Water Merging Quotes

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

But nothing is lasting in this world. Even joy begins to fade after only one minute. Two minutes later, and it is weaker still, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, prosaic state of mind, just as a ripple made by a pebble gradually merges with the smooth surface of the water.

Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

A song of despair The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea. Deserted like the dwarves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one! Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked. In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose. You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank! It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse. Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank! In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank! You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank! I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on. Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness. and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar. There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle. Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms! How terrible and brief my desire was to you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds. Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies. Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips. This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank! Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned! From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel. You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well. Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank! It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables. The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate. Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands. Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

Music burst through him, perfect notes he hear rarely. Fire and ice, wind and calm, sky and earth, water and rock all fused together. Joley seemed as wild and turbulent s the sea, yet beneath her fiery passion, at the very core of her, she was as forceful and strong and as constant as the deepest ocean currents. Ilya seemed as calm as a windless sea, yet beneath the surface smoldered a volcano of such explosive magnitude, his power could easily sweep everything from his path. Together they completed each other, his melody and hers merging together into a single, perfect harmony.

In the pool I lose myself. My thoughts merge and flow. Everything—my body, my heart, the universe—seems tolerable when I’m protected by water and nothing touches me. All I think about is the effort. Below my body there’s a restless play of dark and light projected onto the bottom of the pool, that drifts away like smoke.

It was one of those still, grey, pearly days, with no wind, when sky and water seemed to merge into one, and everything was soft and sad and dreamy.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

Heaven and man do not easily come together, but a wolf and the grassland merge like water and milk.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

If I look closely, I can almost see myself floating in my mother's palm. Yet, when I shut my eyes, I find a different image of my mother releasing me as we dance in the storm and twirl in separate circles that cause the water to ripple from us in widening rings which merge in one ebbing bracelet of waves where the borders of the quarry meet the water, far from the center where my mother and I continue to spin our bodies in the radiant sheen of lightning.

Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. ... You have probably never experienced in yourself the meandering roots of a whole watershed or felt your outstretched fingers touching, by some clairvoyant extension, the brooks of snow-line glaciers at the same time you were flowing toward the Gulf over the eroded debris of worn-down mountains.

Each moment, whatsoever you are doing, do it totally. Simple things—taking a bath; take it totally, forget the whole world; sitting, sit; walking, walk, above all don’t wobble; sit under the shower and let the whole existence fall on you. Be merged with those beautiful drops of water falling on you. Small things: cleaning the house, preparing food, washing clothes, going for a morning walk—do them totally, then there is no need for any meditation.

Merging like two drops of water. Together in a way that humans could never know.

They are from another world, another way of life that somehow has merged with our own. These worlds are kept separate for the safety of everyone. " "And yet, I connect them." "You do.

Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn flowers in the flowerbeds near the house had fallen asleep until morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens, the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars... Alyosha stood gazing and suddenly, as if he had been cut down, threw himself to the earth. He did not know why he was embracing it, he did not try to understand why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss all of it, but he was kissing it, weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and he vowed ecstatically to love it, to love it unto ages of ages. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy, and love those tears...," rang in his soul. What was he weeping for? Oh, in his rapture he wept even for the stars that shone on him from the abyss, and "he was not ashamed of this ecstasy." It was as if threads from all those innumerable worlds of God all came together in his soul, and it was trembling all over, "touching other worlds." He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to ask forgiveness, oh, not for himself! but for all and for everything, "as others are asking for me," rang again in his soul. But with each moment he felt clearly and almost tangibly something as firm and immovable as this heavenly vault descend into his soul. Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind-now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages. He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter, steadfast for the rest of his life, and he knew it and felt it suddenly, in that very moment of his ecstasy. Never, never in all his life would Alyosha forget that moment. "Someone visited my soul in that hour," he would say afterwards, with firm belief in his words...

The four borders of the Taj Mahal are designed to be identical, as if there were a mirror situated on one side, though one can never tell on which one. Stone reflected in the water. God reflected in human beings. Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories. We live, toil and die under the same invisible dome. Rich and poor, Mohammedan and baptized, free and slave, man and woman, Sultan and mahout, master and apprentice … I have come to believe that if there is one shape that reaches out to all of us, it is the dome. That is where all the distinctions disappear and every single sound, whether of joy or sorrow, merges into one huge silence of all-encompassing love. When I think of this world in such a way, I feel dazed and disoriented, and cannot tell any longer where the future begins and the past ends; where the West falls and the East rises.

BOMBAY WAS CENTRAL, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India’s East and to the west, the world’s West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once.

An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually, the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

They are from another world, another way of life that somehow has merged with our own. These worlds are kept separate for the safety of everyone." "And yet, I connect them." "You do.

Notes of the same key respond to one another; Odors of the same nature merge together. Water flows toward what is wet, Fire rises toward what is dry. Clouds follow dragons; Winds follow tigers.

I tilt my head, reading without words. Us cutting our own path through the rock, until we merge with the larger river of life. The flow of water breaks my heart, but it also mends it again--everything art is supposed to do.

Bertrand Russell wrote that the best way to overcome one’s fear of death “is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” He goes on: An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually, the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: There is no God; no Fiend with names divine Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall. It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme, Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; Whom we must curse because the life he gave Could not be buried in the quiet grave, Could not be killed by poison or the knife. This little life is all we must endure, The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, We fall asleep and never wake again; Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh In earth, air, water, plants, and other men. We finish thus; and all our wretched race Shall finish with its cycle, and give place To other beings with their own time-doom: Infinite aeons ere our kind began; Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.

But I also know this: even though water chooses the path of least resistance, it ultimately defines its own course. Rivers divide and merge, they braid and weave, the form complex wholes. They move apart only to rejoin at a defferent point. The geography of our lives would reconnect us again.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

To become a magician you must do something very different,” the man said. This was clearly his set piece. “You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you. “When a magician casts a spell, he does not first mentally review the Major, Minor, Tertiary, and Quaternary Circumstances. He does not search his soul to determine the phase of the moon, and the nearest body of water, and the last time he wiped his ass. When he wishes to cast a spell he simply casts it. When he wishes to fly, he simply flies. When he wants the dishes done, they simply are.

I make my voyage out, far, far out, to the very brim, where a disc of water shimmers like molten coin against a coin-colored sky, and everything lifts, and sky and water merge invisibly. that is where I seem to the most at ease now, on the far, pale margin of things. If I can call it ease. If I can call it being

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords.

The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn’t had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen’s sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite’s innocent gusto. Candy. Heaped on a smoking breast of rice. Each is given such a tidy hot breast, and Margaret is in a special hurry to muddle hers with glazed chunks; all eat well. Their faces take color and strength from the oval plates of dark pork, sugar peas, chicken, stiff sweet sauce, shrimp, water chestnuts, who knows what else. Their talk grows hearty.

I’ve been thinking lately of our pizza nights. Dough from scratch, sauce from scratch, cheese from…well, from the store. Not goin’ that far. I loved the making of bread, the dough for the crust. Flour and water in your hands, first separate and then merging into a silky whole. The yeast and gluten making it a living thing. It moves when you poke it. It breathes into your hands. Our hands covered in flour, we open a bottle of wine, and we eat the pizza we made, and…we just watch whatever’s on TV and fall asleep in a wine and bread coma. I think love is cooking together. I think it’s making something with each other, that’s what I think, Alice. I don’t know what you think. Turns out that I didn’t know what you were thinking at all.

Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

Nadia now lies back as her body perks up at me like the white lotus that reaches for the sun’s love. I now come into Nadia with all of my love, my lips running over her silk skin like water drifting downstream. Her kisses are filled with an incredible ability to give as her body merges into mine. The sounds of relief escaping her lips commend my escape, transcending me into the absolute pureness of love’s unseen realm.

Through our chanting we merge our personal consciousness momentarily with the infinite consciousness that is our origin and our destiny. It is the drop of water finding its way back into the ocean from which it came.

even though water chooses the path of least resistance, it ultimately defines its own course. Rivers divide and merge, they braid and weave, they form complex wholes. They move apart only to rejoin at a different point.

The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you’re adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can’t see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it’s working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces.

The uncle ignored Gracie's father. 'In any event,' he went on, 'when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment -- to rot -- it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge.

These boots you're wearing... They separate me and you. Remove them and merge with me. Let me tickle you with grass, smear you with soil, wash you with water, massage you with stones, make you gasp with thorns and worship you with flowers.

Human reason reduced to its own resources is perfectly worthless, not only for creating but also for preserving any political or religious association, because it only produces disputes, and, to conduct himself well, man needs not problems but beliefs. His cradle should be surrounded by dogmas, and when his reason is awakened, it should find all his opinions ready-made, at least all those relating to his conduct. Nothing is so important to him as prejudices, Let us not take this word in a bad sense. It does not necessarily mean false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, opinions adopted before any examination. Now these sorts of opinions are man’s greatest need, the true elements of his happiness, and the Palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither worship, nor morality, nor government. There must be a state religion just as there is a state policy; or, rather, religious and political dogmas must be merged and mingled together to form a complete common or national reason strong enough to repress the aberrations of individual reason, which of its nature is the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it produces only divergent opinions. All known nations have been happy and powerful to the extent that they have more faithfully obeyed this national reason, which is nothing other than the annihilation of individual dogmas and the absolute and general reign of national dogmas, that is to say, of useful prejudices. Let each man call upon his individual reason in the matter of religion, and immediately you will see the birth of an anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty. Likewise, if each man makes himself judge of the principles of government, you will at once see the birth of civil anarchy or the annihilation of political sovereignty. Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed. Man’s first need is that his nascent reason be curbed under this double yoke, that it be abased and lose itself in the national reason, so that it changes its individual existence into another common existence, just as a river that flows into the ocean always continues to exist in the mass of water, but without a name and without a distinct reality.

Each individual has a subconscious memory of the green earth and murmuring waters, and blindness and deafness cannot rob him of this gift from past generations. This inherited capacity is a sort of sixth sense- a soul sense which sees, hears, and feels, all in one.

Well, my love is just as deep, just as deep as that swamp.” “And the love that we both feel will merge together in the murky waters of the swamp, and sink down silently, ever so silently, to the bottom.” “And what will we find, waiting there at the bottom?” “Why, Hiroko: family, of course.

Nights with bright pivots, departure, matter, uniquely voice, uniquely naked each day. Upon your breasts of still current, upon your legs ofharshness and water, upon the permanence and pride of your naked hair, I want to lie, my love, the tears now cast into the raucous basket where they gather, I want to lie, my love, alone with a syllable of destroyed silver, alone with a tip of your snowy breast.   It is not now possible, at times, to win except by falling, it is not now possible, between two people, to tremble, to touch the river’s flower: man fibers come like needles, transactions, fragments, families of repulsive coral, tempests and hard passages through carpets of winter.   Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist crest, drops of when and how, indefinite traffic: between lips and lips, as if along a coast of sand and glass, the wind passes.   That is why you are endless, gather me up as if you were all solemnity, all nocturnal like a zone, until you merge with the lines of time.   Advance in sweetness, come to my side until the digital leaves of the violins have become silent, until the moss takes root in the thunder, until from the throbbing of hand and hand the roots come down.

Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat. He had opened the door that morning and had groped interminably for the switch, holding the jamb in his usual deathgrip, his eyes squinched shut, the tip of his tongue poked from the corner of his mouth like an agonized rootlet searching for water in a place of drought.

But there is nothing enduring in this world, and that is why even joy is not as keen in the moment that follows the first; and a moment later it grows weaker still and finally merges imperceptibly into one's usual state of mind, just as a ring on the water, made by the fall of a pebble, merges finally into the smooth surface.

With Your sweet Soul, this soul of mine has merged as water does with wine. Who can part the water from the wine, or me from You when we combine? You have become my greater self; how can smallness limit me? You’ve taken on my being, how shall I not take on Yours? Forever, You have claimed me that forever I may know You’re mine.

WAS THERE STILL SOMETHING MURMURING? WAS IT still the kind murmuring of Plotius, protecting and kind and strong? oh, Plotius, oh, that it might endure, oh, that it might endure murmuringly, quiet and quieting, welling up from the unfathomable depths within and without, now that the labor was over, now that the labor sufficed, now that nothing need follow, oh, that it might go on forever! and verily it went on, murmuring and murmuring, rolling in softly in endlessness, murmur-wave after murmur-wave, each of them tiny yet all of them radiating in a boundless cycle; it was simply there, no sort of hearkening, no effort whatsoever was needed to hold on to it, indeed this murmurousness was not to be held onto, for it strove onward, mingled with the trickling of the fountain, with the trickling of the waters, merged with them in the vast and colorless might of a rest-bearing stream, itself the thing carried, itself rest, itself a moving stream, softly lapping the keel and sides of the boat with slithering foam.

In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling obscurity," "whispering silence," "teeming desert," are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions. "He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,' and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana…. When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer…. For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE…. And now thy SELF is lost in SELF, THYSELF unto THYSELF, merged in that SELF from which thou first didst radiate.. . . Behold! thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thou art THYSELF the object of thy search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE. Om tat Sat."[277] [277] H. P. Blavatsky: The voice of the Silence. These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.

what it’s all for. We’re living longer, we social network alone with our screens, and our depth of feeling gets shallower. Soon it’ll be nothing but a tide pool, then a thimble of water, then a micro drop. They say in the next twenty years we’re going to merge with computer chips to cure aging and become immortal. Who wants an eternity of being a machine?

An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within it's banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and waterfalls. Gradually, the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged with the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

Our insistence on being different from everything around us is one of the greatest mistakes of mankind. We stubbornly maintain an illusory distinction that sets us apart from rock and ice, water and fire, plant and animal. Both religion and rationality try to explain it through an elaborate vocabulary of separation—soul, atman, spirit, ghosts in the machine or simply the idea of selfhood. We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain. In

Another, more fluid metaphor for the world of thought gradually suggested itself to him, derived from his former voyages at sea. A philosopher who was trying to consider human understanding in all its aspects would behold beneath him a mass molded in calculable curves, streaked by currents which could be charted, and deeply furrowed by the pressure of winds and the heavy, inert weight of water. It seemed to him that the shapes which the mind assumes are like those great forms, born of undifferentiated water, which assail or replace each other on the surface of the deep; each concept collapses, eventually, to merge with its very opposite, like two waves breaking against each other only to subside into the same single line of white foam.

57. Omniscience and bliss, and mature wisdom, Remaining independent, limitless strength — Attaining all these, he shines ever, the Self without afflictions. With an immaculate body, he, as the Self, merges in Siva. 58. Japa of the name, worship, bathing in holy waters, ritual sacrifices, None of these or others are needed. The fruits of dharma and adharma, Water oblations to forefathers, None of these are for him. 59. No injunctions for observance, no fasts, Nothing required by way of getting into or out of (any action), No vows of celibacy for him, know this. 60. Not having any recourse to falling into the fire or water, Or falling from the mountain top, Enjoy the feast of the Knowledge of Siva, eternal and pure. Rid of the rules applying to all creation, move about as you please. 61. I tell you this is the Truth, the Truth, the Truth, thrice over. There is nothing greater than this, Nothing greater is there to be known, Nothing at all, nowhere ever.

A week ago, this part of the river, where trees on each side of the bank touch and merge overhead to form a living tunnel, had been a green-and-black oil painting of dark water and moss-backed boulders. Now it was as though some vandal had hurled cheap emulsion at the canvas: the arterial red leaves of a low-lying maple branch streaked violently from one bank to another, and on the far side, little poplar leaves the exact color of twenty-four carat gold lay strewn over the boulders like pirate treasure.

My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea’s predators. How long had she been out there before the currents contrived to carry what was left of her back to her own kind? How long had the darkness held her?

Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank its teeth into her wrist--which is more or less what she expects from the mass of other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals loitering about a common watering hole ready to pounce, you'd never know why or what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn't a clue what they talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathleen is in fact horribly shy, but no one would ever suspect it--after all, she gets up and sings in front of halls full of people.

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on. It’s another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups. I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it’s close to 70 degrees. There’s a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board. I’m thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off. Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures. Then the hollow percussion sounds of the ice thudding, crackling under my feet, breaking off little ice flows carried away into a snow-covered cavern and out the other side of the tunnel. And I followed it all the way to bridge under Maple Road as if I didn't have a care in the world.

Men’s dreams, their inner truth, are unheimlich also, your Highness. If any man examines his inner truth with both eyes wide open, and his inner eye wide open also, he will be overcome with terror at what he finds. That, I have always supposed, is why we hear these stories about a region of our lake. Out there, on the water, in darkness, out of sight, men encounter the image within them. Or so they suppose. It is not to be expected that many will return unscathed.’ ‘Thus with men, Spalt. What about women?’ ‘Women have no inner life that is so decisively apart. With women the inner life merges ever with the totality.

Het huwelijk Toen hij bespeurde hoe de nevel van den tijd in d'oogen van zijn vrouw de vonken uit kwam dooven, haar wangen had verweerd, haar voorhoofd had doorkloven toen wendde hij zich af en vrat zich op van spijt. Hij vloekte en ging te keer en trok zich bij den baard en mat haar met den blik, maar kon niet meer begeeren, hij zag de grootsche zonde in duivelsplicht verkeeren en hoe zij tot hem opkeek als een stervend paard. Maar sterven deed zij niet, al zoog zijn helse mond het merg uit haar gebeente, dat haar tòch bleef dragen. Zij dorst niet spreken meer, niet vragen of niet klagen, en rilde waar zij stond, maar leefde en bleef gezond. Hij dacht: ik sla haar dood en steek het huis in brand. Ik moet de schimmel van mijn stramme voeten wasschen en rennen door het vuur en door het water plassen tot bij een ander lief in eenig ander land. Maar doodslaan deed hij niet, want tusschen droom en daad staan wetten in den weg en praktische bezwaren, en ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren, en die des avonds komt, wanneer men slapen gaat. Zoo gingen jaren heen. De kindren werden groot en zagen dat de man dien zij hun vader heetten, bewegingsloos en zwijgend bij het vuur gezeten, een godvergeten en vervaarlijke' aanblik bood.

Nights with bright pivots, departure, matter, uniquely voice, uniquely naked each day. Upon your breasts of still current, upon your legs ofharshness and water, upon the permanence and pride of your naked hair, I want to lie, my love, the tears now cast into the raucous basket where they gather, I want to lie, my love, alone with a syllable of destroyed silver, alone with a tip of your snowy breast.   It is not now possible, at times, to win except by falling, it is not now possible, between two people, to tremble, to touch the river’s flower: man fibers come like needles, transactions, fragments, families of repulsive coral, tempests and hard passages through carpets of winter.   Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist crest, drops of when and how, indefinite traffic: between lips and lips, as if along a coast of sand and glass, the wind passes.   That is why you are endless, gather me up as if you were all solemnity, all nocturnal like a zone, until you merge with the lines of time.   Advance in sweetness, come to my side until the digital leaves of the violins have become silent, until the moss takes root in the thunder, until from the throbbing of hand and hand the roots come down.   VALS Yo toco el odio como pecho diurno, yo sin cesar, de ropa en ropa, vengo durmiendo lejos.

Optimal Tower is a skyscraper unlike its predecessors, rising skyward as an artistic endeavor, spirited and soulful, with a steel and glass manifestation reminiscent of Claude Monet's water lilies, and instantly dismissive of the gray, steel and mortar structures of the past. The architects and builders have pilfered Monet's color pallet and painted this vertical stretch of the Cavanaugh skyline with the delicate greens and blues and grays and yellows of Giverny. Somehow, in the structure, the sensibility of an impressionist painting emerges as the muted colors are faded in splotches and sunlit in others, with gradual transitions as subtle as the delicate brush strokes of the master himself. Steel beams crisscross haphazardly throughout the towering facade, which only reinforces its intrinsic impressionistic essence by emulating the natural randomness of the lily pond. Atop the structure, a simple fifty foot spire seems to rein in the freeform work beneath it as it merges the natural splendor into one straight pinnacle skyward. This one hundred and fifteen story building reaches twenty-five stories above its surroundings, creating a gloriously artful and peaked skyline not unlike the Alps in France that will be instantly recognizable the world over and cause onlookers to gasp and utter, "C'est Magnifique.

Such apparently illogical actions are almost never inspired by a single motive. They spring from an unknown number of threads, perhaps thousands of them, some forgotten, some unconscious, some conspicuously suppressed or not admitted, which when collected and spun together have formed a conclusion, however considered or unconsidered it may ultimately seem. It is like the myriad tiny wells and springs, underground streams and significant little rivulets of water emerging from far and wide, seeping out from swamps or caverns of rock crystal, surging forth from dark underground or oozing through rotting vegetation until, bursting from a cleft in the rocks, they all unite and merge imperceptibly together then, tumbling down to the valley, they achieved their ultimate purpose and are transformed into a mighty river.

I lie on the seashore, the sparkling flood blue-shimmering in my dreamy eyes; light breezes flutter in the distance; the thud of the waves, charging and breaking over in foam, beats thrillingly and drowsily upon the shore—or upon the ear? I cannot tell. The far and the near become blurred into one; outside and inside merge into one another. Nearer and nearer, friendlier, like a homecoming, sounds the thud of the waves; now, like a thundering pulse, they beat in my head, now they beat over my soul, wrapping it round, consuming it, while at the same time my soul floats out of me as a blue waste of waters. Outside and inside are one. The whole symphony of sensations fades away into one tone, all senses become one sense, which is one with feeling; the world expires in the soul and the soul dissolves in the world. Our little life is rounded by a great sleep. Sleep our cradle, sleep our grave, sleep our home, from which we go forth in the morning, returning again at evening; our life a short pilgrimage, the interval between emergence from original oneness and sinking back into it! Blue shimmers the infinite sea, where the jelly-fish dreams of that primeval existence to which our thoughts still filter down through aeons of memory. For every experience entails a change and a guarantee of life’s unity. At that moment when they are no longer blended together, when the experient lifts his head, still blind and dripping, from immersion in the stream of experience, from flowing away with the thing experienced; when man, amazed and estranged, detaches the change from himself and holds it before him as something alien—at that moment of estrangement the two sides of the experience are substantialized into subject and object, and at that moment consciousness is born.33

It floats!” These two words threatened to sink Woodrow Wilson. Soap had been part of civilization for at least four thousand years, going as far back as the Babylonians, who had discovered a formula for water, alkali, and oils that could dissolve dirt and grease. In the 1830s, a man named Alexander Norris suggested that his two sons-in-law—one of whom made candles, the other soap—merge their companies. William Procter and James Gamble did just that, making a small fortune together as purveyors to the Union army during the Civil War. A decade later, Gamble’s son created a phenomenon, combining a strong laundry detergent and a gentle cleaner and whipping in enough air to keep the white cake of soap from sinking. Its two-word advertising campaign helped turn Ivory soap into an American household staple for another century and Procter & Gamble into one of America’s leading manufacturers.

look at love how it tangles with the one fallen in love look at spirit how it fuses with earth giving it new life why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad pay attention to how things blend why talk about all the known and the unknown see how the unknown merges into the known why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last look at your heart and tongue one feels but deaf and dumb the other speaks in words and signs look at water and fire earth and wind enemies and friends all at once the wolf and the lamb the lion and the deer far away yet together look at the unity of this spring and winter manifested in the equinox you too must mingle my friends since the earth and the sky are mingled just for you and me be like sugarcane sweet yet silent don’t get mixed up with bitter words my beloved grows right out of my own heart how much more union can there be

and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling

For her body had never needed anyone, it was free. For she walked through the streets. She drank water, had abolished God, the world, everything. She wouldn’t die. So easy. She held out her hands not knowing what to do with them now that she knew. Perhaps caress herself, kiss herself, recognize herself full of curiosity and gratitude. No longer concerned with reasoning, it seemed so illogical to die, that she stopped now aghast, filled with terror. Eternal? Violent . . . Reflections lightning- fast and bright as sparks flew every which way electrically, merging more into feelings than thoughts. She changed with no transition, skipping lightly, from plane to plane, ever higher, clearer and tenser. And with each instant she fell deeper and deeper into herself, into caverns of milky light, her breathing vibrant, full of fear and happiness at the journey, perhaps like falling in sleep. Her intuition that those moments were fragile made her move lightly afraid to touch herself, to stir up and dissolve that miracle, the tender being of light and air that was trying to live inside her.

Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the far away blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in mist to their summits . . . There was peace and happiness . . .”I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness; but here . . . groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry . . . There—they are shouting again, and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above me and around . . . Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge! . . .” At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds and other stretchers came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation. “O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect me!” Rostóv whispered.

I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you. You look at me, from close up you look at me, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look closer and closer at one another and our eyes get larger, the come closer, they merge into one and the two cyclopses look at each other, blending as they breathe, our mouths touch and struggle in gentle warmth, biting each other with their lips, barely holding their tongues on their teeth, playing in corners where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. Then my hands go to sink into your hair, to cherish slowly the depth of your hair while we kiss as though our mouths were filled with flowers or with fish, with lively movements and dark fragrance. And if we bite each other the pain is sweet, and if we smother each other in a brief and terrible sucking in together of our breaths, that momentary death is beautiful. And there is but one saliva and one flavour of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon on the water.

I look at you and know what a miracle you are. The feel of your skin, soft and inviting, the way you move, like water flowing, the brush of your hair like silk, the feel of your body surrounding mine, completing me, giving me the strength I need to continue a task that seems so hopeless, but so necessary. I look at the way you are made, so beautiful, your body so perfect, made for mine.” Raven stirred restlessly, but his hands held her captive, tilting her chin so that she had no choice but to meet his black eyes. “But it is not your body that holds me, Raven, not your flawless skin or the perfection of the combination of our bodies when we come together. It is when I merge with you and see who you really are that I realize what a miracle really is. I can tell you who you are. You are compassion. You are gentleness. You are a woman who is so courageous you are willing to risk your life for complete strangers. You are a woman willing to use a gift that causes you great pain for the benefit of others. There is no hesitation in your giving, it is who you are. There is such a light in you, it shines through your eyes and radiates through your skin, so that anyone seeing you can easily see your goodness.” Raven could only stare at him helplessly, lost in his mesmerizing eyes. Mikhail took her hand, pressed a kiss in the exact center of her palm, slipped her hand beneath his shirt, and held it over his steadily beating heart. “Look beyond my skin, Raven. Look into my heart and soul. Merge your mind with mine, see me for what I am. Know me for who I am.

Joël describes here, in unmistakable symbolism, the merging of subject and object as the reunion of mother and child. The symbols agree with those of mythology even in their details. There is a distinct allusion to the encircling and devouring motif. The sea that devours the sun and gives birth to it again is an old acquaintance. The moment of the rise of consciousness, of the separation of subject and object, is indeed a birth. It is as though philosophical speculation hung with lame wings on a few primordial figures of human speech, beyond whose simple grandeur no thought can fly. The image of the jelly-fish is far from accidental. Once when I was explaining to a patient the maternal significance of water, she experienced a very disagreeable sensation at this contact with the mother-complex. “It makes me squirm,” she said, “as if I’d touched a jelly-fish.” The blessed state of sleep before birth and after death is, as Joël observes, rather like an old shadowy memory of that unsuspecting state of early childhood, when there is as yet no opposition to disturb the peaceful flow of slumbering life. Again and again an inner longing draws us back, but always the life of action must struggle in deadly fear to break free lest it fall into a state of sleep. Long before Joël, an Indian chieftain had expressed the same thing in the same words to one of the restless white men: “Ah, my brother, you will never know the happiness of thinking nothing and doing nothing. This is the most delightful thing there is, next to sleep. So we were before birth, and so we shall be after death.”34

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.

Yes, but … the waking and the sleeping, the sludge of e-mails and appointments, the low-temperature life that is, for the most part, life: even if there are moments of intensity that seem to release us from this, surely any spiritual maturity demands an acknowledgment that there is not going to be some miraculous, transfiguring intrusion into reality. The sky will not darken and the dead will not speak; no voice from heaven is going to boom you back to a pre-reflective faith, nor will you feel, unless in death, a purifying fire that scalds all of consciousness like fog from the raw face of God. Is faith, then - assuming it isn’t merely a form of resignation or denial - some sort of reconciliation with the implacable fact of matter, or is it a deep, ultimate resistance to it? Both. Neither. To have faith is to acknowledge the absolute materiality of existence while acknowledging at the same time the compulsion toward transfiguring order that seems not outside of things but within them, and within you - not an idea imposed upon the world, but a vital, answering instinct. Heading home from work, irritated by my busyness and the sense of wasted days, shouldering through the strangers who merge and flow together on Michigan Avenue, merge and flow in the mirrored facades, I flash past the rapt and undecided face of my grandmother, lit and lost at once. In a board meeting, bored to oblivion, I hear a pen scrape like a fingernail on a cell wall, watch the glasses sweat as if even water wanted out, when suddenly, at the center of the long table, light makes of a bell-shaped pitcher a bell that rings in no place on this earth. Moments, only, and I am aware even within them, and thus am outside of them, yet something in the very act of such attention has troubled the tyranny of the ordinary, as if the world at which I gazed, gazed at me, as if the lost face and the living crowd, the soundless bell and the mind in which it rings, all hankered toward - expressed some undeniable hope for - one end.

Opal Raines stood on a cliff high above the surf that beat into the rocks on Cape Point at the southmost tip of the African continent. In front of her was the Indian Ocean and the islands of the Far East; to her right the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, and the icy bottom of the earth; at her back the Atlantic and the Americas; and on her left the vast plains of Africa where she had sometimes lived, and where she had been worshiped by wild lions. She read again the notification that had come today from Switzerland: Dear Ms. Raines. This is to notify you that the sum of ten million dollars (US) was transferred today into your account at Credit Suisse by Stella Clair Rose. Opal tore the notice into small pieces, and watched them fly from her hand, blown by the African breeze out across the ocean water. Her laugh followed the pieces as they floated away, drifting out wherever the wind would take them, toward Indonesia, the Banda Sea, Papua New Guinea, the great expanse of the Pacific — all her world, the world of the statistical outlier merging time past, and time not yet come, with this moment. All as unpredictable as shadows, as ghosts. Sometime later, that laugh, floating on an eastbound wind, would reach the California coast and come to rest where it did once before — on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles where Heron White’s body landed after he crashed through a twelfth-floor window at the end of a hallway outside a dentist’s office one rainy day at noon.

Whereas many of the particles inside you are in the constant complex motion that corresponds to your being alive, others move only in less-elaborate ways, such as many of the ones that make up your skin and help keep the other particles from flying apart. This means that your spacetime tube is a bit like those electrical cables where the inner strands are braided together and the shared insulation on the outside resembles a hollow tube. Moreover, most of your particles get regularly replaced. For example, about three-quarters of your body weight is water molecules, which get replaced every month or so, and your skin cells and red blood cells are replaced every few months. In spacetime, the trajectories of these particles joining and then leaving your body make a pattern reminscent of the familiar silk strands attached to a corncob. At both ends of your spacetime braid, corresponding to your birth and death, all the threads gradually separate, corresponding to all your particles joining, interacting and finally going their own separate ways (Figure 11.4 right). This makes the spacetime structure of your entire life resemble a tree: at the bottom, corresponding to early times, is an elaborate system of roots corresponding to the spacetime trajectory of many particles, which gradually merge into thicker strands and culminate in a single tubelike trunk corresponding to your current body (with a remarkable braidlike pattern inside as we described above). At the top, corresponding to late times, the trunk splits into ever-finer branches, corresponding to your particles going their own separate ways once your life is over. In other words, the pattern of life has only a finite extent along the time dimension, with the braid coming apart into frizz at both ends.

A lit candle contains all five elements: fire, earth, air, water, and spirit. The flame itself is fire, the base of the candle that holds it steady is earth, the oxygen that sustains it is air, the wax that pools is water, and when you infuse your energy into the candle, you are spirit. When you perform candle magic, you are invoking the elements and merging them with your intention.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

But I like to think of life in the same way I think of flowing water. Sometimes, the creeks, the streams, and the lakes will all be dry. Filled with carnage, broken branches, dead leaves, dust, and dirt. But then the rain comes, and all the tiny droplets of water merge together to create the river once more.

Your and our sea of love! The night sea, calm and silent, With the lapping sound of waves, There my heart wanders, my heart indulgent, And floats with these waves, Into the ocean of feelings, Into the depths of emotions, And I doubt my heart’s dealings, As it creates new waves of emotions, Where I feel wet with your embrace, And the waves of life surround me from every side, And I seek you riding these waves and merge with your grace, Feeling the beauty of your beautiful face that now stares at me from every side, And then my love Irma, I let myself sink to the bottom, As your feelings, your memories, your touch pile over me, And now I can even feel your every atom, As your conscience of love sinks into me, At the bottom of the life’s sea, Where ripples and waves distract the casual seeker of love, Because the pearls lie at the bottom of the sea, Just like you, every moment sinking into me silently, in this sea of love, Where I am the waves, I am the ripples, I am the sea, And you are the motion that keeps me alive, And in this state I shall now forever be, With you and the sea of life forever in me alive, Then at the bottom as you secretly kiss me, Some mariner shall feel the joy in his heart, And so shall begin the cycle of new waves, new tides in the sea, Where now the sea, the waves, the pearl, everything is part of our heart, That beats endlessly over the surface of the sea, To inspire the true mariner of the sea seeking life and love, To him we shall bear the visions of what he can be, A lover, just like you and me, who always finds his true love, So Irma, let the sea of feelings and your memories grow over me, And let me at the bottom lie submerged, in this vivid presence of thee, Where you are the water, the sea, and everything for me, For my true world is created only when I love thee! And this is what my wish for the true mariner of life shall always be, Seeking love, seeking a wave of passion to ride, And dearing to dive into this sea, At the bottom to discover you and me, Lying in the wet embrace that spreads in all directions, Wherever a true mariner turns to see, Our reflections to discover love’s true sensations, And imagines about the wonder if he too with his lover could dwell in this sea, our sea! And see, The wonder of love and the wonder of the sea, Where life grows on the surface and at the bottom too, For I love you Irma on the surface of the sea, And at its bottom too, So let this mariner come and brave the sea of life, As we cast our spell of love in the form of waves and infinite ripples, Let him discover his own meaningful strife, And flow endlessly with these ripples, To finally tarry at the bottom of this sea, Where now his lover shall tame his weary mind, Just like you do it for me, And make me believe even your heart has a mind, a beautiful mind! That often thinks of me, And dares to plunge into the darkness of the sea, Only to seek me, And realise that at the bottom you and I are the life of the sea! Where many mariners and lovers lie in their state humbled, To flow with these waves endlessly, As we at the bottom of this sea lie passionately cuddled, Like the pearl in an oyster, forever and endlessly!

Beyond these, illuminated by past summers, one summer remained that stayed the sun long into the night after you had watched the others; others with their fathers knee-deep, belly-button unconcerned, roly-poly mothers stretching out of the sea. Whiter than starch hands on bat and ball, you failed to catch. Tents, buckets, spades; others that went on digging barricades. You castle-bound, spying on princesses, honey-gold, singing against the blue, if touched surely their skin would ooze? Aware of own smell, skin-texture, sun in eyes, lips, toes, the softness underneath, in between, wondering what miracle made you, the sky, the sea. Conscious of sound, gulls hovering, crying, or silent at rarer intervals, their swift turns before being swallowed by the waves. Then no sound, all suddenly would be soundless, treading softly, dividing rocks with fins, and sword-fish fingers plucking away clothes, that were left with your anatomy, huddled like ruffled birds waiting. A chrysalis heart formed on the water’s surface, away from the hard-polished pebbles, sand-blowing and elongated shadows. Away, faster than air itself, dragon-whirled. Be given to, the sliding of water, to forget, be forgotten; premature thoughts—predetermined action. In a moment fixed between one wave and the next, the outline of what might be ahead. On your back, staring into space, becoming part of the sky, a speckled bird’s breast that opened up at the slightest notion on your part. But the hands, remember the hands that pulled your legs, that doubled you up, and dragged you down? Surprised at non-resistance. Voices that called, creating confusion. Cells tighter than shells, you spinning into spirals, quick-silver, thrashing the water, making stars scatter. Narcissus above, staring at a shadow-bat spreading out, finally disappearing into the very centre of the ocean. They were always there waiting by the edge, behind them the cliffs extended. Your head disembodied, bouncing above the separate force of arms and legs, rhythmical, the glorious sensation of weightlessness, moon-controlled, and far below your heart went on exploring, no matter how many years came between, nor how many people were thrust into focus. That had surely been the beginning, the separating of yourself from the world that no longer revolved round you, the awareness of becoming part of, merging into something else, no longer dependent upon anyone, a freedom that found its own reality, half of you the constant guardian, watching your actions, your responses, what you accepted, what you might reject.

Earth, air, water, fire. We call on them, use them, with respect. It’s not our power over them, but the merging of our power with theirs.

This was trail magic. Sea Breeze’s fire, his light, his heat, his life, remained, their salvation. It is a fact that all drainages, if followed downhill, lead to the same lowland water body. Lost and fallen hikers follow drainages down because walking ridges is harder. And so, despite the complex web of paths, waterfalls, cliffs, as a hiker wanders downhill, drainages merge, faint, abstract paths coalesce, thicken, until there is one path – the one, natural, trodden way. It isn’t a coincidence that Sea Breeze, Brandon Day and Gina Allen, and countless other hikers all wandered, lost, down the same steep slope to nowhere.

Sensations were completely different. Like the night she had run free as the wolf, Savannah now had the senses of a bird of prey. Her vision was sharp and clear, her eyes enormously wide. She spread her wings experimentally, then flapped them in the light drizzle. They were much bigger than she had anticipated. It delighted her, and she flapped them harder so she could create a wind, causing waves in the water standing in the patio. Are you having fun? Gregori’s voice held a hint of laughter. This is so cool, lifemate, she answered. Her rapidly beating wings lifted her into the air. The light mist was already passing overhead. The air was warm and heavy with the promise of moisture, but she soared high, reveling in her ability to do so. Gregori’s larger, stronger body dropped over hers, close and protective, guiding her in the direction of the bayou. As high up as they were, the sharp eyes of the raptor could spot the smallest of movements below. Details were vivid and clear. Even colors were different. Infrared vision, heat sensors— Savannah wasn’t certain what it was exactly, but the way she perceived the world was a different and unique experience. She dipped beneath Gregori and soared away from him, turning sideways and circling high above him. In her mind she could hear him swearing. As always he sounded arrogant, elegant, Old World, completely in command. Laughing, she caught a thermal and rode it up over the river. The male dropped down to cover her with his huge wings, fencing her in. Spoilsport! she accused him, her touch in his mind a whisper of lightness, of invitation to join in her fun. You are in a great deal of trouble, ma femme. He knew the threat was empty when he made it; he would give her the world. But why did she have to be such a little dare-devil all the time? Anyone choosing to live with you would have to have a sense of adventure, don’t you think? Her soft laughter played over his skin like music, like the gentle breeze blowing from the mountains in their homeland. Even within the bird’s body, he stirred to life, need and hunger rising to become a part of him. Relentless. Demanding. Savage in its intensity. It was more than simple lust. More than hunger. More than need. It was all of it merged together with a tenderness he had never conceived he could feel. When she was at her most outrageous, her most defiant, that was when his heart melted.

Sometimes it seemed as if the past was a painting that she had dipped in water, allowing the colours to run and drip, merge and fade so that an entirely altered landscape remained.

THE TASTE OF HER   Coming into her with all of my love, my lips run over her silk skin like water drifting downstream. Her kisses are filled with an incredible ability to give as her body merges into mine. The sounds of relief escaping her lips commend my escape, transcending me into the absolute pureness of love’s unseen realm. Again and again she does receive my love taking absolute pleasure in me, comforting me from all that I’ve ever known to protect myself from. I now know that the art of love in its entirety is art’s parallel source of energy from which the world is perceived as it is created. My love now consumes every part of her, she being absorbed in and out of this wild spasm that takes control of me until her urges become steady. I’ve become obsessed with the sheer taste of her knowing that my appetite will never cease. It is the taste of her that pleases me. It is her smile and her touch that gives to me the meaning of being.

... trail through the safe and wildflowers and willows, then remove my shoes and roll my trousers and wade into cold, rushing waters to stand in the exact place where the two rivers swam together to form one. The roar of their merging drowned out every other sound except their ancient conversation. I'd grip my toes to the slick stones below and balance against their current, close my eyes, and listen. I can't say exactly what those translucent waters told me. I only know that everything they said was true.

Try using brushes of different sizes and paints of different colors, and let your marks merge together on the canvas. The first few times you try action painting should be purely experimental. The important thing to remember is that unpredictability is what you are after, so you can revel in the pure enjoyment of playing with the paint. Begin to experiment with different approaches: Try flinging paint off the brush to create explosive spatters, dripping paint from different heights or pouring paint of different thicknesses (diluted with various amounts of water) onto the canvas at the same time.

Looking down, observers saw a sphere of purple-pink light burst through the cloud ceiling, like an air bubble breaking the surface of a body of water. William Laurence, watching from a window in The Great Artiste, was awestruck. The sphere merged into an ascending column of dirty brown smoke and ash, and “we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.

I sense her in you. In your blood and in your magic. And I will not abandon her, nor any of the others your people have taken from me. Humans are past the point of earning our forgiveness. You had mercy once and squandered it. Now I see that you have never deserved it. Another avalanche of images. This time of bodies strewn in swampy forest. Dead faces beneath the water. A woman’s face that I did not recognize, with sad violet eyes. The images merged and tangled with those of my own, the aftermath of Sarlazai, my family’s burnt corpses. Tisaanah’s mismatched gaze. All at once, I realized. I realized why this magic felt so unfamiliar, so inhuman. I realized why I had been dragged here, the moment I opened that passageway between me and the deepest levels of magic. You’re Fey, I said. You’re the Fey king. Now I understood. The Fey that Nura held— the ones that she was trying to make into the next Reshaye— She had created it. She had created the war she was trying so hard to stop. We don’t want a war with you, I said. Your people were taken by one human. One misguided human who doesn’t deserve the power that she had. But her reign is over. And I swear to you that I’ll return the people she took from you. You are lying to me. I never lie. It’s a personal flaw.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

The earth, the rocks, the sky and I interpenetrate. We are one. I feel a deep, beatific relaxation. The boundaries that I think of as me are suddenly no more than illusion. My body’s limits are a product of the same surface tension that allows a water bug to skate on top of the pond. Now, as I lie here, the tension is released, the illusion suspended. The vaired personalities and centers of energy that make up my hillside merge, and all of life flows into and out of one another. Collected in: Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson

You probably recall the famous statement at the beginning of Anna Karenina, in which Tolstoy, donning there the cloak of a calm village deity and hovering over the void full of benign toleration and loving kindness, declares from on high that all happy families resemble one another, while unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way. With all due respect to Tolstoy I’m telling you that the opposite is true: Unhappy people are mainly plunged in conventional suffering, living out in sterile routine one of five or six threadbare clichés of misery. Whereas happiness is a rare, fine vessel, a sort of Chinese vase, and the few people who have reached it have shaped and formed it line by line over the course of years, each in his own image and likeness, each in his own character, so that no two happinesses are alike. And in the molding of their happiness they have instilled their own suffering and humiliation. Like refining gold from ore. There is happiness in the world, Alec, even if it is more ephemeral than a dream. Indeed in your case it is beyond your reach. As a star is beyond the reach of a mole. Not “the satisfaction of approval,” not praise and advancement and conquest and domination, not submission and surrender, but the thrill of fusion. The merging of the I with another. As an oyster enfolds a foreign body and is wounded and turns it into its pearl while the warm water still surrounds and encompasses everything. You have never tasted this fusion, not once in your whole life. When the body is a musical instrument in the hands of the soul. When Other and I strike root in each other and become a single coral. And when the drip of the stalactite slowly feeds the stalagmite until the two of them become one.

A yogi who through perfect meditation has merged his consciousness with the Creator perceives the cosmical essence as light (vibrations of life energy); to him there is no difference between the light rays composing water and the light rays composing land. Free from matter-consciousness, free from the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, a master transfers his body of light with equal ease over or through the light rays of earth, water, fire and air.