KNOWLEDGE SHEET BY SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR

Posted: 22 Mar 2001

DIVINE IN THE FORM AND FORMLESS

Divinity is unmanifest, but man has an innate desire to perceive the divine in the manifest creation around him. He creates idols, breathes faith into it and requests divinity to be present in that idol for a while, so that he can worship, express his love and play with it. At the end of his worship he requests divinity to go back into his heart from where divinity manifested. This is in all puja practices.

They are not actually worshipping the idols but worshipping the unmanifest divinity which has all the divine qualities. So, the idol worshippers of the East are not the same as the ones in the Middle East as described in the Bible, because they are not just worshipping different gods and different idols, they are worshipping the ONE divinity in many different forms.

Paganism, Satan and animal worship, without the knowledge of the one divinity is very different from seeing the divine in every form of the manifest universe. In the eastern tradition, gods and goddesses are part of the one divinity like the different colors of white sunlight, whereas in the Greek tradition, gods and goddesses are in themselves different entities.

Worshipping Satan and different entities is totally different from worshipping divinity in its various forms. Every form belongs to the divine. When you adore the form, you are adoring the divine behind the form.

With this knowledge, the very act of worship, which is more an inner phenomenon, assumes a more colorful and vibrant expression, indicating that both the form and the formless are all divine.

Jai Gurudev