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Does God actually eat the food offered?
This is a most interesting question
because in every temple in India, it is customary to make a small offering of
sweets or other food,
as a mark of our devotion and gratefulness
towards whichever God or Goddess we are worshiping.
Once the respective God has "eaten" from the offering
the remaining food is considered sacred and infused
with divinity
because of the touch of God's "hands" and is thereafter
consumed by the devotees as "Prasad". And not just in temples
but even when we pray at home, food is similarly offered.
So a question arises in the mind: Since the idol
or the image itself cannot move, then how exactly
is God said to touch, bless, and eat the food offered?
Do these things genuinely happen, or is the offering of prasad
just an empty custom?
A most fascinating answer to a portion of this question, was given by Swami Vivekananda
more than a hundred years ago. In those days,
Swami Vivekananda had returned back to India from his trip West
and established the monastery at Belur. In this monastery,
Swami Vivekananda had built a small shrine
for the daily worship of his guru Sri Ramakrishna, who long ago,
had left his physical body. This worship of
the image of Sri Ramakrishna was carried out along with the offering of food.
One day Swami Vijnanananda, another great direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna,
asked Swami Vivekananda: "Does Sri Ramakrishna
accept the food we offer in the shrine?" To which Swami Vivekananda replied:
"Yes he does. A ray comes out from his third eye
and touches the food. If you want, I can show it to you today in the shrine."
This wonderful exchange, shows us how Sri Ramakrishna,
who was an incarnation of God, even after leaving his body
actually touched, blessed and sanctified the food that Swami Vivekananda and
the other monks at Belur offered before his image.
But this is not the only way, in which the Divine blesses the food offered.
As Swami Sivananda, another great teacher of Vedanta Philosophy
and founder of the Divine Life Society once explained:
"If the food is offered with a yearning heart, sometimes,
the Lord takes, i.e. eats that food, assuming a physical form.
In other cases, the Lord enjoys the subtle essence of the food offered,
and the food remains as it is, in the shape of prasad."
Now before we start to think that this is too-far-fetched!
How can God, who is the infinite divine consciousness,
possibly assume a physical body? We must recall the account left by
Paramhansa Yogananda
in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, where he describes in terrific detail
how his guru Sri Yukteswar,
some months after his death, suddenly materialized before Yogananda
in a physical body,
conversed with him for 2 hours, and then de-materialized
and vanished. This incident is presented in the chapter
Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar.
And this account of Paramhansa Yogananda is by no means
the only one.
The lives of India's great gurus abound with many such incidents.
For example, Pandit Shriram Sharma has written how his guru who lived in the
subtle body,
manifested before him in a physical form in the Himalayas,
to impart spiritual instructions.
Now if the God-realized gurus of India, can manifest in an actual physical body,
then so can, the many gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion, as well as the
prophets of other religions.
After all, we do know that Sri Ramakrishna
often saw the divine mother Kali in her physical form.
So to conclude - We now know that God can actually touch, bless,
and on rare occasions even assume a physical form, to eat the food offered!
None of these things are far-fetched! Instead,
what is necessary for such events to occur is a very high degree of devotion
such as the type
possessed by Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna
or Meera Bai, with which to call upon the divine.
Now even after learning of this, our answer still
is a little incomplete. It requires 3 important clarifications,
so let us see these next: Our first clarification,
is concerning who actually eats and blesses the food offered?
Because as we know, the idol or the image itself cannot move.
And the answer to this is that the idol that we see in a temple
is only a symbolic representation of God, who is in reality
the infinite ocean of divine consciousness. So it is not
the idol which blesses and eats the food offered, but it is the actual
consciousness of the divine
which is present not just in the idol, but is in reality present everywhere,
it is omnipresent across the Universe - which interacts with sincere
devotees in this way.
Thus one need not be sitting in a temple,
to invoke the blessings of the Lord. One could be anywhere on
earth, in India or abroad, in a city or in a cave in the Himalayas,
and the divine presence will find and bless us just the same.
All that is needed is a clean and sincere heart to call upon the divine.
The second point to note is that the material offerings of food,
sweets etc.
that we make to God, are in themselves completely unimportant.
As Pandit Shriram Sharma has explained in his many books,
God who is the creator and sustainer of this whole Universe
is not in need of our paltry material offerings.
Rather it is the purity, sincerity and honesty of our emotions,
that pulls at the divine consciousness. The custom of an offering
is only so that worldly-minded people can develop within themselves
an attitude of sharing, gratefulness and compassion
and thus climb up to a higher emotional state and attain a vision of God.
And finally the last thing to remember is that God in reality
is ONE -- an infinite and undivided ocean of consciousness.
However, just as the waters of the ocean take up the form of many waves,
in the same way the one unified consciousness
appears in the form of many gods and goddesses, incarnations and prophets.
But God in reality is ONE and irrespective of one's religious standing,
his divine grace is available, equally for all.
This brings us to the end of our presentation, but before I go,
I would like to recommend some wonderful books for reading:
The first book as we have already seen is Autobiography of a Yogi.
The second is "God Lived With Them" by Swami Chetanananda,
who is a monk with the Ramakrishna Mission. This book
is a beautiful collection of spiritual incidents which occurred in the lives
of the 16 monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna.
The Swami Vivekananda incident referred in this video has been taken from this book.
The third is "My Life - Its Legacy and Message" by Pandit Shriram Sharma.
This is an incredible book which details his travels to the Himalayas
to meet his guru and also the rishis who meditate there in their subtle bodies.
And finally for those wishing to learn more about Hinduism,
"All About Hinduism" by Swami Sivananda is a good book to read.
Additionally, if after watching this video you are wondering
- how can one consciousness
appear as so many Gods and Goddesses of the Hindu religion,
then there is an article I wrote on the website,
"Understanding the Many Gods of Hinduism",
which explains this. Links to this article
and as well as to all the free books
are provided in the YouTube description box below.
So Happy Reading! Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video