“Now, although there are many different ways to worship, I have always believed it is best to worship mentally, if you can. Physical worship is always limited, especially now during Kali Yuga, when not even the experts are always able to do their physical worship properly. Even the most proficient devotee must occasionally make a mistake in his or her ritual; even the best trained mouth must sometimes mispronounce a mantra. And in some sadhanas if you make even a minor mistake you are gone. To avoid all possi bility of error it is always better to worship mentally instead of physically. There is nothing to misplace, nothing to spill, and no fear of mistake. This is what the Tantras mean when they call for ‘internal sacrificial rites.’ Do you think this is so easy? In almost every case nowadays only the show remains; the internal techniques have been lost, except to the chosen few.
“You can do any sort of worship internally. I have taught you to perform homa, no doubt, but homa is an external form of worship, and its limita tions are those of all other external forms of worship. It is often easier to do external worship in the beginning so that you do not have to visualize every thing you are offering, but everyone must eventually progress from external to internal worship. The special value of homa is that it purifies the Fire Ele ment, which controls the sense of sight. As the Fire Element in your body becomes purer and your Bhuta Agni increases, your ability to visualize, which is utterly essential for internal worship, will improve. You are going to learn quite a lot about internal worship by the time I am through with you.
“Let’s start with fire worship. Even if you cannot perform homa with an external fire every day—and how many people can nowadays?—you can still do homa every day and get benefit from it if you offer to your digestive fire everything you put into your mouth. Yes, it is not so pure as a well tended external fire, but it is always ignited, always ready to accept offerings. You don’t even need any special mantras; just offer each bite with the man tra you repeat daily, and see the result. This is a form of internal worship.
“Orthodox people go to temples, but I believe that the true temple is inside the mind. Why waste time worshipping physical objects when you have everything you need inside your own mind? Your concentration will be much better if you perform internal worship, because you do not have the distractions that trouble a person performing external rituals: the constant worries of obtaining the right substance at the right time, misplacing some thing, spilling something else. It is much easier to self-identify when your
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mind is not distracted by external things, even if they are your articles of worship. On the inside, everything is always ready for your use, if you make the effort to locate it.
“It is useful to worship in a temple that is filled with Shakti, true; but how many of those are there nowadays? A temple will be useful to you only if its Prana Pratishtha has been properly performed. Prana Pratishtha is the rite by which life-force is infused into the image, making it live. Every temple has had a Prana Pratishtha done for the image which is worshipped therein, but if the Prana Pratishtha is not done properly the image will not come to life. You can test this at the very end of the Prana Pratishtha ceremony when a mirror is offered to the image, so that deity which has been invoked into the image can see itself. If the job has been properly done, the mirror will shat ter. Only then can you say the image has any power, not before.
“Even if an image has no power it can still act as a focus for your mind to concentrate on, of course. The only disadvantage of mental worship is that the mind has no such focus until you create one.”
“This is a big disadvantage for most people.”
“Yes it is. Many people come to me and claim to meditate for one and two hours at a time. I always tell them, ‘First learn to concentrate and then you can meditate.’ Try to concentrate on one thing for even three minutes and you will find that it is impossible unless you have had long practice in that department. Then try to imagine keeping all your articles of worship fixed in your mind for an hour or more, and you have an idea of the effort required for real mental worship. But it is definitely worth it.
“Once there was a poor man by the name of Bulaki Das who worked as a farm laborer for a big landlord just so he could get something to eat. He got into the habit of taking a half-hour break before his lunch and performing mental worship. After some time he found it so enjoyable that he began to sit for an hour, then two hours, three hours, and sometimes longer. The other laborers had no idea what he was doing, of course, and became indig nant about it. They told the landlord, who came out to the field one day to see for himself.
“Back then landlords could do anything they pleased to their workmen, and in this case when the landlord saw that Bulaki Das was not working he gave him a good kick. Bulaki Das awoke from his trance and said, ‘Oh my, look what you’ve done. I was giving food to all my saints, and only the yogurt was remaining; but now you’ve disturbed all that.’ Then he opened his hand to show that the yogurt which had been in his palm had fallen to the ground. Bulaki Das’s concentration had been so intense that the yogurt
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was actually created, in the physical world, as a result of his mental worship.
“When the landlord saw the little mound of yogurt on the ground near Bulaki Das’s hand he immediately realized his mistake, bowed to him, and took him as his guru. They both became saints; they belonged to the Sant Sampradaya, like Dadu and Rajab.
“There is nothing higher than perfection in mental worship. You can actu ally create whatever articles you offer mentally, just like Bulaki Das did. You do run the danger of becoming totally useless to the world, of course, because the joy you get from your mental play is far more intense than any physical joy you might experience. When you advance far enough into men tal worship your deity will come and play with you, and then you get your self absolutely lost in that play. Beautiful!”
“It almost sounds too simple,” I said suspiciously.
“Well, let’s put it this way. Even a pashu can somehow or another per form ordinary physical, adhibhautika worship; but Kundalini must be at least partially awakened if you hope to perform internal, adhyatmika wor ship, since only when Kundalini is awakened does Bhuta Agni become truly ignited, and without a strong Bhuta Agni you will never be able to create a firm image in your astral body. But there is another form of worship also: the astral, or adhidaivika.
“Let’s assume you are worshipping Ganesha. Externally you can offer things dear to Ganesha, such as sugar cane, into a physical fire with an appropriate mantra. Internally you offer your mantra of Ganesha into the fire of your Bhuta Agni. You must make use of your own personal goddess, your Kula Kundalini, in order to perform the adhidaivika worship. Kula Kundalini is essential to adhidaivika worship because only Kula Kundalini knows how to locate Ganesha.
“If you want to do adhidaivika worship, first make your Kundalini Shakti descend to the Muladhara Chakra where you make Her self-identify with Ganesha, the presiding deity of that chakra. Kundalini can self-identify with anything; by Her perfect self-identification with Ganesha She actually becomes Ganesha, and then Ganesha Himself performs the worship. Only when the deity exists within your own body can you do perfect worship. Then you know exactly how to propitiate Him or Her, because you have become Him or Her.”
“And so the Tantras say, “First become Shiva, and then worship Shiva.”” “How else can you comprehend Shiva, unless you have become Him?” Hmm. Just as I was about to proceed with this line of questioning some guests arrived, and Vimalananda deftly changed the flavor of the conversa
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tion. Clearly he expected me to work on this for awhile,