722. Subtle Worship

Man's relationship with God takes the form of worship. Usually it is an idol that he stands before and worships. Sometimes it is a picture. At other moments it is in the shape of a sloka recited. Bhajans meet this need of pious emotional hearts. There are those who cannot forget the Divine. The Divine lives in them, in their emotions, particularly in their imaginations. Imagination is a more powerful faculty than thinking. Poets who create out of their rich imagination create immortal literature. Sri Aurobindo explains how Parabrahman created the world and extends the process as an analogy to explain how Shakespeare created his plays. Imagination would not capture the full scope of the concept, manaseekam in Sanskrit. Those in whom the faculty of imagination is well developed resort to this type of worship and are lost in it.

Ambitious men daydream that they have conquered the world. Whether it is ambition or aspiration, the faculty is the same - imagination. In one case, it is put to an undesirable use, in the other to uplift the soul. One who is deeply in love ‘sees' his beloved everywhere. It is almost a hallucination. On rare occasions, the force of imagination brings his beloved to many places of his visit. Ardent devotees have an active relationship with their gods. Mother ‘saw' Krishna walking behind Her. They are not fantasies. In the life of the Spirit, it is a spiritual experience. The reality of this faculty mostly shows itself in dreams. To those sincere devotees, their dreams come true. Should this faculty gain strength and permanence, it becomes clairvoyance.

Mother asks us to send Her to our work places ahead of us. This is the truth behind that idea. A certain devotee had applied for government permission. On that depended her future in a certain important sense. She had no one who could do it on her behalf, nor was she in a position to go to such places chasing the paper. Even if she had gone to those places, she could do nothing. There was an inordinate delay. She finally decided to move as the paper itself. In her imagination, she became the paper and moved from table to table, office to office. It took six months of this inner work or labour. At the end of six months, news came to her that the paper was sanctioned and she achieved her goal. What she had not known was in the government ‘scheme of things', it had been decided NOT to sanction this paper and all such papers. Her spiritual yearning sent to the paper through the faculty of her own imagination carried Mother's Force to those places, changed the mind of the government and secured sanction for her paper. As a rule, when Mother sanctions one devotee, all those in a similar position receive the benefit.