more does the Whole. Thus contemplating the microcosm makes the coherence and simultaneity of the cosmos intuitively evident (cf. 05-08 — the single harmony of causes; Med. 4.40 — the world as one living being).

Disciplines and parallels. The principal one is desire (contemplating the coordinated Whole). Parallels: Med. 4.40 (the world as one living being, one soul); 7.9 (all things interwoven); 05-08 (one harmony, "out of all bodies, one body"); the doctrine of DOGMAthe unity of the cosmos; the indivisible instant ἀκαριαῖον — cf. the present (03-10).