John Muir, a great naturalist, mystic, and writer who advocated for the preservation of wilderness in the United States, wrote about the way he simultaneously perceived the outer and inner realities both around him and in him, thus expressing the Sacred Tremor, spanda:
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,—a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal. Just now I can hardly conceive of any bodily condition dependent on food or breath any more than the ground or the sky. How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is.”
