Does the Gita recommend Deity worship?

So does Krishna recommend Riddhi Varshan in the Bhagavad Gita not explicitly but inclusively it is there explicitly means there is no verse directly that talks about Riddhi Varshan in the Bhagavad Gita by influence Madhyaanshi can refer to Riddhi Varshan as a logical inference Madhmanmanabha Madhyakta Madhyanshi Maham is to offer homage and to offer obeisance is to, so both these very naturally apply to Riddhis, now the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and in the Mahabharata there are abandoned temples and there is mention of Riddhis and the Pandavas also visited temples on many occasions and of course there is fire sacrifice also because that is the thing at that time but the point is that there is no verse in the Bhagavad Gita which directly condemns Riddhi Varshan absolutely this one comes true that God cannot manifest in matter or as matter but the whole there is an explicit question about in the 10th chapter how can I contemplate on your manifestations in matter so basically this antipathy towards Riddhi Varshan which is there in the Abrahamic religions and that is from where most of the Christians came basically when the Christians came to India they criticized Hinduism for three things its polytheism, its idolatry and its casteism so polytheism you worship so many gods and you worship stones as gods and we also have a discriminatory caste system now in the Abrahamic religions especially in Islam and no lesser extent in Christianity there is a very huge divorce between matter and soul or matter and God primarily so God cannot manifest as matter and in fact what is their idea that actually not only can one of the commandments in the old and the 10 commandments were given to Moses and Moses was accepted as a prophet by all three religions Buddhism, Christianity and Islam the 10 commandments apply to all of them so one of them is thou shall not worship any graver image so what is their idea that God is beyond all conception so if we conceive God in some form that people who are less intelligent they get attracted to the form and the form is meant to remind them of God but they tend to stick only to the form, to the representation and they forget to worship and over a period of time the representation instead of being a root to the God which should be worshipped the representation becomes a competitor to the God because people start worshipping the representation only and forget God and in this way the representation stops people's worship of God and distracts them to something which is a falsehood and therefore according to the Quran Allah can forgive any sin except the sin of idolatry anybody who is an idolater that person is straight going to hell and Allah will never forgive you for that so what is their idea, their idea is because first of all in those religions there was no description of the positive form of God and that's why in the 6th century we have Michelangelo depicting God as an old man with a long beard and then Adam actually looks much more handsome, good looking and go on in that image so the thing is because they had no description of God given their scriptures so they actually had to imagine God and the conception of God will surely distract people so based on the level of revelation that is there in those religions the contemplation of idolatry makes sense but based on the level of revelation that is there in the religion it doesn't, you know people tell Christians I write this in my book that Jesus Christians may ask me, Jesus never said that Krishna is God yes, he may not have said that but he said there is much that I have to tell you but you are not being able to hear not only that, he said are you interested in religion or are you interested in God that the same God that you have to worship and if you look at the Bhagavad Gita you know I am the Alpha and the Beta and the Theta and the Omega of all things and Krishna said so actually the same attributes of God that are described in the Bible or the Quran similar attributes are described in the Bhagavad Gita also in many ways so it is the same one God that is being talked about so if you want to know more about God and if that knowledge is not there in your tradition why not take that knowledge from some other tradition like I want to study computer engineering and I come to IIT Kharagpur but I find there is a certain level of knowledge but in MIT and IIT Kharagpur there is much more knowledge so when I say because I am IIT Kharagpur student I never go to MIT no, am I interested in knowledge or am I interested in college so am I interested in God or am I interested in religion so because they let their rules of religion come in the way of their knowledge of God therefore they get caught and that's why they get a complete almost psychotic complex where there is a God being represented as some image so there may not be any explicit references to lady worship in the Gita but there is nothing in the Gita which can be construed as a condemnation or a rejection of lady worship either that's the first point and the conception of God in Gita is a God who manifests through man also so in principle even Gita's philosophy does not offer anything which would be opposed to lady worship apart from that the Bhagavad Gita is a book of comparative yoga it is not a book of prescriptive yoga prescriptive yoga means what it is not you Arjuna's question is not how to practice bhakti yoga Arjuna's question is which yoga to practice what should I do that is Arjuna's critical question so Arjuna lived in a culture where he knew ok if I have to practice bhakti yoga I have to do this this if I have to practice ashtanga yoga I have to do this this what should I do that is the question so a simple example to understand this point is suppose we have to start a teaching program in Ganga now we are trying to decide should we start in English should we start in English should we start in Bengali now you may make a powerpoint presentation ok these are pros and cons of this cons of this pros and cons of all of this now in this you will not talk about learning the details of Bengali grammar or English grammar or Hindi grammar because the assumption is if the teacher is thinking which language to use that means the teacher already knows the language but the question is which language to use similarly the Gita is not a book which talks about any yoga in detail because it is understood that the Gita student knows how to practice the yoga his dilemma is which yoga to practice so that's why that way if you want to practice yoga then there is Bhakti Samyukta Vrindavan there are other books to describe that the Bhagavad Gita is a book which analyzes what is the sadhya and what is the sadhya what is the goal that I am supposed to achieve what is the means by which I am supposed to achieve but it doesn't go into the details of any of those sadhyas so if you want to talk about Ashtanga Yoga Krishna talks about asanas a bit but just one verse in fact one fragment of one verse what does it say that's all 6.13 in Bhagavad Gita that's all the description of the asanas that's all there are elsewhere books which talk about varieties of asanas, Krishna doesn't go into that so Krishna doesn't go into any of the details of the practice of any of the yogas so if you look at Bhakti also how many times does Krishna talk about the important things of life about association one verse 10.9 and one verse about 30.26 but no no where is any verse in Bhagavad Gita about that there is one example of in terms of Arjuna offering prayers to Vishnu but the point is you have to understand every book has a particular purpose the book Bhagavad Gita is a book of comparative yoga it is not a book of descriptive yoga or descriptive yoga either it is not explaining how to practice yoga it is explaining which yoga to practice and that's why it is very clear it tells us to practice Bhakti yoga and Bhakti yoga has deity worship as an integral part of it and the Bhagavad Gita's philosophy is not against deity worship and the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata wherein there are abundant references to temples and the Pandavas and others go to the temples for worship so in that sense you can say the Bhagavad Gita is compatible with deity worship it is definitely not contrary and there are enough concurrent chains of inference by which you can say it is compatible with deity worship.