Page 12 - My Father-Final Book

His Spiritual Evolution
It is a privilege to be born in a family where a person like Vinayak took birth. Vinayak’s grandfather, Bajirao, was a saintly person. His story has appeared earlier in this book (cf:His Childhood). There was a tradition in the ancestral families to visit Pandharpur Temple during the Ashadhi Ekadashi procession. However, once one of my father’s ancestors found a statue of Vitthal (the deity at Pandharpur Temple) on the farm. Vitthal appeared in his dream instructing that no pilgrimage of Padharpur be done thenceforth. But, one of the successors disobeyed this instruction and since then no boy has been born in that family thus terminating the family tree.
Vinayak’s parents did not have a child for long. So, his father Rajaram was asked by his father Bajirao to do Cyclic Reading of Shree Gurucharitra (known as Parayana in Marathi language) as a Tapas (austerity) to get a son. Rajaram did this reading regularly for 5 years. Vinayak was born to the delight of the family. Vinayak’sbecoming a future Saint was predicted by Bajirao at the time of Bajirao’sdeath. This story was described earlier (cf:His Childhood).
The loss of his mother at a very early age must have made Vinayak very introverted though very little is known about his childhood. I observed that my father’s eyes were very shiny and penetrating, as if he seemed to know about you when he looked at you. My mother once told me that during his young married life, he was able to move a door just by looking at it. But, at the same time, there was something introverted about his eyes. (Though I myself had no power like my father, I can understand my father’s power. Because, when I was an Engineering student, I practiced very strict
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