Saluting and invoking Sri Ganesh

Introduction

In this document I have extracted from my journals on Sri Ganesh from 2004 onwards the slokas, poems and notations that are directly relevant to, or inspired by, Sri Ganesh’s presence and reality. This is so that one may read and absorb and open to the experiences and perceptions therein without being encumbered by any personal or mundane extraneous elements.

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From the very beginning of my active service to Sri Ganesh in Auroville, I have chosen to turn to the aspect of the Supreme the figure of Lord Ganesha stands for and represents; and with the growing sense of its import and significance I have come to cherish the qualities and blessings that it embodies. This was not an easy process as, in Auroville and essentially in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, we are to grow out of all religious habit and formation and strive to open to the direct spiritual Consciousness-Force that alone can eventually transform our human nature into its true and manifest divinity upon earth. I was born an atheist as were both my parents. This atheism was not a posturing, but the sensible admission of ignorance as to any irrefutable answer to the big questions posed by existence. However for both of my parents it was tacitly understood and taken for granted that there is a certain code of conduct to which each person must refer one’s actions and that, so long as this was respected, each one was entirely free to find one’s own way. Thus when in my teens I began to feel the restlessness of the seeker, I was not encumbered by traditional beliefs or any religious observance, although the sense of inner guilt is so ingrained in the sub-consciousness of any western culture that, having grown up in such a milieu – in France in my case -, one cannot pretend to be without baggage. *

My initial journey eventually delivered me at Her Feet – in Pondicherry, 1969: I had reached home again.

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