Dharma Vahini, Chapter 10 - By Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

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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.

When the doors are closed, the rules might say they should not be opened; but

that is only a general direction. For, when persons like Sankara, Sananda,

Jayadeva, Chaithanya, Gouranga etc., come, it becomes impossible to follow the

rule, is it not? Lord Krishna turned round at Udipi to give Darsan to His

Bhaktha; Shiva yielded before the intensity of Nandanar's devotion. The reason

for closing the doors is not connected with the Lord; such rules have been

prescribed by elders for reasons unconnected with Divinity. You must have rules

that do not conflict with highest conceptions of the Bhaktha. If the temple

servants have no fixed timings and if everything is left to their whim and

fancy, the temple will not be able to instill devotion in the mind of the

ordinary man; certain limitations and regulations are needed even to arouse awe

and respect which are the roots of Bhakthi. That is the reason why certain hours

are laid down for the entry into temples and for the opening of the

shrine for the worship. Such restrictions are not repugnant to the main

principle. For, the aim of the temple is to promote Dharma, to develop the

inner culture and spiritual discipline. Human behaviour, actions, attitudes -

all have to be subservient to the overall need to grow in the consciousness of

God as the Living Presence. So, certain rules are necessary, no doubt, for the

correct performance of temple rites. Otherwise, ordinary men will not learn

steadfastness, faith and discipline and they will not grow in Bhakthi. The

responsibility of the Archakas, the responsibility of the Dharmakarthas in

charge of temples and that of the worshipping public is great indeed. Every one

must be aware of the purpose of temples and the need to carry out temple rites:

They promote Sraddha and Bhakthi, more than anything else. Therefore, the doors

of the temple can be opened at any time for allowing worship by ardent seekers.

No one should forget or ignore this fact: "Temples exist for the

progress and welfare of the Man".

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Sathya Sai Baba Dharma VahiniTranslated from the Original TeluguPublished by Sri

Sathya Sai Books and Publications TrustIndex:

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