If you want to become a high priest of humbug, fine - but you are surely not going to do it on company time!" The chief accountant, SVS, a spartan, no-nonsense company functionary with a schoolmaster's mien and sense of metaphor, was addressing me with volume control turned up for the benefit of everyone else in the office. He'd had it up to the eyes; it was time to put his foot down. I continued sketching my picture of Dattatreya as if I hadn't heard him.

The first welcome I got upon my arrival at Sai Baba's ashram was from a large group of ragged beggars sitting outside the front gate. Past them, flocks of well-off people crowded into the compound; that meant Sai Baba was here now. I viewed this scene with decidedly mixed feelings. "He is supposed to be God", I considered, "and his followers say he has the power to remove misfortune, disease and poverty - so why are these beggars loitering here just outside his own house?

A day or so later I asked my friend to take me around the village. We went to the Chitravati river, but since it was the dry season there was no water, just a sand channel. On a rocky mound near the riverbed stood a tamarind tree from which the Sai Baba is said to have magically plucked mangos and other fruits during his youth. I clambered up the rocks and sat beneath it. At the time I was not aware of the significance the Sai Baba's followers attached to this tree; I only happened to go there because it looked like a suitable spot for meditation.

Consciousness is the symptom of the spirit soul. The soul is ‘conscious’. The vedic term for defining soul is 'sat’ (eternal existence ), ‘cit’ (fully conscious), and ananda (full of pleasure). This consciousness pervades our whole existence, namely physic and psychic.