Why Worship

When I was a student of XI standard, one day at College, our hindi teacher while discussing on some topic, said that "God wants sycophants. He is pleased with sycophancy, thats why you see all the prayers praise him like anything".

Though I was not part of the conversation, these above words came into my ears. I started thinking on this....yes it seems to be correct...always we say, "God you are so handsome so beautiful so merciful"....all great words....God gets pleased only with them who praises him...then what does this mean....God wants Sychophants!!

So it is a Give and Take approach...you give good words and get what you want!!

I had this question in my mind for many years, and then one fine day I just got a thought and then perhaps got the answer also!

Why do we worship? What is the purpose?

The word comes from the English word worth-ship which means "to ascribe worth or value to something or someone." Means something give and take.....I praise God, he becomes happy and gives me some boon...so we both are happy!! God is behaving to have human weaknesses ...sychophancy etc.

Then perhaps Worship is not the correct word for Prayer.

Yes we praise God, all of us do so but actually we do not tell this to God, we are trying to tell this to our inner-self to convince ourselves that God is great!

So that a person himself becomes convinced that God is great...God is Powerful...God is merciful...

This may seems to be a little odd to some people, but just take in following manner, suppose a person is in some emergency, he will pray to God, this prayer will give him strength and this strength will give him confidence to overcome the odds.

From where this strength came?

What happens is that after repeating prayers to the God, when our inner-self is convinced that God is there to help me, this firm faith gives the strength. He feels connected...wow! no need to worry the supreme power is there to protect me!!!

All scriptures talk about firm faith. When our inner-self is fully convinced, our faith in God become firm and this helps in going to next level of spiritual growth.

Without this inner-convincing, devotion will never come and sadhak (devotee) may loose its goal of supreme.

In Sanaatan Traditions, this stage is known as Bhakti...when Bhakti reaches to complete devotion, it leads to Gyana, which enlightens an individual.

The bhakti starts with asking for some materialistic things from God, but as it matures, all these demands goes away.....Inner-self becomes convinced that no need to ask anything for this mortal body.....for any other thing, God himself will take care...why ask? He is omipresent, omniscience, omnipotent...he knows my requirements...so no need to ask for anything! He will even take care of my this mortal life also!!

When a sadhak is in this stage, it means that now he is connected to the supreme.

We hear about different philosophies...Dvaita, Advaita etc.

I feel that a person starts with Dvaita...Bhakti comes in this stage...as the sadhak matures dvaita turns into advaita...he become enlightened!

Even the great sage of Advaita philosophy Aadi Shankara sang the song..."Bhaj Govindam"...

So we came to the conclusion, Why pray? Pray so that we are convinced that God is there to help us, to build us the firm faith, to get connected and to go beyond the give and take approach, to develop the inner-consciousness and to be enlightened!

HARI OM TATSAT!