Follow Me IN! Follow Me IN! Relation of Rituals with Karma
Understand: all this does not add anything to the deity or to the master; it adds to us! This is what is living with God! This is what is practicing the presence of God. Practicing the presence of the master is puja. Puja is done everyday because it is a technique to remember everyday the presence of God.
If you decide to remind yourself of all the clicks that happened in you, all the Truths and ideas that you could feel connected to when they were uttered, that is what becomes your ritual then. It is a ritual because when you are dabbling in it, you raise yourself to the higher consciousness.
Whenever you are in a low mood or depression happens in you, if you remind yourself with the right click, you are doing a great service to yourself. The moment you remember the click, what will happen? You will come out of the low mood. You will simply come out of it.
SIGNIFICANCE OF RITUALS
I will now explain about how karma and rituals are directly connected, how our prarabdha, agamya and sanchita karmas and rituals are connected. I will tell you about these three karmas, and how performing rituals can directly eliminate the negative influence of these karmas, these samskaras or engraved memories. You can come out of them with this understanding.
Rituals are very powerful tools, powerful techniques. Many people ask me, 'You are enlightened; why you should perform rituals?' I tell them, 'Because I am enlightened, I am teaching people exactly how and why to perform rituals!' No ritual is needed for enlightened beings.
Let me tell you a small story:
One man went to a hotel and started eating idlis (Hindu dish made of rice flour).
He ate eight idlis, and after the ninth idli his hunger settled.
The waiter came and gave the bill for nine idlis.
This man said, 'What is this? I will pay only for one idli the ninth idli which put my hunger off! The first eight idlis did not do the job; only the ninth one did the job of satisfying my hunger. So, I will pay only for that idli!'
Doesn't it sound strange? In the same way, people who reject rituals are actually rejecting the first eight idlis. People who think that rituls are a waste and that they will go straightaway to meditation and spiritual experience are doing nothing but rejecting the first eight idlis. Understand that the ninth idli worked because of the first eight idlis. So, your meditation will work because of you having gone through ritual worship sincerely! If you reject all these preliminary things and think that you can directly eat the ninth idli, will it ever happen? Will your hunger ever get satisfied? Whoever thinks that they can directly eat the ninth idli will be just sitting and starving. Not only that, because they did not do things in a proper way, they will not experience what they should experience, and instead they will think, 'Maybe this is all that the experience is.' Such people are called Vedantis - the so called meditators. If you see them, there will be no sign of joy on their face. They will perpetually appear depressed and be missing something.
Ramakrishna beautifully says, 'As long as you think you have a body, you will be able to relate to the cosmic energy only through