Dayalu Baba’s other most loved “modern” possession was a small binocular I gave him. He would carry it everywhere in the forest and look at things across the mountains. He would look in amazement like a little kid when he used them.

To him everything would look like some divine manifestation. He would often ask me to look through the binoculars at some distant tree, or rock or mountain peak, and then ask me in excitement, “Do you see it? Do you see it?”

I never saw whatever he was seeing. To me it was just a tree, but he would insist there was something mystical and amazing to see on the distant hills that we had to keep secret. “It was just between him and me”, but in reality it was just with him because I still didn’t see anything even when he would point something out repeatedly.

Many times he would think that I could see what he saw, and would be surprised when I told him I don’t have eyes like him to see the things he sees.

(Photo taken July 13, 2015 while climbing Ratna Giri mountain behind his ashram. Ranjeeth and Bhagavat in the back, Srinath taking the photo.)

Question from the Comments: The mountain is called Ratna Giri, did anyone ever find any jewels there?

One of the sadhus there once told me, “In the previous yugas this mountain was made up of pearls from a mala of mother parvati, which fell off as she meditated to get Lord Shiva as her husband. Each of these huge boulders was a jewel, but when Kali yuga comes, all divine things turn to stone and become hidden.”

Question from the Comments: What was his other prized “modern” possession?

Among modern technology, a casio keyboard he would play in kirtan.

At first I had got a small harmonium for him, which he loved to play, but on festival days you couldn’t hear it since others were using microphones. So then I got him a casio keyboard that could be plugged into the speaker system and be heard. He would always tie it in a red cloth, as they do with respected things like sacred books and mridangas.

Question from the Comments: Did he ever tell you what he saw?

Sometimes he would tell me of things he saw, things he saw both in person and in meditation. He would take me aside and whisper it to me while looking over our shoulders to make sure none of the other people were around to hear. Sometimes he would call me to a place to show me, and to me it would just be a rock. He would keep commenting to me how much light is emanating from it, thinking I must be seeing that light too.

When I would explain to him I didn’t see any light, he was perplexed why I couldn’t see it. A few times he tried to get me to see it, and even did different experiments to try to get me to see what he was seeing. Finally he concluded, “You were supposed to be able to see by now, but something is blocking your vision.” He would say, “its delayed for some reason”, deri heigala, “It got delayed”. He spent a lot of time over the years trying to solve that.

It ties in to the first time I met them, and a story of the three coconuts in their altar cave from a yajna they had done, two of which had sprouted and grew into small plants on top of the clay kalashas, and one which didn’t sprout.

The day after I met them in their ashram, they (Dayalu Baba along with Nityananda Baba) walked 12 km to where I was staying at Chakratirtha ashram in the forest, and arrived just in time to save me from a deadly fight with drunkards holding machetes. We had gotten into a difficult confrontation with them over some innapropriate behavior of theirs which ended in them pushing one of the sadhus and the subsequent retaliation by one of our devotees.

After solving that confrontation, when they saw me they said, “We saw in our meditation this fight would happen, so we have come here by walk to solve it.” Then after sitting down for a minute, they said, “Three coconuts have fallen, two have grown into mighty trees, one has not. We have come to find out why. We came here to see the coconut that didn’t sprout and to find out why it didn’t sprout.”

They sat down and drank a cup of tea with us and then immediately returned 12 km by walk back to their ashram. They had walked a total of 24 km to spend less than 5 minutes with us, solving the fight and drinking a cup of tea.

In their view, there were supposed to be three sadhus who would join together, but only two succeeded and one failed to sprout, which they considered to be me. And that’s why I could never see anything that they saw. “It was delayed”, was the answer, and that was what was forshadowed by the coconuts on the altar.

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