Ask The Master: 18 Dec 2007

Q. Beloved master, in India we are brought up on rituals and idol worship. Are you for or against these?

First of all, I am neither for nor against idol worship or rituals - or anything, for that matter! But there is a reason why idol worship is so common in India, and elsewhere in the East. For a beginner on the spiritual journey, it is difficult to even conceive of the divine in the abstract. When given a form, it is crystallized into something he understands and can relate to. With an idol, he can commune with the divine in the language that he is familiar with. Our thousands of deities are nothing but expressions of the divine. And yet anyone can talk to them, pray to or play with them, seek solace or give thanks. The whole awesome, indefinable nature of the divine is scaled down to comforting proportions in the form of the deity. It has to be this way; the divine without form is simply too terrifying a concept for the ordinary mind.

At a deeper, subtler level, there is one more message being reinforced - the idol before you is cast in the same form as yours, and yet it is divine.

What does that say about you? Think about it. Even if you are an idol worshiper, there is no need to condemn yourself. As you grow spiritually, you will find yourself able to commune with the divine just as well without an idol. Just as children stop playing with dolls as they grow older, you will drop the idols of your own accord when the time comes. But right now if it gives you a sense of well-being to worship your favorite deity, do so by all means. Spirituality is a vast, shoreless ocean. When you are just learning to swim, it would certainly help your confidence to hold onto a lifebuoy, something you can be sure of, something that won’t let you down. As you grow stronger and surer, you will naturally shake off its hold and enter the deep waters, freely and fearlessly.

As for rituals, it has been scientifically proven that certain colors, sounds and actions can deeply impact your state of mind, activate desired areas of the brain, and expand your consciousness. Rituals have lost their credibility today only because their true meaning has been lost upon the masses over time. Only the shell of the ritual remains; the spirit has departed. But even if they seem irrelevant to you today, never underestimate the true potential of rituals. Rituals are the distillation of centuries of wisdom and the tapas of innumerable enlightened masters. When performed in the proper way, rituals have tremendous power to bring about unimaginable levels of awareness and change.

In the ashram, you may often find me performing pujas and yagas. The fact is, these mean nothing to me; I don’t need a channel to commune with the divine. These are for my people. I do this to draw you all into a familiar territory, a space where you feel secure and tranquil. In an atmosphere that years of worship have sanctified, bowing before your beloved deities and listening to the chanting of well-known mantras, a silent, meditative state is naturally induced in you. At this time you are completely open and surrendered, receptive to my energy.

This is the time when I can truly work upon you, without your knowledge and without your resistance. Can you understand me now?

(Of course, I have never given up being a child, and so I perfectly enjoy my play with these beautiful dolls - but that is another matter!)

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions