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Originally Posted by Molearner
Shivani Devi,
I very much liked your example. The very same thing happened in Christianity over the years. Knowledge, in many ways, was restricted to the priesthood. It made no difference in regards to liberation(salvation) even by the very things or knowledge that the priests possessed. Namely, that the scriptures taught salvation by grace......not knowledge.
To differ somewhat, I would suggest that liberation is not dependent on worship and love of God. I would simply assert that it is soley dependent on love.....period. One that is permeated with love and radiates love, IMO, meets all the criteria for liberation. "Worship and love of God" unfortunately has connotations of association with some specific religion and this has a way of reverting to a knowledge based philosophy.
In the Christian scriptures(1 Cor. 13), the Apostle Paul states that 'love never fails' and that it is what truly endures......even mentioning that eventually knowledge 'passes away'.
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Thank you.
For me, worship and love kind of goes 'hand in hand'. If one loves something, there's a natural tendency to show just
how much - or as much as the limited human condition allows.
Some just worship by rote though and I have seen them.
Between the ages of 21 and 35, I was married to a Hindu priest from Fiji and I was in the rather unenviable position of being a 'dutiful priest's wife'....who also was totally smitten by the Hindu God, Lord Shiva (my ex-husband was a Ram Bhakta...and things were rather 'interesting' in regards).
I went to
many pujas (prayer services) and really got into it - but externally and superficially, I noticed everybody else just attending out of a sense of duty, really - according to dharma...I didn't 'feel the lerve' from others...only from Shiva and my husband.
The women would all dress up in their finery and jewels (while I was wearing a plain sari or shalwar khamise only). They would all sit around in groups and gossip about others who were not in attendance and when I asked if they actually understood the service and what was going on, they pretty much said 'nope'.
The men would all sit around in a separate group drinking Yaqona (Kava), discussing politics...and I would sit by my husband in the 'men group' (because I despised gossip and the 'clucking hens' on the other side of the room) which was pretty much frowned upon, but I was permitted to do so, due to my 'status'.
...anyway, after a while, I noticed how people were just using a religious meeting as an excuse to socialise and show-off and it was
totally different to the ISKCON movement...yeah, I sorta missed those days when others would just get up and dance around ecstatically and spontaneously, totally oblivious to their surroundings.
Whenever I started to go into trance, my husband (or another) would try to quickly snap me out of it with some kind of philosophy or another...saying that I was being 'possessed' or it was 'demonic' and such...yeah, after being raised in Agama Hindu Dharma this was rather a very rude 'culture shock'.
I also noticed that for one night a year, Shiva would get a 'look-in' but for the other 364 days, He was pretty much totally ignored...which left me thinking 'how hypocritical is
that'? and as stated, I have a problem with hypocrisy that I don't know how to reconcile within my being yet.
Anyway, back in 1995, I pretty much left Hinduism due to all this...due to all I experienced...only for Lord Shiva to show up again in my life some 20 years later with a "You may have left Hinduism, but I never left
you" and I got back into worship as an 'expression' of my heart...maybe on one level for 'seeking favour' as I did not feel worthy...humility made me do it and I don't always agree with nitiananda (hardly ever) but I do agree that one cannot just allow themselves to rest on the 'laurels of love' because there's a propensity for becoming complacent (a
much better word than 'lazy') and take God's love for granted - take the love that one also feels...for granted (which was probably what was happening in the case of those aforementioned Hindus).
There's a word we use...it's called Bhava...which can be transliterated to 'attitude' or 'faith' or 'right intention' sort of a mixture of all three...some Sanskrit words are not so easily definable into English...sometimes worship is done with ego...with the intention of 'receiving something' like more money, curing illness, better status and outcome in life, receiving Gods grace, gaining salvation/liberation and sometimes, worship is down as an expression OF that love...in the only way one can show it...even if they
know that 'God knows'...it's not enough...and one acts totally
irrationally in the throes of Bhakti (rapture) anyway, so we can't really be accountable for it.