After saying goodbye to the queen of Raipur, Guru Gobind Singh Ji travelled on, stopping here and there, and one evening the party halted at a village called Toda.
It was time for the evening assembly, and Guru Ji was walking across to it when he saw somebody under a tree.
It was a meditating man, sitting quite still with his eyes closed.
Guru Ji stopped. He did not say anything. He simply stood there and looked at him.
After a few moments the man felt somebody near and opened his eyes, and got the surprise of his life, because of who was standing over him.
Then Guru Ji took the bow off his shoulder, and reached out, and drew the tip of it gently down the man's back.
And a coolness went through that man such as he had never felt in his life.
He had been at this for years. He had gone through hard practices, the kind that hurt. He had sat and sat. And nothing he had ever done had given him one moment of what he had just been given by the touch of a bow.
He started talking, all in a rush, the way you do when something cracks open.
O Lord, he said, I do not even know what I am looking for any more.
I had trouble at home, he said, so I left it and became a recluse. Then I took up the hard yoga. A holy man told me that if I did that I would become like Shiva himself. I did it, and I got no happiness out of it at all. Then I went and asked other holy men, and they all told me something different.
And Guru Ji answered him. This is the part to listen to.
I am a servant of the Supreme Lord, said Guru Ji. But I am soaked in his love. His love is in my touch. That is why, when I touched you, you felt him there.
Then he told the man the truth about all those years.
Your meditation did not bear this fruit, said Guru Ji.
What bore fruit was the longing in your heart. You truly wanted him. That is the thing that worked, and it was working the whole time, underneath all the rest of it.
And meditation is not a bad thing, said Guru Ji, so long as you are aiming at the right thing. If there is no longing to meet the Lord in it, then you can sit as long as you like and it will take you nowhere.
The man sat there and his mind woke up like somebody coming out of a long sleep. All those years of sitting had made his mind steady and quiet. What he had never had was the right direction to point it in. Now he had both.
Guru Ji put his hand on the man's head and stroked his hair.
And the man went down onto his knees with his head bent, and stayed there.
It was evening by now, that time when the day and the night meet each other.
Bhai Sahib gets carried away here, and I think he is allowed to. It was the hour, he says, when wishing and grace came face to face. When the one who wanted to know met the one who gives knowing. When an empty lap was held out and got filled up with the Name.
Meanwhile, over in the assembly, the kirtan had finished and everybody was getting anxious, because Guru Ji had not arrived and nobody knew where he was. They were praying that nothing was wrong.
And nothing was wrong. He was out under a tree in the dusk with one tired man who had spent his whole life looking in the wrong places, taking as long as it took.
They came in together afterwards.
That night the singing went on and on, and it was still dark when the musicians finished, and the moment they did, the drum began to beat for moving on.
Which is a thing the drum says every morning to everybody, if you listen to it properly. You are only staying here. Get up. We are going on.