God-Man Interaction
Joe D'Cruz talks about how fishermen in Kerala who are Christian are drawn back to worshipping their ancestral God Murugan. This behavior of Christian fishermen points to a deficiency in modes of god-Man communication allowed in Abrahamic faiths. These fishermen are not happy with the arms-length contractual relationship offered through prophets. Jesus, for example, offers salvation to Christians in return for faith that Jesus is the son of God. Christians get an arms-length contractual relationship. Contrast this to the beautiful and personal relationship that is depicted in such acts as moorti pooja or singing devotional Keerthanas. Those Christian fishermen want the intimacy with Murugan that their Hindu ancestors had. While they worship Murugan next to Jesus, all they really desire is the intimacy with Murugan.
God-Man Interaction
How can man interact with God? How does God communicate with man? In theistic religions, only three modes arise for this God-Man communication. Not all modes are available in a religion. In Abrahamic religions in particular, we know that God is accessible only through prophets.
Third-Person communication: Man cannot communicate with the infinite God directly. To facilitate communication, God chooses special people called prophets. God conveys all his messages to humanity through these prophets. Rest of humanity has no direct access to the infinite God. All access to God's word then is restricted through the recorded words of prophets (hence third-person communication). Religiousness in this case boils down to remaining devout to the word in the recorded scriptures and holding the belief that the prophet was a genuine mediator. Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam allow only third-person communication. Other modes would bypass the need for prophets and thus undermine the history for prophets. Rest of humanity has no recourse to prophet either but only to written records and historical claims authenticating the communication.
Second-Person communication: Man cannot directly communicate with the infinite God. However, man can communicate with God by invoking him into finite forms or objects and then ritually interact with him. Pagan religions that existed before Abrahamic religions sought this approach for communion with God. Biblical records of the formation of Abrahamic religions speak of the blind beliefs of local Pagan religions and how they blindly believed that their idols themselves were Gods. Clearly, this is a perversion of the human effort to achieve a second-person communication where the human forgets the symbolism and mistakes the idol itself to be God. An appropiate Second-Person communication explicitly acknowledges and maintains the essence of symbolism. This is evident in Hindu rituals even today. For example, a Hindu builds a Ganesh moorti from clay, invokes Ganesha into the moorti, and then interacts indirectly with Ganesha by interacting with the moorti. At the end, the Hindu calls for Ganesha to return, and then submerges the moorti in water to let it disintegrate. Hindus even celebrate the occasion of Ganesh moorti nimajjan in a local water body.
First-Person communication: When man is directly in communion with God through a higher state of consciousness, we call that direct communication. Not every man may achieve this, but through special methods, all men are capable of achieving this state. Rishis of ancient India who recorded the Vedas are an example. Over time, sampradayas or lineages evolved as different traditions to achieve communication with God or achieve an understanding of ultimate reality.
First and second person communication became impossible in religious traditions which held that God is transcendental and not immanent thus absent from the material world. Such religions do not leave much even for imagination, forcing one to hold that any form for God is false, and that idols are false gods. The new testament too warns that symbolic worship is devil worship. Yahweh even sent down a commandment, in fact the very first commandment, that he, a jealous god, will not tolerate any worshipping of other gods. Alas, Yahweh leaves no choice for humans to associate with him, even hold a thought of him with form. To make up for this lapse, God has to use human prophets or messiahs as mediators.
Both first and second person modes of communication are available in Hinduism appropriate to the individual's maturity. Brahman, for Hindus, is both transcendental and immanent thus allowing for as much closeness as one desires.
At a first glance, one can mistake a priest in a temple as a mediator to God. Priest is only guiding you in the process of worshipping God. Priest is merely a guide and not an intermediary between a worshipper and God.
Moorti pooja is second-person communication with God. Murti pooja is an ancient tradition that has continued in India for millenia and thrives even today. The intent of second-person communication is clear and distinct in the Indian moorti-pooja tradition. Even today, individual Hindus perform moorti pooja in their homes where he/she invokes a deity into the moorti and then treat the moorti as a guest in the house by performing various activities such as making arrangements for their bath, offering them food, etc., The Hindu fully realizes the value of moorti pooja: that without the second-person communication as a bridge, it is practically impossible to reach first-person communication; and that second-person communication is a continuum that offers solace and intimacy with Ishwara that the individual is prepared to handle.
The oft-quoted clay-pot from Chandogya Upanishad is a reminder to the Hindu that names and forms are not the ultimate Brahman but Ishwara, a symbolism of the integral unity that ties names and forms to the Ultimate Truth. Recognition of the temporal dependence of names and forms in the perceptual world on the unchanging Ultimate Truth is the reason that the Hindu is not caught up in History-centric beliefs. For example, for a Hindu, the central concern is the message of Buddha but not the actual time and events of his life. For a Christian, the actual history is central to the belief system. As Peter says in the Bible, without the belief in the historicity of crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the entire Christian belief system collapses. The actual messages delivered by Jesus are just incidental. Historicity of Jesus is central.
Tradition of Ishta devata allows for one to develop deep intimacy with forms and names of worship that suits the individual. Given the richness of intimacy allowed in Hinduism, it is hardly a surprise that third-person communication is alien to Hindus.
Over time, Vedic rituals transformed into Upasana meditation with a specific deity. The term 'Upasana' means relating to a deity in a prescribed manner. There are many kinds of Upasanas in different sects and lineages. Upasana bridged the distance of arms-length moorti pooja or second-person communication to the ever closeness to God leading to first-person communication. Here again, Indian system is context-dependent. Depending on the maturity of the individual, Hindus can choose to communicate with God - through Tantra or physical performance with the body via participation in Yajna, Rituals etc., through Mantra or sound where the belief is that specific pronunciations and vibrations are essential, and where the mind and intellect, but not the body, are used in the communication, or through meditation where only the intellect is involved.