Chapter X

Next, about the House of God, the Residence of the concretised Formful Aspect of divinity (called Alaya or Mandir), the Temple and the Rules of Dharma relating to it. Rules have overgrown and overwhelmed these institutions, following the whims and prejudices of various authorities. They have led people away from Dharma and Brahmam and even proper Karma; they have confounded the devotees by their variety and unreasonableness. They are insisted upon blindly and so, they have done much harm to the welfare of the world itself. In fact, these rules and formalities form the first steps in the retreat away from God. They have fostered atheism in a great measure.

Think deeply over the functions of the temple. Temples are centers of discipline, where the aspirant is guided step by step to attain a vision of the Truth, they are schools for the training of the spirit; they are academies for the promotion of Sastric studies; they are institutes of super-science; they are laboratories for the testing of the values of life; they are hospitals for the treatment and cure not only of the "birth-death-disease", which has persisted in the individual from ages, but even the much more patent "mental disorders" that trouble those who do not know the secret of acquiring Santhi; they are gymnasia where man is reconditioned and has hesitant faith, waning conviction and upsurging egoism are all cured; they are mirrors which reflect his aesthetic standards and achievements. The purpose of the temple is to awaken the Madhavathwa in the Manavathwa, the Divinity in Humanity, inducing man to believe that the physical frame in which he lives is itself the House of God. Therefore all the temple formalities, rites and rituals emphasise and cultivate this Brahmajnana, the Truth that the Jivi is just a wave of the Sea.

The Sastras teach man that all his actions and activities must lead ultimately to non-attachment, for this is the best qualification for the development of the Brahmajnana. Of the three, Bhakthi, Jnana and Vairagya, Bhakthi is the Queen. The rules and rites are the Maids-in-waiting; the Queen treats her maids with kind consideration and favour, no doubt, but, if the ceremonies, which are but 'servants' and 'aides', disregard the Queen, they should be mercilessly dismissed; all the formalities and rituals in the temples must therefore subserve the glorification of the Queen, Bhakthi; this is the sum and substance of the Dharma which must direct and govern all temples. It is only then that man can reach the Goal.

Bhakthi helps most easily the attainment of the Bliss of Merger with the basic Brahmam, by canalising towards the Lord the mental agitations, the sensory reaching out, and the emotional urges of man. It is in this direction that all the details of the worship of the Lord in temples took shape. In the temple, all the various ceremonies from the "Awakening of God in early dawn to the Laying-in-bed' late at night, are all intended to heighten and promote the devotional trends of the mind. Each incident in its turn helps the sublimation of the appropriate emotion in a peculiarly charming manner. In the sublimity of that experience, the agitation of the lower emotions declines and disappears. The vulgar feelings of ordinary life become elevated to the status of Worship and Dedication to the Almighty Presence.

The Lord will evoke in each the emotion which that person associates with Him; if He is conceived as a Monster or Bhutha, He will terrify as a Monster. If He is pictured and believed as Bhuthanatha (the Master of the Five Elements), He will manifest Himself likewise. Perhaps, you might ask, how?

It has now become a fashion to distribute advice, a fashion which is indulged in by those who know, and those who don't. They do not care whether the advice is followed or not. People jump into this superior attitude of giving advice just to feel important and show off their status. They are blinded by their own conceit; these have to be pitied, more than condemned. For, no one can lay down "thus and thus only", so far as the Lord is concerned.

Moreover, though Jnana and Vairagya might have some standards of measure, Bhakthi has its own measure. It will assume many a form, adjusted to the attitude of the Bhaktha. Kamsa, Jarasandha, Sisupala, Hiranyakasipu, etc., took up the attitude of hostility to the Lord, so, the Lord manifested Himself as their Enemy and finished their careers and their struggles. If the Lord is conceived as the Most Loved One, as Jayadeva, Gouranga, Tukaram, Ramdas, Surdas, Radha, Meera and Sakkubai did, He manifests Himself as the nearest and the dearest and showers Ananda. The little child takes the sun to be similar to the Kumkum Dot on its mother's forehead; but the knowing adult sees it as a sphere of effulgent heat. This shows the effect of the mental picture on the process of comprehension. In the case of Godhead as well as of the Temple, the same law applies.

It is proper that man should have an exalted attitude towards the Lord as well as the Habitation of the Lord, viz, the Temple. This attitude also yields great good. While it is quite natural and appropriate that man should picture Madhava in human form, it is not desirable to assume that He is just an ordinary individual. It is the principle of Bhakthi that He is conceived as an extra-ordinary Person, with a Figure of Sublime Splendour.

The feeling aroused by and during worship must be sweet and melodious and must, imperceptibly, transform the low desires and cravings of matter-bound men; they must not awaken or inflame the latent animal instincts of man. Take this example: Thyagaraja forgot that he should go to bed, in his enthusiasm to see that Rama was put to bed. Here, you should infer, not that Thyagaraja made Rama sleep in a swing; you should infer that Rama seated Thyagaraja on the swing of Bhakthi and gently swung him to sleep (or the forgetfulness of all things material). Instead of remembering your child in its cradle when you swing your Ishtadevatha in the silver or golden cradle, you must cultivate the attitude of seeing your Ishtadevatha, Rama or Krishna, in the cradle when you swing your own child in it. So too, when you stand before the installed Ishtadevatha, you must get confirmed in the installation of Brahmam in your own heart, as the real base of your existence, knowledge and bliss. It is to instill this feeling that the rites and ceremonies of temple worship have been organised. So you should not take the Sita-Rama, Radha-Krishna, Lakshmi-Narayana, or Parvathi-Parameswara in the temple as 'Pitiable couples' eking out a miserable existence in the cramped sanctum sanctorum, subsisting on the food given by the archaka and slaking thirst with drinks that he offers. The archakas say "the Lord is sleeping", "the Lord is taking food" while refusing to open the door of the inner shrine. This is absurd. They sometimes even enforce silence, for "the Lord is asleep and He might be awakened too soon by the noise". There will be no chance at such times even for emergent pleadings.

Statements such as these may cause wrong conclusions in the minds of men. They raise many ridiculous queries like the problems of the Lord answering calls of nature while shut up in the niche and they promote atheism among men. The archakas and the carping unbelievers are both ignorant of the real principles of temple-worship. That is the reason for their low conduct. You should be cultured enough to avoid the lower worldly path.

The temple should not be valued on secular principle at all; only the attitude of Devotion can ennoble and beautify feelings which otherwise drag you down to the lower worldly path.

Today, on account of new fangled views, temples have become objects of derision. This is a sad state of affairs. Therefore it is necessary to reveal publicly the real objective of temple worship and elevate them to the status which is their due. The temple must prosper once again. How stupid is it to be under the impression that the Lord sleeps as you do when a lullaby is sung or that He wakes up as you do when some one calls on Him aloud, or that He feasts when some food is placed before Him, as you want to do, or that He becomes weaker and weaker, as happens to you, when He is not given regular meals. Filling up the entire Universe down to the minutest part of the atom, unreachable by Time, effulgent beyond imagination, merciful above all expectation, the Lord has to be conceived as the Vital Energy that pervades and inheres everywhere, forever. How foolish to subject the Lord of that stature, to the carping criticisms of cynics and the false theories of the ignorant.

Can you bind the Lord to a timetable as you can do to a Bhaktha? Travails do not fall upon the Bhaktha during a fixed time, do they? Has the Bhaktha to wait till the Lord is awakened from the sleep? Oh, the foolishness of it all! The infant can cry for its mother's milk at any time; the Mother too will rise from sleep and feed it at her breast. She won't push it off, angry that it yells when she is sleeping. Well, the Lord who is the Universal Mother must be getting disturbed and awakened at least a million times, if He really slept.

It all depends on the progress of your mental faculties; they must reach the supreme level. The Lord is immanent everywhere; He is capable of everything; He is the Universal Witness; there is nothing He does not know. These truths must be taken as axiomatic and all rituals and sadhanas must be arranged and interpreted, in conformity with those Truths. No low demeaning feeling must be associated with the worship of the Lord, or with His Name and Form. Therefore the highest Bhakthi and the rites that can supplement it are very essential. To say that the Lord's sleep will be disturbed, that one should not interrupt Him while eating, and that at such times, the doors of the temple must remain closed is, to say the least, infantile. It does not indicate a broad or correct attitude. When the emotion of Bhakthi gets ripe and blossoms more fully, these low secular feelings melt away into nothingness.

One small incident comes to mind now. Once in Calcutta, in the Kali temple constructed by Rani Rasmani, a Gopala idol fell down and its foot was broken a little. Since many elders declared that according to the Sastras a broken image should not be worshipped, Rani Rasmani made arrangements to get a new one made by sculptors. Ramakrishna heard of this and he reproached the Rani, saying: "Maharani, if your son-in-law breaks his leg, what will you do? What is the correct thing to do? Bandaging the foot and setting it right, or discarding the son-in-law and getting another in his stead?" The Elders and Pundits were dumb-founded; the broken foot of Gopala was set right and the image was installed and worshipped as before. See, when Bhakthi is purified and is ascendant, the Lord will be patent even in a broken idol. This too is the Dharma declared in the Sastras.