my faith - 7 Swami(SB)

THE TRUE DEVOTEE Prayer is a confession of one’s unworthiness and weakness. God has a thousand names, or rather, He is Nameless. We worship or pray to Him by whichever name that pleases us. Some call Him Rama, some Krishna, others call Him Rahim, and yet other call Him God. All worship the same spirit, but as all foods do not agree with all, all names do not appeal to all. Each choses the name according to his associations, and He being the In-Dweller, All-Powerful and Omniscient knows our innermost feelings and responds to us according to our deserts. Worships or prayer, therefore, is not to be performed with the lips, but with the heart. And that is why it can be performed equally by the dumb and the stammerer, by the ignorant and the stupid. And the prayers of those whose tongues are nectared but whose hearts are full of poison are never heard. He, therefore, who would pray to God, must cleanse his heart. Rama was not only on the lips of Hanuman, He was enthroned in his heart. He gave Hanuman exhaustless strength. In His strength he lifted the mountain and crossed the ocean.

HOUSE OF GOD I do not regard the existence of a temple as a sin or superstition. Some form of common worship, and a common place of worship appear to be a human necessity. Whether the temples should contain images or not is a matter of temperament and taste. I do not regard a Hindu or a Roman Catholic place of worship containing images as necessarily bad or superstitious, and a mosque or a Protestant place of worship being good or free of superstition merely because of their exclusion of images. A symbol such as a cross or a book may easily become idolatrous, and therefore superstitions. And the worship of the image of Child Krishna or Virgin Mary may become ennobling and free of all superstition. It depends upon the attitude of the heart of the worshipper. Young India, 5-11-1925, p. 378 I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without its House of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or an agiari. Nor is it certain that any of the great reformers including Jesus destroyed or descarded temples altogether. All of them sought to banish corruption from temples as well as from society. Some of them, if not all, appear to have preached from temples. I have ceased to visit temples for years, but I do not regard myself on that account as a better person than before. My mother never missed going to the temple when she was in a fit state to go there. Probably her faith was far greater than mine, though I do not visit temples. There are millions whose faith is sustained through these temples, churches and mosques. They are not all blind followers of a superstition, nor are they fanatics. Superstition and fanaticism are not their monopoly. These vices have their root in our hearts and minds. ….To reject the necessity of temples is to reject the necessity of God, religion, and earthly existence. Harijan, 11-3-1933, p. 5

INCARNATIONS OF GOD In Hinduism, incarnation is ascribed to one who has performed some extraordinary service of mankind. All embodied life is in reality an incarnation of God, but it is not usual to consider every living being an incarnation. Future generations pay this homage to one who in his own generation has been extraordinarily religious in his conduct. I can see nothing wrong in the procedure; it takes nothing from God’s greatness, and there is no violence done to truth. There is an Urdu saying which means ‘Adam is not God but he is a spark of the Divine.’ And therefore he who is the most religiously behaved has most of the divine spark in him. It is in accordance with this train of thought that Krishna enjoys, in Hinduism, the status of the most perfect incarnation. This belief in incarnation is a testimony of man’s lofty spiritual ambition. Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavour to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization. Young India, 6-8-1931, pp. 205-06 I have no knowledge that the Krishna of Mahabharat ever lived. My Krishna has nothing to do with any historical person. I would refuse to bow my head to the Krishna who would kill because his pride is hurt, or the Krishna whom the non-Hindus portray as a dissolute youth. I believe in Krishna of my imagination as a perfect incarnation, sportless in every sense of the word, the inspirer of the Gita and the inspirer of the lives of millions of human beings. But if it was proved to me that the Mahabharat is history in the same sense that modern historical books are, that every word of the Mahabharat actually did some of the acts attributed to him, even at the risk of being banished from the Hindu fold I should not hesitate to reject that Krishna as God incarnate. But to me the Mahabharat is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in no way meant to be a historical record. It is the description of the eternal duel going on within ourselves, given so vividly as to make us thing for the time being that the deeds described therein were actually done by the human beings. Nor do I regard the Mahabharat as we have it now as a faultless copy of the original. On the contrary I consider that it has undergone many amendations. Young India, 1-10-1-25, p. 336