‘What is so special about Lord Bhrigu?’ asked Shiva. ‘He is only human. Why are all of you so wary of him?’

‘He is a maharishi, Shiva,’ said Sati. ‘In fact, like Gopalji had mentioned, Lord Bhrigu is believed by many to be beyond a maharishi; he’s a Saptrishi Uttradhikari.’

‘You should respect a man, not his position,’ said Shiva, before turning to Gopal. ‘Once again I ask, my friend, why are you so nervous about him?’

‘Well, for starters, he can read minds,’ said Gopal.

‘So?’ asked Shiva. ‘You and I can do that too. Every Vasudev pandit can, in fact.’

‘True, but we can only do so while we’re in one of our temples. Lord Bhrigu can read the mind of anyone around him, regardless of where he is.’

Ganesh looked genuinely surprised. ‘How?’

‘Well,’ said Gopal, ‘our brains transmit radio waves when we think. These thoughts can be detected by a trained person, provided he is within the range of a powerful transmitter. But it is believed that maharishis can go a step further. They do not need to wait till our thoughts are converted into radio waves, to be able to detect them. They can read our thoughts even as we formulate them.’

‘But how?’

‘Thoughts are nothing but electrical impulses in our brain,’ said Gopal. ‘These impulses make the pupils of our eyes move minutely. A trained person, like a maharishi, can decipher this movement in our pupils and read our thoughts.’

‘Lord Ram, be merciful,’ whispered a stunned Kartik.

‘I still do not understand how this is possible,’ remarked a sceptical Shiva. ‘Are you saying all our thoughts are exposed by the movement of our pupils? What language would that communication be in? This makes no sense.’

‘My friend,’ said Gopal, ‘you are confusing the language of communication with the internal language of the brain. Sanskrit, for example, is a language of communication. You use it to communicate with others. You also use it to communicate with your own brain, so that your conscious mind can understand your inner thoughts. But the brain itself uses only one language for its own working. This is a universal language across all brains of all known species. And the alphabet of this language has two letters, or signals.’

‘Two signals?’ asked Sati

‘Yes,’ said Gopal, ‘only two – electricity on and electricity off. Our brain has millions of thoughts and instructions running simultaneously within. But at any one point of time, only one of these thoughts can capture our conscious attention. This particular thought gets reflected in our eyes through the language of the brain. A maharishi can read this conscious thought. So one has to be very careful about what one consciously thinks in the presence of a maharishi.’

‘So the eye is indeed the window to one’s soul,’ said Ganesh.

Gopal smiled. ‘It appears that it is.’