In geography, a confluence occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel.
Confluences and mankind
Since rivers often serve as political boundaries, confluences sometimes demarcate three abutting political entities, such as nations, states, or provinces, forming a tripoint.
A number of major cities, such as Chongqing, St. Louis, and Khartoum, arose at confluences.
Within a city, a confluence often forms a visually prominent point, so that confluences are sometimes chosen as the site of prominent public buildings or monuments, as in Koblenz, Lyon, and Winnipeg. Cities also often build parks at confluences, sometimes as projects of municipal improvement, as at Portland and Pittsburgh. In other cases, a confluence is an industrial site, as in Philadelphia or Mannheim. Often a confluence lies in the shared floodplain of the two rivers and nothing is built on it, for example at Manaus.
One other way that confluences may be exploited by humans is as sacred places in religions. Rogers suggests that for the ancient peoples of the Iron Age in northwest Europe, watery locations were often sacred, especially sources and confluences. Pre-Christian Slavic peoples chose confluences as the sites for fortified triangular temples, where they practiced human sacrifice and other sacred rites. In Hinduism, the confluence of two sacred rivers often is a pilgrimage site for ritual bathing. In Pittsburgh, a number of adherents to Mayanism consider their city’s confluence to be sacred. [source: WikiPedia]
Confluence Age, Sangam Yug, Diamond Age
The confluence age, Sangam Yug, (Diamond Age) inspires world transformation. Sangam Yug is a period of about 100 years that overlaps the end or last 100 years of Kali Yug (Iron Age). This is the period at the end of the cycle in which God descends to protect the virtuous, destroy the evil and to re-establish righteousness and the new world of Sat Yug (Golden Age). This is the reason Sangam Yug is called the leap age as it signals the end the old kaliyugi world and the beginning of the new cycle of peace, happiness and prosperity.
- In the confluence age, you get the realization and awareness of who you are. You get the knowledge that you are a soul and not this body.
- The “Bhagvatgita” (“Gita”) scripture is a memorial of spiritual knowledge given by Shiv Baba in the confluence age. Actually, Murlis are true “Gita” (Song of God).
- Holi is a festival, a memorial of the confluence age, when on the first day (Holi) people burn everything old; a symbol of burning old sanskaras (habits, traits) and sins in the fire of yoga. On the second day (Dhurya) people sprinkle each other with coloured water; a symbol of a soul being coloured with God’s knowledge.
- Svadarshanchakra ‘disc of self-realization’, awareness of one’s own stage of the soul in the world drama cycle, from golden age to iron age and in confluence age (“swa” – I, “darshan” – see; knowledge, “chakra” – cycle).
- The Confluence Age is known as the mela of a meeting with God. Many melas take place, but the mela of a meeting with God only takes place at the confluence age.
- At the Confluence Age you get the knowledge of the past, present and future of the cycle or the world eternal drama, known as Trikaldarshi.