I bow down in my heart to God-omnipotent, whom I see in the form: Lord, Meher Baba, King of the Universe.

To walk with the brother of that King through the bustling streets of His birth, is to tread the loftiest heights of imagination, happiness, and love. To spend a day with the brother of Avatar is to run and play again like a child.

It was, morning in the city of Poona, India, birthplace of the Avatar of our age. One feels of Poona, "This is surely the home town of everyone and anyone who is in any way reaching out for the hand of God."

My trip to Poona in 1965 was truly the journey of a pilgrim. So also was my trip to that city in 1969. In the journey of a pilgrim there is much anguish and desperation. And in the progress of a pilgrim there is virtual despair when one reaches that point where all hopes, dreams and visions have fallen into ruin.

But in the sojourn of a beggar, even despair and disappointment are left behind, and one finds himself entering into a state of existence, an adventure that seems more truly charged with humor than with any other attribute of consciousness. This was a journey without hopes or expectations, a journey in which the funny side of this beggarly sojourn continued to show itself with a sparkling and iridescent humor.

We went out of our hotel into a beautiful Poona December morning. The shops were just beginning to open for the day's business. We decided to walk through some of the busy streets just to feel the atmosphere and aroma of India. How many young people from America now wander the streets of India amidst the millions whose karma gave them birth in that land? How many western-born souls now go a-searching in that land — for what they do not know, but with a kind of homing instinct that brings them? How many long to know what so few know, that the One for whom all ultimately search has already come and finished His mighty work, which is to rechart compassionately the course of each and every wandering soul towards its real destiny?

How fortunate we were, my companions and I, to simply know while strolling through these Poona streets that we had come simply to pay homage to the one God of Gods who has come down to human level in our time and made Himself known to us so that this morning's stroll had real direction. We were looking for the family home of a man who wandered out of Persia a hundred years ago in search of God — a man named Sheriarji, the man whose privilege it was to become human father to the living Christ.

Now it was the house of Baba's brothers, Behram and Jal, who are real disciples of that one Christ. It must surely be of profound importance to the God-Man that His own brothers follow and obey Him in His lifetime. We felt that we would find the house if we just kept walking through the neighborhood we were in, a neighborhood as full of amazing sights as of smells and sounds.

I could never figure out how it is that an American is always recognizable to the eyes of the Indian people. In Ahmednagar and even in Poona the American is met wherever he goes with the sound of "Jai Baba." As we were walking along one narrow street, we heard a "Jai Baba!" My companions told me it was a blind beggar. I didn't see the blind beggar myself, but the blind beggar easily spotted us as Americans and thus the "Jai Baba." I thought: "What a hallucination this great country is, what a Divine hallucination!"

Sure enough, we found the house of Sheriar Irani and were greeted most warmly by Behram who promptly showed us into the little room where Baba underwent the horrendous agony of "coming down" from the unlimited freedom, power and bliss of the Almighty to become the bound Prometheus for this kali yuga. No one can imagine that agony. All one can say in that little room in one's own little heart is, "Thank God, agony or no agony, that You came down." He had to come down to