If God can hear our prayers directly, why do we need to pray to a murti? (PK answerd 12)
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
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Hare Krishna. If God can hear our prayers directly, then why do we need a murti to worship him? Answer. The purpose of the murti is not to ensure that God hears our prayers, it is to ensure that our heart goes closer to God.
Yes, it is true that God is everywhere and even if we don’t enunciate our prayers, he can hear even our thoughts. But the purpose of going to God is not just to get our job done. God is not just some cosmic superpower or a universal bellboy, we ring a bell and then he obeys our command.
That may be a very superficial level at which some people approach God. But the purpose of going to God is to develop our relationship with him, to develop love for him. And that love develops through service.
So just love and service are two mutually symbiotic components of any relationship. When we love someone, we serve that person. When we serve someone, affection for that person also develops.
So in order to intensify, heighten our relationship with him, God manifests himself in his deity form. So the murti is a manifestation of God provided for us to be able to serve him. So it is not just to ensure that he hears our prayers, it is so that we can behold him with our eyes and in that way we serve him with our eyes.
It is so that we can move around him on the legs and by that we serve him with our legs. And it is so that we can sing his glories and we can dress him, we can bathe him. So the purpose of the deity is not to ensure that God’s audience in compliance to our prayers.
The purpose of the deity is to ensure that our heart becomes closer to Krishna and to God. And if we have an opportunity to go closer to him by perceiving him in a way that we have access to right now. So we just close our eyes and pray, then it is not as real, as tangible experience of connection with God as it is when we serve him through his deity manifestation.
So to say that we have to worship God in the deity form so that he will hear is a straw man argument. It is a misleading argument. The purpose of going in front of the deity to pray is not so that he hears, it is he can hear anywhere.
But the purpose of going in front of the deity is to serve him, to offer our respects to him and to develop our relationship with him so that ultimately we can love him purely. Thank you. Hare Krishna.