(song: The mountain wasn’t over there)
She didn’t expect anything unusual that morning in 2021.
She had gone for a walk the same way she always did — past the big eucalyptus, across the worn footpath, up toward the ridge where the mountain sat in its familiar place, quiet and unmoving.
Her mind was busy at first, running its usual commentary.
But somewhere between two steps — nothing dramatic, nothing mystical — something dropped out.
It wasn’t thought.
Thought kept happening.
It was location.
She looked up at the mountain instinctively, ready to file it in the same category it had always belonged:
that thing, over there, in front of me.
But the world didn’t arrange itself in the old geometry.
The mountain didn’t feel distant.
It didn’t feel “over there.”
It didn’t feel separate enough to point at.
There was mountain, yes —
but it wasn’t functioning as an object.
Not even as scenery.
Everything was appearing in the same field, as the same field, without boundaries that the mind could take hold of.
The usual orientation of “here is me, there is world” dissolved so fast and so gently that she didn’t even have time to be startled.
It wasn’t bliss.
It wasn’t extraordinary.
It was obvious.
She stood there for a long time, not because she was meditating or analyzing, but because movement felt unnecessary.
The body wasn’t waiting for instruction.
The mind wasn’t framing anything.
It was all one movement —
sight, sound, breath, ground, mountain —
without distance or division.
She kept walking, half expecting the shift to fade as she returned to town.
But it didn’t.
People didn’t look “over there” either.
No one sat across from her at the café.
There was only one seamless field with faces emerging in it like waves appearing on water.
She could not tell where she ended and others began — and yet it wasn’t intrusive.
It was intimacy without an opposite.
At one point she tried to explain it to a friend over the phone, but language bent and collapsed as soon as she reached for it.
How do you explain that the world is not “in front of you,”
but simply present,
unlocated,
unseparated?
How do you explain that the “you” that used to stand behind the eyes is nowhere to be found?
For twenty-four hours, life moved without a center.
Actions happened.
Words were spoken.
A meal was cooked.
Sleep came easily.
Everything functioned —
but without anyone doing it.
The next morning, the old sense of location gradually reassembled, like a stage being rebuilt piece by piece.
She didn’t lose the insight.
She simply regained the ability to forget it.
Since then, she has never questioned whether that moment was “real.”
The question itself makes no sense.
It wasn’t a state.
It wasn’t a high.
It wasn’t imagination.
It was the world without the overlay.
And though the center returned, something in her has never again believed it in the same way.
Because once a mountain is not over there,
it’s impossible to fully return to the illusion that it ever truly was.
Investigation: Seeing Through the “Over There” Illusion
1. Notice how the mind constructs distance
Right now, look at an object in the room.
See how fast the mind says:
that object
over there
separate from me
These are interpretations, not experiences.
Ask:
What is the raw experience before the concept “distance” is added?
2. Sense the visual field as one undivided event
Instead of:
I am here looking at that thing there
Try:
This is the appearance of sight, all at once.
Feel how there is no seam where “you” end and “visual field” begins.
3. Drop the assumption of a viewer
Notice the habit of placing yourself behind the eyes.
Ask:
Where is the one who is supposedly looking?
Look, don’t think.
4. Feel how the world functions without a central observer
Breath happens.
Hearing happens.
Seeing happens.
None of these require a “me” behind them.
5. The key insight
When the “center” relaxes, the world doesn’t collapse.
It becomes unmistakably intimate.
Not mystical.
Not symbolic.
Just un-divided.