Reading left Australia in April 1968 and traveled overland through Asia to India. After spending a few weeks in Bombay trying to learn the basics of the tabla, and then traveling to Poona, where he met Jalbhai, he arrived in Ahmednagar on 5 August 1968 and went to Adi's office. Adi urged him to write a note to Baba, and Reading went back to his hotel and wrote the following:
Dear Baba,
My name is William Reading and I have traveled from Sydney, Australia, where I met Bill Le Page and saw some films of you. I do not know if you are God but the works that I have read of yours appear to me to be the unquestionable truth, and I would very much like to see you.
Bill's note was read to Baba on 7 August, and Baba sent a reply that he was pleased to read his letter. Eruch wrote:
... Baba wants you to take him with you in your heart for he is already with you. He sends his love to you and wants you to keep happy. He wants you to remember him always so that you will be able to love him and serve him all the more.
Baba's love will be with William.
Reading wrote another note asking to see Baba, and Baba replied in a similar manner as above. This went on for a few days. While delivering another note to Adi to pass on to Baba, he spent some time talking to Don, who looked at him and declared, "You are the new humanity!"
On 7 August, Don, perhaps feeling sympathetic toward the young man, suggested they drive out to Seclusion Hill on the sly, where Reading might catch a glimpse of Baba through a pair of Don's binoculars. Although he failed to catch a glimpse of Baba from either of the two hills behind Meherazad, as he peered through the binoculars straining to see Baba, inwardly he beseeched Baba that he yearned for something to assure himself that "Baba was truly God in human form."
As they walked over to Seclusion Hill the sky became overcast and a light shower of rain began to fall, producing a rainbow. By the time they were halfway up the side of Seclusion Hill the rainbow had slowly moved until one end was on the roofs of Meherazad. Reading was elated at what he took to be Baba's reply to his inner longings. As he later recounted: "It was a very subtle and beautiful way of confirming his divinity to me. In fact, everything there, the people at [Khushru Quarters] in Ahmednagar and out at Meherabad, including the weather, seemed to exist only to respond to Baba's wish."