The Great Mystery — Part 1: The Summit of the Mountain

There are questions we don’t choose. They choose us. They emerge in the silence between thoughts, in a sleepless night, in a forest that overwhelms us. They don’t belong to any discipline. They are older than belief, vaster than answers. They are vertigos.

And one of those vertigos, perhaps the most fundamental, is this:

Is there a common point to all worldviews?

A ground. A source. Something that, though invisible, sustains all forms. If it exists — what is it? And more importantly: how do we approach it?

In search of the common summit

We live in a world of fractured beliefs. Philosophies, religions, cultures, systems of thought — they often seem opposed or incompatible.But all of them, without exception, arise from a fundamental experience:

There is something rather than nothing. And I am part of it.

This experience of being precedes thought, speech, even identity. It is the raw fact of existing, of being here, now.

Philosopher Simone Weil wrote:

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”Here, no dogma. Just openness to what is.

Philosophical traditions: six paths to the same summit

1. Zen (Japanese Chan Buddhism)

“What was your original face before you were born?”

Zen pushes the abandonment of conceptualization to the extreme. It doesn’t seek theoretical truth but a direct return to pure presence.In zazen practice, one doesn’t think — one sits. And in that sitting: the whole world arises.

Ref: Dōgen – Shōbōgenzō; Alan Watts – The Way of Zen

2. Advaita Vedānta (non-dual Hinduism)

Tat Tvam Asi — “You are That.”

Subject, object, and consciousness are one and the same reality: Brahman, pure and indivisible awareness. Individual experience (the self) is a temporary illusion. The goal is not belief, but direct realization.

Ref: Shankara – Commentaries on the Upanishads; Jean Herbert – Hindu Spirituality

3. Quantum Physics and the Observer

“Reality depends on the observer.”

Interpretations such as the Copenhagen model (Bohr) or Schrödinger’s cat demonstrate that the act of observation influences what is observed. The observer is thus an inseparable part of the system, challenging the notion of absolute objectivity.

Ref: Carlo Rovelli – Helgoland; Fritjof Capra – The Tao of Physics

4. Indigenous Cosmologies

“The world is a network of relations.”

In many Indigenous traditions — Native American, Aboriginal, African — everything is relation: humans, animals, spirits, places, ancestors. There is no rigid separation between self and world. Reality is a living fabric.

Ref: Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass; David Abram – The Spell of the Sensuous

5. Taoism

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.”

Tao is the fundamental order of the universe, invisible yet active. The sage does not seek to control, but to align. Unity is already there — it is the mind that divides.

📖 Ref: Laozi – Tao Te Ching; Zhuangzi – Essential Writings

6. Contemplative Neuroscience

Studies on meditation and self-awareness show that the ‘self’ is a flexible process, largely constructed by the brain to structure experience.But at the core, what remains is a witnessing state — the one that observes without judgment.

Ref: Sam Harris – Waking Up; Francisco Varela – The Embodied Mind

The common root of the great religions

Despite their apparent differences, all major religious traditions speak of a principle beyond form, beyond thought, named differently:

Tradition	Key Term	Description
Judaism (Kabbalah)	Ein Sof	Pure infinite, unknowable, beyond names
Christianity (Mystic)	God–Love	Inner presence, direct relationship
Sufism (Islam)	al-Haqq	Absolute Reality; God as the only real
Hinduism	Brahman	Pure consciousness beyond all manifestation
Buddhism	Śūnyatā	Emptiness full of potential
Shinto	Kami	Sacred forces present in everything
Indigenous spirituality	Living Network	A living web of spirit, place, and relation

And me, in all this?

Faced with all this, one voice remains — fragile but honest: my own.

When I resonate with these traditions, something inside me goes silent. Not because I know, but because I feel.I don’t believe in a single truth. But I sense a living truth, revealed in fragments — in breath, in attention, in silence.

Perhaps consciousness is not here to know, but to feel.Perhaps mystery is not a flaw to fix, but an inner landscape.

Temporary conclusion: at the summit

I’m not searching for an answer.I’m searching for an inner space where all answers fall silent.A summit, not above all things — but at the heart of all things.

And you, reader — have you ever touched that summit?Felt that all beliefs, all forms, pointed toward the same quiet star?

Part 2 — on the meaning of duality, movement, and death — coming soon...