Eight or ten women and three old men were sitting on chairs, facing a black haired woman who was younger than Budur had expected but not all that young, a woman who wore Zotti clothing, heavy kohl and lipstick, and a great deal of cheap glass jewellery. She had been speaking to her devotees in a low intent voice, and now she paused, and gestured to empty chairs at the back of the room without saying anything to the new arrivals.

'Each time the soul descends into a body,' she resumed when they were seated, 'it is like a divine soldier, entering into the battlefield of life and fighting ignorance and evil doing. It tries to reveal its own inner divinity and establish the divine truth on Earth, according to its capacity. Then at the end of its journey in that incarnation, it returns to its own region of the bardo. I can talk to that region when conditions are right.'

'How long will a soul spend there before coming back again?' one of the women in her audience asked.

'This varies depending on conditions,' Madam Sururi replied. 'There is no single process for the evolution of higher souls. Some began from the mineral and some from the animal kingdom. Sometimes it starts from the other end, and cosmic gods take on human form directly.' She nodded as if personally familiar with this phenomenon. 'There are many different ways.'

'So it's true that we may have been animals in a previous incarnation?'

'Yes, it is possible. In the evolution of our souls we have been all things, including rocks and plants. It is not possible to change too much between any two incarnations, of course. But over many incarnations, great changes can be made. The Lord Buddha revealed that he had been a goat in a previous life, for instance. But because he had realized God, this was not important.'

Kirana stifled a little snort, shifted on her chair to cover it.

Madam Sururi ignored her: 'It was easy for him to see what he had been in the past. Some of us are given that kind of vision. But he knew that the past was not important. Our goal is not behind us, it is ahead of us. To a spiritual person I always say, the past is dust. I say this because the past has not given us what we want. What we want is Godrealization, and contact with our loved ones, and that depends entirely on our inner cry. We must say, "I have no past. I am beginning here and now, with God's grace and my own aspiration. – There was not much to object to in that, Budur thought; it cut strangely to the heart, given the source; but she could feel scepticism emanating from Kirana like heat, indeed the room seemed to be warming with it, as if a qi burning heater had been placed on the floor and turned on high. Perhaps it was a function of Budur's embarrassment. She reached over and squeezed Kirana's hand. It seemed to her that the seer was more interesting than Kirana's fidgets were allowing.

An elderly widow, still wearing one of the pins given to them in the middle decades of the war, said, 'When a soul picks a new body to enter, does it already know what kind of life it will have?'

'It can only see possibilities. God knows everything, but He covers up the future. Even God does not use his ultimate vision all the time. Otherwise, there would be no game.'

Kirana's mouth opened round as a zero, almost as if she were going to speak, and Budur elbowed her.

'Does the soul lose the details of its previous experiences, or does it remember?'

'The soul doesn't need to remember those things. It would be like remembering what you ate today, or what a disciple's cooking was like. If I know that the disciple was very kind to me, that she brought me food, then that is enough. I don't need to know the details of the meals. just the impression of the service. This is what the soul remembers.'

'Sometimes, my – my friend and I meditate by looking into each other's eyes, and when we do, sometimes we see each other's faces change. Even our hair changes colour. I was wondering what this means.'

'It means you are seeing past incarnations. But this is not at all advisable. Suppose you see that three or four incarnations ago you were a fierce tiger? What good would this do you? The past is dust, I tell you.'

'Did any of your disciples – did any of us know each other in our past incarnations?'

'Yes. We travel in groups, we keep running into each other. There are two disciples here, for instance, who are close friends in this incarnation. When I was meditating on them, I saw that they were physical sisters in their previous incarnation, and very close to each other. And in the incarnation before that, they were mother and son. This is how it happens. Nothing can eclipse my third eye's vision. When you have established a true spiritual bond, then that feeling can never truly disappear.'

'Can you tell us – can you tell us who we were before? Or who among us had this bond?'

'Outwardly I have not personally told these two, but those who are my real disciples I have told inwardly, and so they know it inside themselves already. My real disciples – those who I have taken as my very own, and who have taken me they are going to be fulfilled and realized in this incarnation, or in their next incarnation, or in very few incarnations. Some disciples may take twenty incarnations or more, because of their very poor start. Some who have come to me in their first or second human incarnation may take hundreds of incarnations more to reach their goal. The first or second incarnation is still a halfanimal incarnation, most of the time. The animal is still there as a predominating factor, so how can they achieve God realization? Even in the Nsara Centre for Spiritual Development, right here among us, there are many disciples who have had only six or seven incarnations, and on the streets of the city I see Africans, or other people from across the sea, who are very clearly more animal than human. What can a guru do with such souls? With these people a guru can only do so much.'

'Can you… can you put us in communication with souls who have passed over? Now? Is it time yet?'

Madam Sururi returned her questioner's gaze, level and calm. 'They are speaking to you already, are they not? We cannot bring them forth in front of everyone tonight. The spirits do not like to be so exposed. And we have guests that they are not yet used to. And I am tired. You have seen how draining it is to speak aloud in this world the things they are saying in our minds. Let's retire to the dining room now, and enjoy the offerings you have brought. We will cat knowing that our loved ones speak to us in our minds.'

The visitors from the cafe decided by glance to leave while the others were retiring to the next room, before they began to commit the crime of taking others' food without believing in their religion. They made small coin offerings to the seer, who accepted them with dignity, ignoring the tenor of Kirana's look, staring back at Kirana without guilt or complicity.

The next tram wasn't due for another half watch, and so the group walked back through the industrial district and down the riverside, reenacting choice bits of the interview and staggering with laughter. Kirana for one could not stop laughing, howling it out over the river: 'My third eye sees all! But I can't tell you right now! What unbelievable crap!'

'I've already told you what you want to know with my inner voice, now let's eat!'

'Some of my disciples were sisters in previous lives, sister goats in actual fact, but you can only ask so much of the past, ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!'

'Oh be quiet,' Budur said sharply. 'She's only making a living.' To Kirana: 'She tells people things and they pay her, how is that so different from what you do? She makes them feel better.'

'Does she?'

'She gives them something in exchange for food. She tells them what they want to hear. You tell people what they don't want to hear for your food, is that any better?'