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Show 70 But "soul life," he knew, gave an intimation into the eternal: after the whole body had opened up as an eye during the day, the soul awoke, and crossed that boundary into "realms that eye hath not seen." Brooding over some vast mountain landscape, or among the spiritual countenances of mountain flowers, our bodies disappear, our mortal coils come off without any shuffling, and we blend into the rest of Nature, utterly blind to the boundaries that measure human quantities into separate individuals. So the two lives were necessarily linked, and the only way to become "part and parcel of Nature," was to attain such a fine edge of physical fitness that one didn't even notice it. Muir said that he was in such good health that he "knew nothing about it." It was as if the body had become part of the wilderness, the ego had vanished, and the boundary between self and Nature had evaporated. The palpable separation of soul life from limb life is no cheap thrill, and is not easily come by. I have felt it and can verify that it requires much time and effort. It's the sort of thing one feels only in the mountains, I think, after covering sixty miles in three days perhaps, or after 1500 feet of difficult climbing in the Valley. Back when I first discovered that it was happening, I wasn't likely to guess that my mental state was enlightened, and I wasn't carrying any books of oriental philosophy, so I wasn't likely to make any comparisons. Neither did Muir. It was simply a loss of any |