Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not
only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with
some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above
a merry remark and conversation at times. Thus on the second day of my
arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for
over an hour with my Master. Asked by him smilingly what it was that
made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:--"How is it,
Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their
heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even
seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?" To which he
pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the
reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the
Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly
Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time. The
said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led
several persons to mistake the Lama for himself.
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