Outside a certain town there was a hermitage, and the man in charge of it was a famous yogi called Bhartari.
He had a whole community under him: men who had left their homes, who sat in the cold and held their breath and did all the hard things.
And one morning he came out and walked along the path, and saw somebody sitting on the bare ground a little way off.
He slowed down.
Something about the place felt different, and he could not say why. So he came closer, and looked properly, and everything went out of his head.
All those years of practice. Every hard thing he had ever made himself do. Gone, just like that, and in their place a gladness he had never once managed to reach by trying.
His head went down of its own accord.
Greetings to you, he said, and came nearer, and said it again, and then put his forehead on the ground and sat down there. The head of the hermitage, on the bare earth, in front of a stranger.
But after a while a small worried thought got in.
What if this is the one, he thought. And what if he gets up and walks away while my eyes are shut, and I have to spend another ten years waiting.
So he opened his eyes and went up, rather shyly, and asked: where are you from. What is your name. How do you come to be here.
And one of the companions sitting nearby answered him.
His country is the Lord's, he said. His name is from the Lord. He has come to join up whatever has come apart from Him. And if you are asking about the body, then the place is Lahore, and the name is Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
The yogi's eyes closed.
Something went right through him at the sound of it, down into his bones.
Oh, he said. How lucky I am. I have been waiting so long. So very long.
And Guru Ji smiled and said: waiting, were you. How did you know to wait.
So Bhartari told him.
Once, he said, when I had got my mind still enough, I saw something, very faint. And a voice in it said: stop this. This hard road will not take you where you want to go.
I asked a great many questions, and the answer was this. Somebody has been born on the earth who was sent. Go and find him. Sit with him and serve him.
So I asked, how will I know him, and what is he called.
And I was told: a soul has no name. But in a body, he is called Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
He will come to you here, I was told. It is certain. Sit with a loving heart, and when he comes, ask him anything at all.
And so I waited, said Bhartari. And here you are.
Now, the whole town saw the head of the hermitage bow to a stranger, and word went round fast.
People came out to look. They looked at the yogis they had been bowing to for years, who did hard practices and also drank and took things that muddled them and had no love in them anywhere. And then they looked at the face of Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
And after that they stopped going to the hermitage.
The other yogis did not take it well. They tried everything they knew, every trick and every power, and none of it worked, and in the end they came and sat down at his feet as well.
And one day, when all that had settled, Bhartari asked the question he had been carrying.
Do you say the hard road is no good at all, he asked. All of it wasted.
And Guru Ji answered him gently.
People are not what they were, he said. They are worn down, and their bodies are not strong, and they do not have it in them to do what you have done.
A handful of men go off into a forest and sit down, and the rest of the world carries on exactly as before.
That will not do, said Guru Ji.
It is no good having a few saints in a wood. Everybody needs to be one.
Goodnight. He waited years for somebody to arrive, and when he did, the first thing that happened was that his eyes closed.