Whether you bathe in the Ganga for a thousand years or live on vegetable food for a like period, unless it helps towards the manifestation of the Self, know that it is all of no use.
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin!
One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots.
Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain.
The secret of image – worship is that you are trying to develop your vision of Divinity in one thing.
The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet.
This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do.
Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry – to them I say “Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?”
Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible.
We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.
Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.
Man stands in materialism; you and I are materialists. Our talking about God and Spirit is good; but it is simply the vogue in our society to talk thus: we have learnt it parrot-like and repeat it.
Charity is great, but the moment you say it is all, you run the risk of running into materialism.
If there be no eternal life, still the enjoyment of spiritual thoughts as ideals is keener and makes a man happier, whilst the foolery of materialism leads to competition and undue ambition and ultimate death, individual and national.
Let there be as little materialism as possible, with the maximum of spirituality.
Materialism and all its miseries can never be conquered by materialism.
Materialism prevails in Europe today. You may pray for the salvation of the modern sceptics, but they do not yield, they want reason.
Everything is ended if you forgive and forget.
Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.