A light rain fell upon the monastery and temple this morning, upon the plants and trees, ferns and lakes. It also fell upon the seven residents who go to the river each morning, there to sit on the large boulders and meditate on the oneness of themselves and their experience. You would think they would be complaining that they had no umbrellas, that their clothes were soaked, that they were cold. But instead when they returned for breakfast they spoke only of the bliss they felt, the union of themselves and the river and rain.

Swami Pragyanand of Delhi will be arriving for a 3-day visit this afternoon. The Kauai Kulapati families and a few mathavasi (monks) will be hosting him for 3 days, beginning today at 3:30pm with a parade up Tiruneri to Kadavul Temple for a foot-washing there. September 3 is his Jayanthi, and we plan to have a nice homa for him.

Wonderful visits from our pilgrims with Gurudeva. The family from Toronto sat with Gurudeva under the Big Mango Tree, and he gave them each a nice warm wool shawl to "keep you warm next winter in Canada." They all started to cry! The father explained: "We've been to so many ashrams, swami. Nowhere are we looked after with such love as we have found here. This is a special place, such a pure place, and our prayer is that it stays this way forever." They started walking toward the gate with Sadhaka Thondunatha. They had already made a pledge to give a small monthly sum to Iraivan "for the rest of our life," but something moved them and the wife opened her purse and handed over all the money left with her on this last day of her pilgrimage. Then the husband, and the grandfather, did the same, all giving (and giving their all) to the temple with such love. Thondunatha could hardly believe it, and we all enjoyed his story about it at lunch.

Gurudeva is working each afternoon on the Merging with Siva text, fine-tuning a few of his inspired talks. The publications team is getting the resources together, Jyothi Palani is back on the glossary work and Sadhaka Japendranatha is helping Acharya Kumarswami with the forms and information in the very back of the book. The art team is on the job too, preparing instructions for our artist in South India who is doing a full piece of art for all the 52 chapters, plus more for the Raja Yoga sections in the back. This is going to be a truly great book, a fantastic legacy of Gurudeva's fifty years of teaching yoga and Saiva Siddhanta to so many seekers. Wait until you see this 1,400-page masterpiece. To show how precious each part of it is, when the editing team set out with Gurudeva last night to cut back a mere four lines in one of the longest chapters, it took them twenty minutes to find something that they felt good about eliminating!

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