Mental worship

There was a man named Dhanpal belonging to the business community, a contemporary of Tulsi Dasji the author of ‘Ramcharit Manas’. One day he approached Tulsi Das and asked him ‘‘I want to worship Lord Ram everyday elaborately but I cannot afford to spend even a single pie for purchase of fruits, milk, and camphor or incense sticks etc. Can you kindly instruct me on such a method of worship.’’

Tulsi Das looked at him with all compassion and said – ‘‘Yes, there is a method of mentally worshipping Bhagavan and all offerings are only through imagination. It would cost you nothing. You have to install your Ram on a golden throne and offer him plenty of different varieties of fruits and hot cow’s milk with sugar added to it. As it is all through imagination there is no need for you to be miserly. Do not forget
to add one full teaspoon of sugar to the milk offered to the Lord.’’ Tulsi Das told him the method in detail.

Dhanpal began to worship daily as directed by Tulsi Das. He was keeping a small plastic container with sugar and he never forgot to add one spoon of sugar to the milk (all in imagination). Fifteen years passed. One day as he had misplaced the spoon, he had to pour the sugar into the cup of milk directly from the container when a good amount of sugar fell into the cup (imagination). Immediately he dived his hand into the imagined cup and tried to take out the surplus sugar, though there was no cup in reality. The Lord saw that even after 15 years of continuousworship the miserliness has not left Dhanpal. Lord caught hold of his hand and told him – ‘‘Aye, there is neither real sugar nor a real cup of milk. If more sugar has fallen into it, let it remain so. It is after all imagination.’’ When once Dhanpal experienced the Divine touch of Lord’s hands he was transformed. He renounced his house and all property and went to the Himalayas to do Sadhana.