Spiritual GYAN

Namaste! Many of you may have heard that there are four main paths to God and divinity or approach to God, as enumerated by the ancient rishis. These are: Bhakti  (The path of devotion, prescribed for those who love God and have an emotional nature) Gyan  (The path of knowledge, prescribed for those who possess a good intellect) Karma  (The path of action, for those who are energetic and workaholics) Raja  (The royal path of meditation, for those who have an introspective soul) While all these paths either singularly or in a collective mix are efficacious in leading the seeker to the Ultimate Goal of meeting God, they too, like any other path, have distinct stages in their journey. These four stages have been very interestingly charted out by the  Upanishadic Rishis as under: Saloka:  which means, a proximity to God In the same Plane as Him, or living on the same planet ( which can be earth, because God takes avatar here) Samipa : which ...

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was formally married to Sri Sarada Devi , who in her later life was acclaimed as the Holy Mother by her devotees.  But, he had a unique relationship with her.  He looked upon her as the veritable manifestation of the Divine Mother and any thought of physical relationship never ever crossed his mind.  Of course, other people were baffled by this attitude and someone even went to the extent of asking him as to why he did not lead the life of a normal householder with his wife.  Sri Ramakrishna explained his attitude through a beautiful story from our Puranas. One day Ganesha was playing with a cat and he deliberately scratched it with his nails.  On returning home he was shocked to see a mark of scratch on the cheek of his mother Parvati .  He was very much disturbed and asked her as to who did this to her.  Parvati, who was none other than the Mother of Universe, replied, “This is the work of your own hands with a ...