In the last century, the century when reason reigned supreme ,all oriental religiosity and modes of worship were relegated to the realm of superstition and were criticized by Western scholars as being barbaric ,evil and grotesque.The apparent polytheism which is one of the first things which strikes any outsider coming to India became a point of ridicule.Western scholars saw our multitude of gods and demigods as demonic beings, devils and creation of a barbaric mind and wrote profusely of their horror of seeing such images being worshipped .
But whosoever has ventured to penetrate deeper than the superficial appearance of Indian deities has been rewarded with the knowledge of beautiful philosophy and eventually the concept of Advaitvada.which underlines all polytheistic rituals and attitudes. Most ancient of the Vedas and a storehouse of information on Indian mythology and philosophy ,There is a shloka in Rik Veda which translates as …..MAY THIS RELIC BE YOUR PERSONIFICATION….
The highest,most comprehensive truth set forth in the Upanisads is nondual.But Vedantic sages recognized that gradations of philosophical truth was inevitable because Brahman, the absolute , non dual reality is only partially revealed to the vast majority of us. The experience of Brahman is so utterly impersonal , so devoid of anything describable in human terms, as to be suited only to the greatest saints and to those also only in their most strenuous moments. Hence devotees throughout the world have created images of the deities and saints in whom they feel a holy presence.The devotees are very much aware that the image is not the deity itself but just serves as a reminder of the all pervading one and as an object to concentrate ones devotion on.An image or an idol allows one to have a one to one relationship with the deity and worship Almighty in form of mother, friend, lover ,father and thus personalize their worship.Here one needs to understand the difference between idolatry and idol worship. While idolatory can lead to completely blind faith and result in devotee fearing the deity, the idol worship does no such thing. The idol worshippers have tremendous faith but they are conscious of the presence of Almight beyond the image.Thus it’s the symbolic representation of the all pervading one.
Realizing the importance of symbolic representation the German thinker Hegel has compared the images of deities to a set of symbols intelligible only to people who have placed their faith in them in a way which restof the world cannot make sense of. He says “Symbol is a sensuous object which must not be taken in itself such as it is presents itself immediately to us., butin a more extended and more general sense….we must pass beyond the sensuous form in order to penetrate its more extended and profound meaning”
It is often heard that the people who have profound faith in a deity get to see him/her as well. They are blessed with a darshana of their favorite deity in whose bhakti they have completely lost themselves. The formless Brahman appears to the true devotee in whatever form he/she has visualized it, it could be in the form of Lord Krishna, Goddess Kali, Lord Shiva and so on.In no matter what form Almighty appears to a devotee the essence is unique and the phenomenon leads to stronger faith and devotion. Thus idol or image worship can work as an important medium to reach or atleast an attemp to reach the all encompassing one.
Swami Vivekananda while explaining the concept of idol worship says “This poor hindu sits before the idol and tries to think that he is That, and then says , O,lord I cannot conceive Thee as spirit,so let me conceive Thee in this form and then he opens his eyes and sees this form and prostrating he repeats his prayers.And when his prayer is ended he says, O, Lord forgive me for this imperfect worship of Thee”.
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