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mediately attracted by the twinkling good-humoured eyes, which yet seem to possess the ability to penetrate into the innermost recesses of one's soul. One is greeted with a smile of welcome and in a clear, cheerful voice. One's first impulse is to say, “But this man is more like a friend than anything else!” And that, indeed, is the key to Muniji's personality, it exudes warmth and friendship.
It is not only in his personal appearance that Muniji dispels one's conventional ideas of a sage. Though he follows scrupulously the precepts of his Order, he has completely overcome the pitfall of allowing his mind and outlook to become petty and narrow. There is no rigidity in his mental make-up and the catholicity of his tastes and ideas is truly amazing. His reading in literature, philosophy and theology proves this very well indeed. Not only is he a master of Sanskrit and Gujarati, in which languages he is well-known to the literary world, but he is also quite familiar with western literature and thought and can claim to have read the works of such writers as Shaw and Ibsen, Socrates, Plato and Marcus Aurelius.
Muniji is no recluse, living in the vernal woods and meditating at a distance, on the fate of mankind. He has meditated and meditated deeply, he is concerned with the fate of mankind, but in a much more active and personal way. He is not a prophet of doom, castigating his followers in a thundering voice and making them quake with the threat of "the fire next time” if they do not mend their ways. His approach is more human and one which is based on commonsense, and that is why he establishes such an immediate and perfect rapport with his audience. He believes firmly that basically all human beings are good
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