“You mean Ram Gopal Muzumdar. I call him the ‘sleepless saint.’ He is always awake in an ecstatic consciousness. His home is at Ranbajpur, near Tarakeswar.” I thanked the pundit, and entrained immediately for Tarakeswar. I hoped to silence my misgivings by wringing a sanction from the “sleepless saint” to engage myself in lonely Himalayan meditation. Behari’s friend, I heard, had received illumination after many years of KRIYA YOGA practice in isolated caves. At Tarakeswar I approached a famous shrine. Hindus regard it with the same veneration that Catholics give to the Lourdes sanctuary in France. Innumerable healing miracles have occurred at Tarakeswar, including one for a member of my family. “I sat in the temple there for a week,” my eldest aunt once told me. “Observing a complete fast, I prayed for the recovery of your Uncle Sarada from a chronic malady. On the seventh day I found a herb materialized in my hand! I made a brew from the leaves, and gave it to your uncle. His disease vanished at once, and has never reappeared.” I entered the sacred Tarakeswar shrine; the altar contains nothing but a round stone. Its circumference, beginningless and endless, makes it aptly significant of the Infinite. Cosmic abstractions are not alien even to the humblest Indian peasant; he has been accused by Westerners, in fact, of living on abstractions! My own mood at the moment was so austere that I felt disinclined to bow before the stone symbol. God should be sought, I reflected, only within the soul. I left the temple without genuflection and walked briskly toward the outlying village of Ranbajpur. My appeal to a passer-by for guidance caused him to sink into long cogitation. “When you come to a crossroad, turn right and keep going,” he finally pronounced oracularly. Obeying the directions, I wended my way alongside the banks of a canal. Darkness fell; the outskirts of the jungle village were alive with winking fireflies and the howls of near-by jackals. The moonlight was too faint to supply any reassurance; I stumbled on for two hours. Welcome clang of a cowbell! My repeated shouts eventually brought a peasant to my side. “I am looking for Ram Gopal Babu.” “No such person lives in our village.” The man’s tone was surly. “You are probably a lying detective.” Hoping to allay suspicion in his politically troubled mind, I touchingly explained my predicament. He took me to his home and offered a hospitable welcome. “Ranbajpur is far from here,” he remarked. “At the crossroad, you should have turned left, not right.” My earlier informant, I thought sadly, was a distinct menace to travelers. After a relishable meal of coarse rice, lentil-DHAL, and curry of potatoes with raw bananas, I retired to a small hut adjoining the courtyard. In the distance, villagers were singing to the loud accompaniment of MRIDANGAS {FN13-1} and cymbals. Sleep was inconsiderable that night; I prayed deeply to be directed to the secret yogi, Ram Gopal.