Guest guest Posted January 6, 2006 Report Share Posted January 6, 2006 Q632. What is the very initial step in the spiritual path? A632. In the early stages, a devotee's mind is chained to and engaged in the pleasure pursuit of our fascinating world of names and forms. Therefore, the initial step is to wean away his mind from all its continuous engagements and total preoccupations with the ''objects''. The technique employed is called Upasana. Since our mind cannot directly conceive the Truth that is beyond all ''qualities'', the teachers had to supply us with a symbolic altar for our mental attention to rest continuously, an altar which should suggest richly the Supreme in all its Formless Glory! For providing such an altar of devotion, Vyasa had supplied us with a host of deities in his Puranas. Ganesha, the son of Lord Shiva, is one of the most prominent altars, faithfully invoked and dedicatedly worshipped by a large group of Hindu devotees. On the spiritual pilgrimage, all the obstacles are created by the very subjective and objective worlds in the seeker himself; his attachment to the world of objects, emotions and thoughts, are alone his obstacles. Lord Ganesha or Sri Vighneswara chops them off with an axe (in one of his hands) and holds the attention of the seeker constantly towards the Higher with the Rope that He has in another hand. En route He feeds the seeker with modaka (the joy of satisfaction experienced by the evolving seeker of Reality) and blesses him continuosly with greater and greater progress, until at last the Man of Perfection becomes Himself the Lord of Obstacles, Sri Vighneswara. - Swami Chinmayananda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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