WORSHIP OF SUBSTITUTES AND IMAGES

THE NEXT POINTS to be considered are the worship of pratikas, or things more or less satisfactory as substitutes for God, and the worship of pratimās, or images. What is the worship of God through a pratika? It means “joining the mind with devotion to what is not Brahman, taking it to be Brahman,” says Bhagavān Rāmānuja. Śankara says, “Worship of the mind as Brahman—this is worship with regard to the internal; and of the ākāśa as Brahman—this is with regard to the gods.” The mind is an internal pratika; ākāśa is an external one; and both have to be worshipped as substitutes for God. Similarly: “‘The sun is Brahman; this is the command’; ‘He who worships name as Brahman’—in all such passages a doubt arises as to the worship of pratikas,” says Śankara. The word pratika means “going towards”; and worshipping a pratika means worshipping, as a substitute, something which is, in one or more respects, like Brahman, but is not Brahman. Along with the pratikas mentioned in Śruti there are various others to be found in the Purānas and the Tantras. In this kind of pratika-worship may be included all the various forms of pitri-worship and deva-worship.

Now, worshipping Iśvara, and Him alone, is bhakti; the worship of anything else—deva or pitri or any other being—cannot be bhakti. The various kinds of worship of the various devas are all included in ritualistic karma, which gives to the worshipper only a particular result in the form of some celestial enjoyment, but can neither give rise to bhakti nor lead to mukti. One thing therefore has to be carefully borne in mind. If, as it may happen in some cases, the highly philosophic ideal, the Supreme Brahman, is dragged down by pratika-worship to the level of the pratika and the pratika itself is taken to be the Ātman of the worshipper, his Antaryāmin, then the worshipper becomes entirely misled; for no pratika can really be the Ātman of the worshipper. But where Brahman Himself is the object of worship, and the pratika stands only as a substitute or a suggestion thereof, that is to say, where, through the pratika, the omnipresent Brahman is worshipped, the pratika itself being idealized into the cause of all, or Brahman—the worship is positively beneficial. Nay, it is absolutely necessary for all mankind until they have got beyond the primary or preparatory state of the mind with regard to worship.

When, therefore, any gods or other beings are worshipped in and for themselves, such worship is only ritualistic karma; and as a vidyā, a science, it gives us only the fruit belonging to that particular vidyā. But when the devas or any other beings are looked upon as Brahman and worshipped, the result obtained is the same as that obtained by the worshipping of Iśvara.

This explains how in many cases, both in the Śrutis and in the Smritis, a god or a sage or some other extraordinary being is taken up and lifted, as it were, out of his own nature and idealized into Brahman, and is then worshipped. Says the Advaitist, “Is not everything Brahman when the name and the form have been removed from it?” “Is not He, the Lord, the innermost Self of everyone?” says the Viśishtādvaitist. “The fruition of even the worship of the Ādityas, and so forth, Brahman Himself bestows, because He is the Ruler of all.” Says Śankara, in his Brahma Sutra Bhāshya: “Here, in this way, Brahman becomes the object of worship, because He, as Brahman, is superimposed on the pratikas, just as Vishnu, and so forth, are superimposed upon images.”

The same ideas apply to the worship of the pratimās as to that of the pratikas. That is to say, if the image stands for a god or a saint, the worship does not result in bhakti and does not lead to liberation; but if it stands for the one God, the worship thereof will bring both bhakti and mukti. Of the principal religions of the world, we see Vedānta, Buddhism, and certain forms of Christianity freely using images; only two religions, Mohammedanism and Protestantism, refuse such help. Yet the Mohammedans use the graves of their saints and martyrs almost in the place of images; and the Protestants, in rejecting all concrete helps to religion, are drifting away every year farther and farther from spirituality, till at present there is scarcely any difference between the advanced Protestants and the followers of Auguste Comte, or the agnostics, who preach ethics alone. Again, in Christianity and Mohammedanism whatever exists of image worship is made to fall under that category in which the pratika or the pratimā is worshipped in itself, but not as a help to the vision of God. Therefore it is at best only of the nature of ritualistic karma and cannot produce either bhakti or mukti. In this form of image worship, the allegiance of the soul is given to other things than Iśvara, and therefore such use of images or graves, of temples or tombs, is real idolatry. It is in itself neither sinful nor wicked. It is a rite, a karma, and worshippers must and will get the fruit thereof.