Understanding does not always come through long reflection. Sometimes it arrives in a single moment that cannot be planned. It simply happens. That is how it unfolded one night in Cold Spring. By then, it was our second trip there. The mountains, the forest, the river—they pulled us back.

That day, we climbed one of the mountains. At the top was a rocky clearing, surrounded by low bushes and wind-bent conifer trees. The view opened across the Hudson River and the surrounding ridges. It felt like the right place to shift our state of perception again. It was our second experience—Ruslan, Alex, and I.

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We sat on the rocks and gradually felt the familiar sense of self begin to dissolve, as if it were being spread out beyond its usual boundaries. With our eyes closed, all three of us began seeing visions, as if fragments of human history were unfolding in front of us. Images of different civilizations appeared—Ancient India, Mesoamerica, and others that were harder to identify. As we moved deeper, a strange clarity emerged, sharp and almost overwhelming. From the speaker, quiet mantras of North Indian music played. In that clarity, the fractal structures of nature became more visible.

We began speaking about thoughts that seemed to arise simultaneously. We talked about how nations grow out of peoples, how states form out of nations. It started to feel constructed. Countries appeared as invented forms, borders as lines without real substance. It was as if we traced the arc of human history—from small tribes to large empires—and the entire structure of civilization revealed itself as something artificial standing within a living world.

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It was unclear why we were speaking about this, yet it felt necessary. Something caught in my throat. For a brief moment, I felt the weight of the earth’s history and something like its unspoken tension. Tears came close, but I held them back.

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We lay on the rocks, watching the sky and the fading light. Then something shifted.

The mountains on the horizon seemed to breathe. The forest was breathing. The earth itself felt alive. It became clear that we were not observing it from the outside. We were part of it. Part of the same body. My continuation was in the stone beneath me, in the growth along the slopes, in the movement of the river, in the sound within the bushes, in the warmth of the sun on the land. This had always been the case.

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The realization was simple and overwhelming. Until then, the earth had been a background to life, a stage for human activity. Now it became obvious that we are not separate from it. We are formed from the same matter—stone, water, air—participating in the same process. Followed to its conclusion, the idea becomes direct and almost unavoidable. Not visitors, but an extension of what is already here. For a moment, it felt as if the world was looking at itself through our eyes.

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Concepts used to define identity—nationality, borders, belonging—lost their solidity. They collapsed in the mind, leaving a single, direct recognition: there is no separation here. We are not within the world as something distinct. We are the world in one of its forms.

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We stayed on the summit until night began to fall, then started our descent. Moving down a mountain in the dark is a different experience. Perception sharpens. Every sound becomes precise—the insects, the shifting leaves, the ground underfoot. We followed the trail using reflective markers, but soon lost it again. We followed a dried stream, mistaking it for the path, and continued downward. The markers disappeared. We chose a direction without knowing where it would lead.

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A quiet tension emerged.

At the bottom, we found ourselves in a muddy ditch filled with water and climbed out onto a dark highway, crossing over a barrier.

The experience was still unfolding. We crossed the road and entered another part of the forest, heading toward the river. After some time, we reached a narrow beach along the Hudson. A path lit by moonlight stretched along the shoreline into the woods. Small sandy clearings appeared between driftwood scattered along the water.

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As we passed a large boulder, we noticed a small cave. At the entrance, the word “IRA” was written. We laughed, joking that someone named Ira lived there, and continued toward the water.

From time to time, a freight train passed behind us, breaking the silence with its horn. The railway cut through the landscape, separating the mountain from the river. At night, Cold Spring changes completely. During the day it is a place for walks and hikes. At night it becomes empty. What remains is water, air, darkness, and distant lights across the river.

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We sat by the shore—Alex Aliume, Ruslan, and I. There was a sense of overwhelming joy. We laughed, shouted, and watched the water. Gradually, conversation returned. We spoke about life, nature, consciousness, and a strange connection to everything around us, as if perception could move through any form without resistance.

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The river moved almost silently. At times, the wind disturbed its surface, and the lights across the water began to tremble. It felt as if the boundary between us and the surroundings was becoming thinner. Then something happened that stayed with us for a long time.

For a few seconds, all three of us became silent at once. It felt as if a single thought appeared, not spoken but present.

“You are always.”
“You are everywhere.”
“You are in everything.”

We had not agreed on it. The words emerged as if they were already there, shared before being spoken. It felt like direct communication without language.

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We reacted with laughter and shock, overwhelmed by the realization. Then, from the bushes nearby, we heard a low growl—something moving in the dark. We never found out what it was, but it was enough to make us leave. It was clear that the forest and whatever lived within it demanded respect.

We moved deeper into the park, to a place overlooking the mountain across the river, and sat down on the rocks again. The same perception returned. Life was present in all forms. The usual sense of separation—self and world—felt unstable, almost transparent.

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We looked at the river, the trees, the night sky. Ruslan lay back on a rock, staring at the stars. They were unusually bright. He laughed, pointing a flashlight toward the sky.

Life does not belong only to humans. It expresses itself through everything—in animals, in plants, in the land, even in the planet as a whole. A human being is one of many forms through which it moves. All of this is part of a single process. It felt direct, unfiltered, as if something had opened that had always been there.

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This was not a religious interpretation. There was no discussion of belief systems. It felt as if reality itself had become transparent, revealing a deeper layer. The phrase that appeared that night remained with us: you are always, you are everywhere, you are in everything.

We stayed until around four in the morning, then walked to a twenty-four-hour gas station, still wide awake, bought food, and went to the train station. Sitting on a bench by the water, we tried to absorb what had happened. We smoked, ate, and looked out at the dark Hudson and the silhouette of Bear Mountain.

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Across the river, the mountain was almost completely swallowed by darkness. Occasionally, a train passed, its headlights cutting through the night. There was only the sound of water and the quiet knocking of buoys against boats.

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It was difficult to fully grasp the experience. That night brought us closer to nature than any conversation could. It deepened our connection to each other as well.

We sat in silence, waiting for the morning train to Grand Central, as the first light of the June sky began to appear.

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If life is present in everything, expressing itself through countless forms, then a question naturally follows. What if all living beings are connected far more deeply than we assume? What if a human is not a separate point, but one of the ways through which reality becomes aware of itself?

That question marked the beginning of the next stage of thought. From there, the idea of a unified consciousness began to take shape.