I think you may be mixing up something. What you're describing is still a "single strand of thought", just one that is a lot fuzzier. We can hear, see and feel

I think you may be mixing up something. What you're describing is still a "single strand of thought", just one that is a lot fuzzier. We can hear, see and feel at the same time even though we can at other times be hyper-focused on any one of those experiences individually. We can observe a single fish in a swarm closely, but we can also track the entire swarm and all the fish in it -- albeit with a much higher error rate at the level of the individual fish (e.g. because of "change blindness"). Unless I missed some serious research on the topic, it's not possible to be intensely aware of every single particle (be it a particular sensation or an individual entity that is being observed) in a complex system while observing the system as a whole.