| CATEGORY | ADVAITA |
| SUB CATEGORY | FORM WORSHIP |
| Why should one practice form worship to achieve the formless state? When is it possible to give up? |
| When you want to learn to swim, you learn by depending on a contrivance like a float or a tyre around you. Once you have learnt to swim, you will give up such a contrivance. If you do not have this helpful contrivance in the beginning, you cannot learn to swim. Similarly, in the beginning, you must have some object before your mind. It may be a photo or a light, and gradually you must move on to the formless one—the supreme Atma. Finally, you can give up the object. You can see your reflection only if there is a mirror. If there is no mirror, how can you see the reflection? So long as there is a feeling that there are two things, you and your image, it is a feeling of duality. Between the object and the image, there is the mirror. If you removethe mirror, there is neither the image nor the mirror. You are the only surviving one and that is the object. This is the essence of Adwaitha. In the same manner, you have some object and with the help of this object you see yourself and your image. Therefore you, the individual, Prakruthi, the world around you and Easwara, the Creator, are one and the same. Divine Discourse Summer Showers in Brindavan 1973, Chapter 26 |