_________________________________________
/ His followers called him Mahasamatman   \
| and said he was a god. He preferred to  |
| drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, |
| and called himself Sam. He never        |
| claimed to be a god. But then, he never |
| claimed not to be a god. Circum-        |
| stances being what they were, neither   |
| admission could be of any benefit.      |
| Silence, though, could. It was in the   |
| days of the rains that their prayers    |
| went up, not from the fingering of      |
| knotted prayer cords or the spinning of |
| prayer wheels, but from the great       |
| pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, |
| goddess of the Night. The               |
| high-frequency prayers were directed    |
| upward through the atmosphere and out   |
| beyond it, passing into that golden     |
| cloud called the Bridge of the Gods,    |
| which circles the entire world, is seen |
| as a bronze rainbow at night and is the |
| place where the red sun becomes orange  |
| at midday. Some of the monks doubted    |
| the orthodoxy of this prayer            |
| technique...                            |
|                                         |
\ -- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"       /
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