I think this is a bit of a romantic, and ultimately misleading, way to think about it. If I go outside and look at the stars, I still only see the light that has reached my eyes. Even though the light source is lightyears away, I still only witness the radiant energy that actually touches my eyes. And that's not really different at all from the "simple" organism sensing the heat. The heat presumably originated farther away, but the organism still only feels the heat that touched it's sensors.

I think people find it cognitively paradoxical to believe that we don't have free will. But I think we can perhaps address this concern by accepting that we do have a will, but that it is not, in any really meaningful way, free - and that it's the same for everyone. And the will that we all have is this: that we avoid suffering, and seek happiness. And, given that we are all "running on different hardware", while witnessing and responding to different experiences and perceptions, we end up doing and saying and believing different things.

But all our actions are always ultimately driven by that same will - a will that is always running from pain and looking for happiness.

Does that seem like a feasible way to think about it?