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The hour for my promised instruction had arrived; several SATYAGRAHIS now entered the room-Mr. Desai, Dr. Pingale, and a few others who desired the KRIYA technique. I first taught the little class the physical YOGODA exercises. The body is visualized as divided into twenty parts; the will directs energy in turn to each section. Soon everyone was vibrating before me like a human motor.
The fading sun cast a last gleam over the palms and banyans; the hum of night and the crickets had started. The atmosphere was serenity itself; I was enraptured. A solemn chant led by Mr. Desai, with responses from the group; then a GITA reading. The Mahatma motioned to me to give the concluding prayer. Such divine unison of thought and aspiration!
A front-yard well, twenty-five feet across, was used, Mr. Desai said, for watering stock; near-by stood a revolving cement wheel for threshing rice. Each of our small bedrooms proved to contain only the irreducible minimum-a bed, handmade of rope. The whitewashed kitchen boasted a faucet in one corner and a fire pit for cooking in another.
It has no doubt absorbed many tribes in its fold, but this absorption has been of an evolutionary, imperceptible character. I believe that He belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world, to all lands and races." On my last evening in Wardha I addressed the meeting which had been called by Mr. Desai in Town Hall.
Consigning our luggage to a bullock cart, we entered an open motor car with Mr. Desai and his companions, Babasaheb Deshmukh and Dr. Pingale. A short drive over the muddy country roads brought us to MAGANVADI, the ashram of India's political saint. Mr. Desai led us at once to the writing room where, cross-legged, sat Mahatma Gandhi.
Desai entered the room, "please make arrangements at Town Hall for Swamiji to speak there on yoga tomorrow night." As I was bidding the Mahatma good night, he considerately handed me a bottle of citronella oil. The following morning our little group breakfasted early on a tasty wheat porridge with molasses and milk.
"The ashram residents are wholly at your disposal; please call on them for any service." With characteristic courtesy, the Mahatma handed me this hastily-written note as Mr. Desai led our party from the writing room toward the guest house. Our guide led us through orchards and flowering fields to a tile-roofed building with latticed windows.
This philosophy of monism received its highest expression in the UPANISHAD commentaries of Shankara. "Welcome to Wardha!" Mahadev Desai, secretary to Mahatma Gandhi, greeted Miss Bletch, Mr. Our little group had just dismounted at the Wardha station on an early morning in August, glad to leave the dust and heat of the train.
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