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WORSHIP, RITUAL, FASTS AND FESTIVALS
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generally more powerful and, in a way, better placed than human beings. On account of their super-natural powers, they can work wonders and perform miracles. Yet, they are not divinities. They are much lower beings than the Jinas or Tirthankaras, nay, than even a human being who possesses right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. None of these celestial beings can practise right conduct, because of the very nature of celestial existence, they can at best possess right faith and right knowledge. Those of them who are so lucky, are the devotees of the Jina and are engaged in working out their own salvation through worship of and devotion to the Jina. As such, they do not help or hinder human beings in working out their own salvation. Some of them may per chance prove helpful to a person in gaining some heart's desire or warding off some danger, but it depends purely on their whim and the fruition of the karman of that person at that particular moment.
However, it is this rare possibility which tempts people to worship these gods and goddesses, especially the kşetrapālas or dik-pālas (godly guards of regions), Sarasvatī the goddess of learning, and the attendant yakşas and yakṣīs of the different Tirthankaras, such as, Cakreśvarī. The last two, the attendants of the twenty-third Tirthankara Pārsvanātha, are by far the most popular. In certain Jaina temples one may see images of these godlings installed, but always in an inferior place and position to those of the Tirtharkaras; and some people even worship them. The more orthodox, however, do not approve of the worship of these godlings. They consider, and, perhaps, rightly, that such worship is a deteraction of Right Faith; a right believer would worship and have devotion for only the Deva (Arhats, Jinas or Tīrthankaras, and the Siddhas), the guru, and the śāstra, and for nothing or nobody else, human, subhuman, natural or supernatural. In fact, according to the Jaina doctrine, men are, in some respects, more favoured than these gods or celestial beings,
