Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Invocation of prana, life, and faith

Deifying the divine, the life force, as idols are worshipped, they are, after the ritual (performed by the “qualified,” hailed as the connecting medium) of prana pratishtha, invoking life in the lifeless form. And in cases of festivals where the idol is immersed in water, like Durga Puja, the deity is invoked, again, to leave the form to render it lifeless, and the ritual is of visarjan.

Coming to the one of prana pratishtha, and obviously, all is a matter of faith and not contention, but of utter regard, one faith honoring the other, while it continues to follow its own path, fully, the queries arise:

  • Why an external medium is required to connect to the divine?
  • Is it not because the divine is placed out of us, while found within one realizes that It is that sublime sense of love, Its essence, unconditional love, which only one can feel, and no connector is required for the same? Though, it is also is true that there are many who connect to the external form without needing any connector. Nothing is being generalized, as important is faith, and each one has unique ways and means of connecting, as is acknowledged that the guru within, our essential essence, does come out in a form that one would be receptive to, the form could be animate or inanimate, guiding one to ultimately transcend the forms and find the divine in the formless...everywhere...in everything...every being...Its omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, realized, as is realized oneness with It, as every manifestation happens within, as all is experiential.
  • Is not deifying the divine, a futile attempt at trying to confine the infinite in the edifice of a form, and limiting Its experience, and that of life? And has not this, also, led to acts deplorable in the name of the divine, as also, claims of one’s ways as the way and one’s God as the most powerful and best?
  • Anyways, acknowledging all as the infinite ways and means of accessing and realizing the life force, the essential energy that we all are in form, albeit, vibrating at different frequencies, still, the query knocks that while idols are worshiped, as prana is perceived in them, as is believed to have been invoked in them, why is it so difficult to invoke the prana that flows through us, the life force? It flows so we are.... It simply has to be believed in and called forth, realized.
  • Is it because it seems too good to be true?
At the end of it all it is all a matter of awareness.... That which we are aware of being and having, with faith in the awareness, that we bring to being...that we invoke, as thus we resonate with the prana that flows in, as and through them, and thus, establish (pratistha) them as realities of our life.

Awareness becomes aware to the query: How do we not take cognizance of the prana that establishes us...for which we are in form, the very form we hold as our real reality?

Sushmita Mukherjee,

April 9, 2014