'Where I’d been at the Ashrama just two years I went up to my forest retreat for a reason that’ll make you smile. I wanted to spend my birthday there. I got there the day before. Next morning I awoke before dawn and I thought I’d go and see the sunrise from the place I’ve just told you about. I knew the way blindfold. I sat down under a tree and waited. It was night still, but the stars were pale in the sky, and day was at hand. I had a strange feeling of suspense. So gradually that I was hardly aware of it light began to filter through the darkness, slowly, like a mysterious figure slinking between the trees. I felt my heart beating as though at the approach of danger. The sun rose.

… How grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in it’s splendour. Those mountains with their deep jungle, the mist still entangled in the treetops, and the bottomless lake far below me. The sun caught the lake through a cleft in the heights and it shone like burnished steel. I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I’d never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and travelled up to me head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of my loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that has perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forego it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstasy of my bliss. When I came to myself I was exhausted and trembling. I fell asleep."