Does the Earth Speak? – An Inner Journey from Geography to the Human Being

Sometimes when I look at a map, I notice that it’s not only the mountains, rivers and border lines that appear.

There is another trace there.

As your finger moves along the lines, it feels as if something inside you shifts slightly. There are those subtle moments when you sense that the earth is not only stone, soil and water; this piece was born exactly from there.

While writing The Geography of Truth, I asked myself this question:

“Does the earth speak?”

If it does speak, in what language?

And when did we forget this language?

For me, this question did not belong only to the outer world.

In fact, it was the question of my own inner journey.

Because the way we see geography is often a copy of the way we see ourselves.

Every geography is a memory, every city a fragment of consciousness...

After a while, I noticed this:

The very name of some cities stirs a feeling in a person, even if you have never been there…

Hearing the name Jerusalem is not the same as hearing Tokyo.

The mark Mecca and Paris leave on you is not merely a matter of “cultural difference.”

I felt that every geography is a field of memory that carries not only the traces of the people living on it, but also of centuries, prayers, denials, surrenders, fears and hopes.

Every city seemed like a fragment of humanity’s collective consciousness.

Sometimes broken, sometimes proud, sometimes weary, sometimes arrogant…

But it was always saying something.

For a long time I believed this:

We thought we were merely describing geography, but in fact geography was describing us.

That is why in The Geography of Truth I tried to think of the earth not through the separation of “geography and human”, but through the silent flow between the two.

The earth was like the body of the human on the outside; the human was like the echo of the earth on the inside.

Geography and the human: Looking into a mirror...

The city in which a person is born, where they grow up, where they migrate to, which streets they walk through…

I can’t brush any of this aside with the word “coincidence.”

Every place awakens a different state within a person.

Some cities empty you out, some cities fill you up.

Some places bring you closer to yourself, others pull you away from yourself.

I began to ask:

“Where on this earth do I resemble myself the most?

Which geography brings out more of the states I have buried inside me?”

Some people deepen when they look at the sea, some learn to be silent when they look at the mountains.

Some, the more they get lost in crowded metropolises, the more they begin to hear the voice of their own soul.

This showed me something:

We do not simply pass through what we call “place”; place also passes through us.

For the human being, geography is in fact much more than that:

A mirror.

And if we lack the courage to look into this mirror, the earth always remains merely a set of “faraway countries.”

Earth-consciousness: Beyond soil, stone and water...

When I say “earth-consciousness”, here is what I mean:

A human being recognising the planet they live on not merely as a resource, a décor, a backdrop, a stage in the background, but as a living field that is connected to them.

This realisation is not just a romantic “love of nature.”

It comes from a more unsettling place:

If there are so many wounds, wars, destructions, injustices and ruptures on this earth, this is not merely a political or economic issue.

It is the damage of the bond the human has with the earth, and from there, of the bond they have with truth.

For me, earth-consciousness begins by hearing this:

“With every step I take, I tread not only on the soil, but also on my own existence.”

The drying up of a river is not just a data point about the climate crisis; it also means the withdrawal of compassion and a sense of responsibility within us.

The covering of a city’s soul with concrete and display is not merely an “urban planning preference”; it also means covering our inner world with ornaments and masks.

When you see the earth with these eyes, a spiritual journey is no longer an abstract experience in which you withdraw from life.

On the contrary, it begins at the most concrete points of life:

Soil, tree, street, city, mountain, sea…

All of them turn into mirrors that multiply the questions inside us.

An inner journey is sometimes simply looking more carefully at the earth...

Most of the time, when we say “inner journey”, eyes close, the world is left outside, and turning inward is told as a kind of escape.

While writing The Geography of Truth, I felt the opposite.

For me, an inner journey was not escaping the world; it was looking at the world more awake.

Looking at a city’s morning and asking:

“How many people’s prayers are mixing with the air here?”

Looking at the silence of a mountain and saying:

“What am I silencing and what am I not letting speak within myself?”

Looking at a border line and questioning:

“Have we divided truth into pieces like this as well?”

When you establish the bond between geography and the human, every journey, although it looks like a movement outward, actually becomes a step inward.

Sometimes you walk only one street further, but the path that passes through you carries the weight of years.

Who is this book speaking to?

To everyone who loves the earth yet feels estranged from themselves.

To those who feel a strange ache inside when they look at a map.

To those whose throat tightens even just hearing the name of a city they have never seen.

To those who wonder less “Is geography destiny?” and more “Is geography memory?”

Maybe at some point in your life you have felt this way:

“I changed places, but my state did not change.”

That is why what we call a spiritual journey is not only changing countries, changing cities, changing continents.

Sometimes it is staying in the same room, the same city, the same street and learning to look at the earth with different eyes.

It is placing an awareness of the earth side by side with your own inner awareness.

In The Geography of Truth, this was the question I tried to ask:

“Are we ready to stop being someone who only watches the earth from afar and to enter the same sentence with it?”

“Every geography is a memory, every city a fragment of consciousness.”

If the earth is speaking, perhaps it does so most through the states that echo within us.

That is why I want to turn the question “Does the earth speak?” into a question that never ends:

“Are you ready to hear the language of the ground you walk upon?

And above all:

When you look at your own inner geography, do you feel the responsibility the earth is asking of you?”

Maybe your answers are not ready.

Maybe you have only a single opening sentence.

But sometimes an entire inner journey begins with exactly that one sentence:

“What is the earth trying to tell me, and am I finally ready to listen?”