So the first stage is of Shri Ganesha – how He surrenders to the Shakti, to the Mother – that is the beginning. If one cannot surrender…That doesn’t mean you don’t do anything, but surrendering means the worship, the respect of the higher, the obedience to the higher. Not to argue it out, not to react, acceptance, absorption. Like a child absorbs the milk of the mother without questioning, without reasoning. That’s why Christ has said, “You have to become like children”. But if you are questioning, then you are no more a child.
So first is the state, which you have to develop, is the child-like state. But child, which is a realised child, which has to have a gravity. If you can develop childhood first, then everything takes proper course, because maturity cannot take place unless and until you start from the very beginning, and gravity means maturity not frivolousness.
So now the quality of Ganesha, as you know, is that He has viveka, means He has discretion. He ‘has’ means He is discretion. So try to develop your discretion power so that Shri Ganesha gives you the wisdom – subuddhi – wisdom. And this is why you have to have a dependence on Shri Ganesha.
So at this point you have to make a negation of efforts. Like, whatever are efforts anti-Ganesha, or anti-innocence must be negated. So the negation of effort is to be achieved by negating whatever is the effort – means the effort of negation. So in the beginning you will not be effortless, you will have to put in effort for that. Like Christ has said, “Thou shalt not have adulterous eyes”.
So how do you make your eyes innocent? In Sahaja Yoga we have a method by which we try to distract our eyes from effort that makes it adulterous. Like, we try to put our attention, our eyes, on the Mother Earth, on the grass, on the trees.
So the avoidance, the avoiding of the effort itself is effort. So those people who have come now, recently, have to understand also that they have to put in all kinds of efforts to stop the efforts. For example, some people are used to very comfortable life, they may talk of all kinds of renunciation, [but] when it comes to comfort, they want to have comfort. Such people should try to get out of the habit of comfort – Sleep on the ground, sleep on the Mother Earth. Some people have an attention which is all the time looking this side, that side – cannot see to one point – so fix your attention. So gradually, you will find, you’ll discipline yourself. So the effort that you put in is very important in the beginning of Sahaja Yoga.