Tilabhandeswar that they had sprung from the earth and not been made by the hands of men. About the image of Kedaranath she said, 'This Kedar and the Kedar in the Himalayas are related to each other. If one visits this, one really visits the other. This Deity is a very Living Presence.'
One day she went to visit Sarnath, the ruined site of an important centre of Buddhist learning and religious activity in ancient days. On seeing there some Westerners looking at the relics of Buddhism in speechless wonder, she remarked, 'These are the people who built this place in a previous birth. And now they are amazed at their own doings.'
While returning from Sarnath, the Holy Mother narrowly escaped a very serious accident. On the return trip Swami Brahmananda had exchanged his carriage with that of the Holy Mother. As they proceeded, the horses of the carriage in which the Swami was seated ran amuck, thus upsetting the carriage and causing considerable injury to the Swami. Referring to this incident, the Mother said, 'I was to be involved in the accident, but Rakhal (Swami Brahmananda) diverted it and made himself the victim of it. Otherwise the consequences would have been disastrous.'
The Holy Mother visited two well-known monks in Banaras. One of them belonged to the sect of Nanak and lived on the banks of the Ganges. The other was the celebrated Chameli Puri, who was a junior contemporary of Tota Puri, the preceptor of Sri Ramakrishna, and who belonged to the same monastery as he. When Golap-Ma inquired of this monk as to who had been