Deifying the divine, the life
force, as idols are worshipped, they are, after the ritual (performed by the
“qualified,” hailed as the connecting medium) of prana pratishtha, invoking life in the lifeless form. And in cases
of festivals where the idol is immersed in water, like Durga Puja, the deity is
invoked, again, to leave the form to render it lifeless, and the ritual is of visarjan.
Coming to the one of prana pratishtha, and obviously, all is
a matter of faith and not contention, but of utter regard, one faith honoring
the other, while it continues to follow its own path, fully, the queries arise:
- Why
an external medium is required to connect to the divine?
- Is
it not because the divine is placed out of us, while found within one
realizes that It is that sublime sense of love, Its essence, unconditional
love, which only one can feel, and no connector is required for the same?
Though, it is also is true that there are many who connect to the external
form without needing any connector. Nothing is being generalized, as
important is faith, and each one has unique ways and means of
connecting, as is acknowledged that the guru within, our essential essence, does come out in a form
that one would be receptive to, the form could be animate or inanimate,
guiding one to ultimately transcend the forms and find the divine in the
formless...everywhere...in everything...every being...Its omnipresence,
omnipotence, omniscience, realized, as is realized oneness with It, as
every manifestation happens within, as all is experiential.
- Is
not deifying the divine, a futile attempt at trying to confine the
infinite in the edifice of a form, and limiting Its experience, and that
of life? And has not this, also, led to acts deplorable in the name of the
divine, as also, claims of one’s ways as the way and one’s God as the most powerful and best?
- Anyways,
acknowledging all as the infinite ways and means of accessing and
realizing the life force, the essential energy that we all are in form,
albeit, vibrating at different frequencies, still, the query knocks that
while idols are worshiped, as prana
is perceived in them, as is believed to have been invoked in them, why is
it so difficult to invoke the prana
that flows through us, the life force? It flows so we are.... It simply
has to be believed in and called forth, realized.
- Is
it because it seems too good to be true?
At the end of it all it is all a
matter of awareness.... That which we are aware of being and having, with faith
in the awareness, that we bring to being...that we invoke, as thus we resonate
with the prana that flows in, as and
through them, and thus, establish (pratistha)
them as realities of our life.
Awareness becomes aware to the
query: How do we not take cognizance of the prana
that establishes us...for which we are in form, the very form we hold as
our real reality?
Sushmita Mukherjee,
April 9, 2014
