Namast,
SanathanaDharma, thank you for your well-considered reply and for playing along with my analogy to explain where you were coming from. Examples and stories are so helpful for teaching.
I'll provide another perspective, on worship and the choice one makes in approaching the Supreme. These are not my words, but words nonetheless that I found truly inspiring and insightful, written by P.V.R. Narasimha Rao on the e-group vedic-wisdom. I could never have summarized what I believe with such beauty or eloquence.
"If you take things literally, Sri Krishna did say that worshipping "Me" is supreme and those worshipping "Me" reach "Me", while those who worship demigods for lower things get lower things, even those worshipping demigods for lower things worshipping "Me", but in a wrong way.
When Sri Krishna said "I", did he mean the specific form he occupied then or the Cosmic Self that his consciousness was fully absorbed in?...
By "I" and "Me", Krishna meant the supreme cosmic self (Aatman or Brahman) and not the specific form he occupied then. Those who worship Self do not worship Self for children or marriage or promotion or success or any limited thing. Those who worship Self with no desires and have their minds fixed on Self get self-knowledge and become free from the cycle of birth and death. On the other hands, those who worship deities for marriage, children, promotion, etc. get those when the effort is ripe. Those who worship deities for material benefits are also worshipping Self (because this material world manifests within Self, like ripples arise in ocean), but in a limited and non-liberating (binding) way.
Suppose someone worships Ganesha, and sees Ganesha as the supreme cosmic self WITHIN whom Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, etc. and all the 14 worlds are created, maintained, and destroyed. After all, this is how Ganapathi Atharva Seersham described Ganesha! If one worships Ganesha with that attitude and without any desires, one is indeed worshipping "Me" as said by Krishna and one indeed gets "Me" (Self of Veda/Upanishad). One becomes liberated.
If one worships Ganesha as the god of obstacles to remove obstacles, solve material problems and start spiritual progress, that is the lower demigod worship said by Krishna. That is lower (but necessary for many). One worshipping Ganesha like that is also in reality worshipping "Self" only, but in a limited form. Thus, is does not liberate one.
Suppose someone worships Krishna, and sees Krishna as the supreme cosmic self WITHIN whom Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva etc and all the 14 worlds are created, maintained and destroyed. If one worships Krishna with that attitude and without any desires, one is indeed worshipping "Me" as said by Krishna and one indeed gets "Me" (Self of Veda/Upanishad). One becomes liberated.
If one worships Krishna as the giver of children to get a child (a very dharmik thing no doubt!), that is the lower demigod worship said by Krishna. That is lower (but necessary for many). One worshipping Krishna like that is also in reality worshipping "Self" only, but in a limited form. Thus, it does not liberate one...
One does not do something wrong by just using the word "Shiva" and the right thing by just using the word "Krishna". It's not in the name, but in "attitude". How do you visualize your god, what is your attitude, what do you want? THAT is what decides at what spiritual evolution level your worship is.
Having said that, a person in kindergarten cannot go to PhD right away. It is NOT undesirable to study kindergarten. If you need to worship god for a specific material thing, do so. Eventually, you will reach a stage where you worship god with no desires. Every thought and action of a realized jnaani becomes a great worship of god (of "I" said by Krishna).
* * *
Not all forms are equal. Each form has different qualities. Self is like the stable, steady and vast ocean. People are like ripples on the surface. The ripples move and spread under the momentum of previous movement and eventually die down. When they are moving also, they are part of the ocean, but they see themselves as ripples moving in a particular way. When they die down, they lose their identity as a ripple and start seeing themselves as ocean again. That is liberation.
Some huge waves carry a lot of ripples where they want to go. They change the surface of the ocean drastically. That is deities and incarnations. Each wave may have different qualities.
Krishna was a deity born with all kalas, i.e. full control over the manifested world. It was like a tremendous wave that shook the entire ocean.
Nevertheless, it is useless to compare waves and what they do on the surface. Take any wave (Krishna, Shiva, Ganesha), but see the wave not as a wave but as the ocean. Go to the depth of the ocean through that wave and become the ocean. That is liberation.
Whichever deity you worship, see the deity as Self. See that the deity fills everyone and everything. See that the entire universes exists within that deity. Have no desires and just surrender to that deity. Then you get liberated."
When you write of Paramathma/Krishna/Devas, there is indeed great merit in going to Krishna directly and bypassing Deva-worship as less fruitful. But seeing Devas in this way, as I do, worship of any One is the way to liberation.
At least, though, we can agree on the need for crossing that busy street, and for being incapable of navigating its dangers, or even of approaching it without surrendering to One of greater knowledge and guidance.
And to excerpt the same post:
"God is infinite. Even one who has experienced god cannot describe god accurately and fully. God can only be realized through direct experience. Not once, not twice, but again and again, every second. After all, our minds are finite and god is infinite. A tumbler can only capture so much of the ocean...
Irrespective of where you dive from, the ocean is the same. Swim in it forever."
I will return to the original question in my next post.
Indraneela
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Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.
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