Why we worship murthis?

Hindus blindly worship lifeless idols & stones - isn’t God invisible, how ironic? Our friend has probably never heard the science behind it & here’s the tea.

After our vedic times when we worshipped shapeless elements & energies in space (we knew God is invisible & shapeless), the murthi was introduced to make God more relatable as a point of focus for commons folks. Murti comes from the Sanskrit “Mr” or “Murchchh,” which means to give a shape.

But unless its a shaligram, shivling or tulsi which are naturally sacred or “syayambhu,” each man-made murthi needs to be permanently battery-charged with God’s life force through a process called praan-pratistha.

So unless you’re going to clean & pray to the murthi or God’s photo in your house regularly, you ideally shouldn’t keep it because its not gone through that procedure & it can lose its energy.

After the Shobha yatra which is like a house warming party for the murthi, the priest starts purifying it using the detoxifying darba grass, and smears its eyes close. It’s submerged in water, grains & cow ghee one day at a time to reveal any manufacturing defects & injuries.

Then, in the Abhishek stage, its bathed in up to 108 items, including medicated water, the panchamrit, which has honey, sugar, cow milk, curd and ghee. With the vibrations of hundreds of vedic mantras & homas i.e. fire rituals, the murti is awakened, its eyes are opened, and its placed in the complete garbagriha i.e. the center inner room of the temple.

There, it goes through nyasa which includes dressing it up & touching different parts of its body to activate the energy centers & transfer the priest’s pure energy, soul, and 10 senses which we call indriyas. Finally, after the first aarti & puja, it becomes a living, breathing source of energy.

Worshipping idols is not wrong if you’re using them as a tool to focus your love for God.