Meditating on God's glorious form

CHENNAI, JUNE 14. Besides conferring on us the rare privilege of having created us as human beings and providing us with worldly comforts and showing us the path to return to His kingdom, the Almighty has been showering His grace in times of our needs and guiding us properly whenever we appealed to Him. How to realise that He has been extending the benefactions, how to know about His existence and how to enjoy His vision so as to cling to His feet are factors which may engage our attention. How to give practical demonstration that He resides in us is yet another question, though we reach Him even otherwise through our supplication.

It is to enable devotees, God out of His mercy, makes us see Him, presenting Himself with a form. Meditating on this glorious form, we derive peace and enjoy His charm. If there is no such form, we will be adoring His qualities only. His form, as idols, provides us with the opportunity to understand how He extends His grace and how to approach Him, without doing by mere imagination.

Take the instance of the quality of ``gratitude''. To illustrate how to put it in a shape, the legendary characters of Karna and Kumbakarna have been shown before us. Other practical demonstrations of divine mercy can be read through the lives of saints. One of them, by singing the praise of the deity directly, was able to restore the life of a girl from her bones. In another case, the saint himself floated on the ocean though a milestone was tied to him. Yet another saint made a dead boy drowned in a tank come alive. Pamban Swamigal, who was amidst us till recently, in his hymn, ``Kumarasthavam'' containing several ``Mantras'' hidden in it, adores Lord Subramania as He presents Himself before us in an attractive and beautiful form.

Explaining the contents of one of these ``Mantras,'' Professor V. Rathinasabapathy said in a lecture that meditating on the Lord's feet will result in obtaining triple benefits - spiritual knowledge, bliss and His grace. Even while taking a form, God can be worshipped as He is seated, or in ``reclining'' posture or as ``standing'' or as He strolls. Another Mantra refers to the five elements of Nature (fire, water, ether, air and earth) which help us to sustain but all have their origin only from one source viz., God. On one occasion, God, describing the purpose of His descent on this world, corrected the manuscript of a script laid before Him, that through His forms, He only reveals Himself to devotees who have not been able to see Him hitherto. He is there forever unseen but through His appearances, He enables us to get His glorious vision.

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