Some create God’s image to relate to it

Let us say a child sleeps with the mother. It knows the comfort of the mother’s body. As it grows up, you want to put the child separately, which is very essential for the growth of the child. Suddenly if you put him in a different bed, he feels uncomfortable. So what do we do? Usually we give him a toy—a doll or teddy bear to hold onto.

Now, he holds onto this doll and feels comfortable. As he grows up, you don’t have to tell him, 'Get rid of the doll'. As he grows up, this doll, which was so precious to him earlier, goes to the trashcan, isn’t it? You don’t have to do anything about it. As growth happens, the doll falls away by itself. The teddy bear disappears, but if you snatch the doll away when he needs it, you will harm the child. You will damage his psyche in a very deep sense. 

Similarly, right now some people need an image. An idol is an image that you have created, which you think is the image of God. If you need to hold somebody’s hand and walk, you do it. It is perfectly okay. As long as you understand that someday you have to become free from this, there is no problem. But if you think this is God, then you are in trouble. You create an image of God because you want to relate to it. As long as you need it you use it, but the aim is to grow out of it.

India is one place where they went into elaborate systems of idol-making. This has been misunderstood by other cultures as worshipping some doll as a god. No. Here people are very much aware that it is we who create the shapes and forms. If you look at it from the standpoint of modern science, we know today that everything is the same energy, but everything is not the same in the world. So this same energy can be like an animal or this same energy can function like the Divine. 

There is a whole science of idol-making where a certain form with certain material is created and energised in a certain way. Different idols are made in different ways to make them into completely different possibilities. Idol-making is that science through which you manifest the energy in a particular way so that your quality of life can be enhanced. 

Ancient temples in India were not created for worship. Only over a period of time it has become the way it has become. Temple-building is a very deep science. If the basic aspects of the temple—the size and shape of the idol, the mudra that the idol holds, the parikrama, the garbha griham, and the mantras that you use to consecrate the idol are properly matched—a positive energy system is created.

In Indian tradition, nobody told you that if you go to a temple that you must worship and ask for something. They told you if you go the temple, you must sit for a while and come. But today you just touch your bottom to the floor and run away. This is not the way. You are required to sit there because there is a field of energy that has been created.

In the morning before you go out into the world and transact your business, the first thing you do is you go sit in the temple for a while. This is a way of recharging yourself with very positive vibrations of life so that you go into the world with a different perspective.

Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Website: Isha.sadhguru.org.