I think there's a little more going on than that. Of course, every Neurosis album is fairly conceptual and Times of Grace is one I've yet to entirely decipher. yet I see the "great mind" and the collective conciousness of humanity, and that times are are about to get brutal and violent and rationality isn't going to save you ("honor and wisdom will cower"). The river's flow is quite that sort of temporal pattern, the flow of life if you will. Our shell is hollow because we're powerless to betray the great mind, we're part of a system so therefore we're not grand individual egos we made ourselves out to be, therefore since we're unable to dam or diverge the flow, all we can do is follow it.
I think there's a little more going on than that. Of course, every Neurosis album is fairly conceptual and Times of Grace is one I've yet to entirely decipher. yet I see the "great mind" and the collective conciousness of humanity, and that times are are about to get brutal and violent and rationality isn't going to save you ("honor and wisdom will cower"). The river's flow is quite that sort of temporal pattern, the flow of life if you will. Our shell is hollow because we're powerless to betray the great mind, we're part of a system so therefore we're not grand individual egos we made ourselves out to be, therefore since we're unable to dam or diverge the flow, all we can do is follow it.