Jain Journal 2000 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 28

JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXIV, No. 3 January 2000 infant Jesus'. The Gurudwaras are the symbol of a holy place for the Sikhs where they worship the 'Adi Granth' as a symbol. If all these are not 'Idol worship', what are they? Every faith has its objects of veneration and the followers do 'Idol worship' in one form or the other. "An idol or symbol is lifeless and therefore no education is imparted by it" say the condemners of faith. Yes, an idol, by itself, may be lifeless, but the divine power of the facial expressions which are animate and are passed on to the devotees are very much there to be felt by such a worshipper. When the devotees pray to the idol they are not praying to the lifeless stone or sculpture but to the inherent power their mind invests with the idol. They are unknowingly guided by this latent power. The idol, on its own, does not guide the devotee, but the devotee has to draw guidance from it. The idol is like a milestone in the spiritual journey. The milestone is a dumb stone on the road, but the travelers by noticing the milestone know their position and proceed correctly on the path further. The idol of the Lord to a devotee, sends out similar signals in the path of spiritual realisation. Through this medium of idol worship, a devotee can one day attain spiritual realisation! Whether animate or inanimate everything has its own importance. Without the soul even the human body is inanimate and without a body the soul also cannot attain salvation! In this way even the epic religious scriptures adorning the various libraries are lifeless; but don't they guide a seeker on the right path?
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Through these aids, the devotee brings before his mind's eye, as if on a mirror, the grand personality of the divine being and aims to merge his 'Atman' (soul) with that 'Parmatman' (supreme soul)! Does it not make sense then that idol worship is a powerful medium to attain the supreme spiritual Bliss? In prayer while idol worship has its symbolic importance, the importance of the visual impact of the idol on the devotee cannot be discounted. What you learn by actually seeing cannot be taught by any number of scriptures/sacred books. There are always conflicting literatures ever confusing a reader. But a visual object is free from controversies and misunderstandings. By seeing an object with our own eyes we get to know the details about the particular object but we cannot understand the same by reading a thousand words about it. What you feel with your organs whether by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching or tasting is always better than just the theoretical study of many years. A devotee gets immense inner pleasure by just looking at the idol of his or her beloved God, and this is no less than any other pleasure. The same idol helps the beginner in spiritual quest to transcend slowly different levels of spiritual awareness till one reaches a stage spiritually when one does not require any external aids to attain spiritual salvation!