Sudha Devi Nayak
A newspaper report said a woman from Brazil has been praying to a figure of ‘Elrond’, a character from ‘Lord of the Rings’, mistaking it for a figurine of Saint Anthony, for years. The fact was discovered and posted on Facebook as funny and must have been a cause for much mirth and comment.
But faith, like love, is said to be blind and whatever it fixes on is said to yield results. Stones can turn to castles and dreams can turn to reality. And how many of us have seen God and can vouch for these idols and images we worship with such fervour and invest with such divinity. They are merely images and idols and we see them as God. In fact God lives within us and inspires faith and all our prayers are only external manifestations of this consciousness.
A great sculptor or a humble artisan invests the stone he is sculpting with a spirit of devotion and this very spirit charges the shrine where men and women go to worship. The idols and images are only lifeless slabs of stone till they are imbued with the spirit of man.
Christopher Isherwood says in “Ramakrishna and His Disciples”: “Great souls go on pilgrimages and visit holy places not to get but to give. They recharge each shrine they visit renewing the spiritual power which masses of worshippers are daily taking from it.”
So it is man who gives and takes divinity. Vivekananda says: “Never forget the glory of human nature. We are the greatest God … Christs and Buddhas are but waves on the boundless ocean which I am.”
In fact, primitive man worshipped the Sun, Moon and stars, mountains, rocks and trees and many tribal gods who are seen as the guardian divinities. The tradition persists and we worship these as deities. The Sun and Moon are sacred, the banyan and peepul are worshipped as sanctified symbols of divinity.
According to Indian astrology if a person is a “mangalik” he or she must go through the Kumbhavivaha which means the individual must have a symbolic marriage with a peepul to mitigate possible obstacles in marital life.
All art is a prayer to the almighty and work is worship. When the dancer becomes his dance, the singer becomes his song and the artist his canvas it is a prayer. The Sufi dervishes, whirling in the love of God in a form of physically active meditation, are acts of prayer.
In his celebrated novel “ The Guide”, RK Narayan writes of Raju, the wily, but charming guide who after a life of misdemeanours, disillusionment and loss dons the mantle of the Godman in an abandoned temple. Villagers mistake him for a saint and invest him with divine powers and on their importuning, he undertakes a fast that at last brings rain to the drought-stricken village.
Ultimately, faith is what drives humanity and deifies object be it the idol in the temple, a work of nature or art. So what is wrong if the Brazilian woman was praying to Elrond. Her prayers would certainly have reached the Almighty.
Francis Thompson in “The Kingdom of Heaven”, a lyric verse celebrating mankind’s ability to understand the seemingly impossible aspects of faith says “Not where the wheeling systems darken / and the benumbed conceiving soars/ The drift of pinions would we hearken/ Beats at our own clay shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places/ Turn but a stone, and start a wing/ Tis ye! It’s your estranged faces / That miss the many splendoured thing.