It was late artist Murlidhar Nangare who one day gave me the Marathi translation of this book. I read it and was fascinated with the unrelenting search of Paul Brunton, a mystic, traveller and author who undertook travels to India to search for gurus, godmen and the likes.

It took a while before I could get a copy of the original english version (originally published in 1934). Reading it again proved to be equally interesting. While the author has shared his account of his encounters with seers and godmen - some seemed to possess special powers, whereas some turned out to be fraudulent.

Paul Brunton has summed up the book with a very appropriate comment which must be revelation to the probing western mind - a realisation that he seemed to have had after a rigorous scrutiny of seers and godmen - the fact that there exist certain phenomena in this world which are true but the human knowledge of the day is not in a position to explain it.