382 IN THE VISION OF GOD
ed of Ramdas, He would, at three in the morning daily
come to Gopalrao's from a long distance to see Ramdas.
He would embrace Ramdas and sit beside him with his
hands clasped round Ramdas' shoulders and would say:
" I am coming to inhale the sweet fragrance which you
radiate. To be with you fills me with a blissful intoxica-
tion." On one occasion Ramdas was sitting with the saints
and a few devotees in Bhai Vir Singh's worship room
upstairs where the holy book Granth Saheb was being read
by turns by the devotees. Now a man at the entrance
downstairs sent a request to be admitted into the satsung.
A consultation took place between Bhai Vir Singh and
Vaddasantji, and they came to the decision that the man
should not be admitted since he would create a disturbance,
not being a pure-hearted man. Hero Ramdas intervened
and pleaded on behalf of the eager devotee.
"If you consider him impure," Ramdas urged, "there is
all the more reason that he should be admitted into your
society. Satsung is the most potent power for purifying the
heart of any one who comes under its influence. Do not
deny the man this privilege since he seeks it of his own
accord." The saints at first refused to take Ramdas' sugges-
tion, but had to yield at last and the man was permitted to
enter the room and sit beside them. The man stayed for a
few minutes and then left. Saint Bhai Vir Singh then
narrated a curious bit of his own experience to show how
the society and influence of an evil-minded man produced
disastrous results.
" Once a woman came to me," he went on, " in a dis-
tressed condition. She said that she had been of late
subjected to attacks of splitting headache and wanted
some remedy. When asked how the complaint started, she
said that she was having it since she saw a wandering
sadKu from whom she got the upadesh of a mantram. Ever
since then, whenever she repeated the mantram, she would
feel excruciating pains in the head. When I suggested to