The river, still fed by the far distant mountain spring of Book 1 (Plough), approaches the ocean. It has sustained life all through the evolution of society along its banks and down through the centuries during the events of Book 2 (Growth) and Book 3 (Harvest), but by the time of Book 4 (Snow) the conscious connection between society and the river has almost been lost. According to legend, at one point the river split into two streams, one feminine and the other masculine, and where they will flow into the ocean they will re-unite, of necessity.

It is winter. Jade is making her way...

Twinkling is an autobiography with a difference: it is not mainly an account of the outer life of a person. It reveals the emergence of the increasing influence of the inner self, and does so much as an image is revealed when a photo is being slowly developed, which image, necessarily, at the start of the process is barely visible. What emerges is the story of the growing importance of the influence of the Self. And because the life concerned was, from an early adult stage, most significantly changed by the presence in it of the effect and guidance of the latihan of Subud (Susila Budhi...

"Note for Note Book 5 (Scatter)" sees the river finally reach the ocean, roughly one thousand years after the events of "Book 1 (Plough)." It is the modern era in which people move at increasing speed and with increasing sophistication and increasing brutality, but essentially make the same choices as their ancestors did, although the context is absolutely different. There is a global transfer of goods, of culture and of those displaced and seeking refuge, the extent of which has never been seen before, but to a large extent people have forgotten their connections with what has gone...