Since you can’t swim across a flooded stream, you board a raft. So also, since you can’t master the Formless, you resort to the Form with attributes and struggle to swim across to the Formless through worship and contemplation. But can you remain forever on the raft, amidst the currents and whirlpools? You must discard this conventional worship some day and reach the shore. Worship is just a means of educating the emotions. Human impulses and emotions have to be guided and controlled. Just as the raging waters of the Godavari river have to be curbed by dikes, halted by dams, tamed by canals, and led quietly to the ocean which can swallow all floods without a trace, so too the age-long instincts in you have to be trained and transmuted by contact with higher ideals and powers. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall off the branch of its own accord. Similarly, when renunciation saturates your heart, you lose contact with the world and slip into the lap of the Lord.

- Divine Discourse, Oct 26, 1961.