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The shabbiness of my sleeping quarter didn't bother me much. I was anxious to ascend Vindhyagiri and behold that giant statue which had beckoned me from afar in full size. Having reached the topmost terrace of the temple and beholding the statue's face at close range above me that limited knowledge which I had acquired in the Ashram library in Pondicherry of the religion of the twenty-four Tirthankaras didn't seem so other-wordly after all. I now knew, quite. clearly and more by instinct than by reason, that my pilgrimage had brought me to a place where the potential moral greatness of man has been made visible in a magnificent, perhaps even incomparable manner. And if the spiritual force which has created this marvelby means of gifted artisans were still alive, I pondered, I would have no choice but to open my mind to that ancient body of thought.
Three times I climbed Vindhyagiri on that first visit to Shravanabelgola, staying atop for hours each time. The mid-day hours I specially liked for that was the time when hardly anyone
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