People are ignorant of God in truth so they believe and worship their inherited religious propagated belief as God.
It is high time for the ignorant populace to realize God in truth according to their own scriptures.
Bhagavad Gita: ~ ‘All those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires, they worship many gods. (7- Verse -20)
Only the path of wisdom leads the seeker of truth on his journey to the ultimate realization of God hidden by ignorance.
Bhagavad Gita: 7: 19:~ "Such a man who has attained true knowledge, the knowledge of Self, the knowledge of Atman, worships ‘Self’ as~ Atman (God) alone exists~ everything is Atman, there exists nothing except Atman. Such a man is extremely rare."
Bhagavad Gita: ~ Brahmano hi pratisthaham ~ Brahman (God) is considered the all-pervading consciousness, which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material. (14.27).
When Bhagavad Gita says, God is considered the all-pervading consciousness which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material then nothing has to be accepted as God other than consciousness.
The Soul, the ‘Self itself is the Infinite God.
The Soul is the Self. God is the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. God is the fullness of consciousness without the illusory division of form, time, and space. Therefore, there is nothing apart from it.
God is Self-evident. God is not established by extraneous proofs. It is not possible to deny God because God is the very essence of the one who denies it. God is the basis of all kinds of knowledge, presuppositions, and proofs. God is within the universe in which you exist, God is without the universe in which you exist.
God is the Supreme Being the One eternal homogeneous essence, indivisible consciousness and intelligence, which is beyond the form, time, and space. To which the Sages describe in a variety of ways through diverse words.
The Vedas confirms God is Atman (Spirit), the Self.
Yajurveda – chapter- 32:~ I God is Supreme Spirit has no ‘Pratima’ (idol) or material shape. God cannot be seen directly by anyone. God pervades all beings and all directions. Thus, Idolatry does not find any support from the Vedas.
Vedas itself declares: May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman? Thus, to know the real God Self-realization is necessary. Self-realization is God-realization. Self-realization itself is real worship.
Rig Veda: ~ The Atman is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman the innermost self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5)
How can you worship God? That implies two ~ the worshiper and the worshiped, whereas God is nondual. One can worship his idea of God only or realize his unity with it when he can’t worship it as apart.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: ~ Brahman (God) is present in the form of the Athma, and it is indeed Athma itself.
When Upanishads and Vedas declare that, “God is present in the form of the Athma, and God is indeed Athma itself” then why to accept another God in place of the Atman or worship other than the Atman.
People, who worship the belief-based God, are hallucinating that they become one with such God.
Remember:~
All the karmas performed by the orthodoxy are non-Vedic and barred by the Vedas.
That is why Veda bars such worships and people who indulge in such activities will suffer and sink into darkness.
Upanishads says:~ Self-realization is the human goal. Therefore, one has to strive only for self-realization or truth realization.
All the religionists believe in God and Goddesses [vidya] and performing rituals and other sacrifices[Avidya] both are a hindrance to self-knowledge according to Ish Upanishads, then why the seeker of truth needs worshipping of God and Goddesses when the essence of Advaita is Ataman is Brahman.
Therefore, if one is seeking truth he has to know his true self is not physical but it is the Ataman, which is in the form of consciousness.
Isa Upanishads indicates that: By worshipping Gods and goddesses and going to the world of Gods after death is of no use. The time one spends in ritualistic practices is wasted; one can spend the same time moving forward towards Self-knowledge, which is the main goal. One cannot reach the non-dual destination by glorifying God and Goddesses and by doing that, one goes deeper and deeper into darkness. It surely indicates the fact that the seeker of truth has to drop the worshiping God and Goddesses.
It also indicates that Religious Rituals [Avidya] is Karma [action] and therefore a hindrance. By performing Agnihotra and other sacrifices [Avidya] is a roundabout way of purifying the mind, and it is also groping in the dark.
Also, it indicates the karma is limited only to the religious rituals, not on the whole human life. This karma theory based on human conduct must have been adopted from Buddhism and other theories based on human conduct.
When it says: Perform the obligatory karmas without any attachment to the fruits, and at the same time worship gods and goddesses, again without any desire to go to heaven - then you can get the benefit of both, liberation and bliss. For those who are not yet ready to renounce, this path is recommended, it means that the religion and its idea of god and goddesses and code of conducts, and its rituals are meant for the mass who are incapable of thinking of the beyond.
Also, it speaks of heaven the abode of gods, where one goes after death, and it speaks of rebirth, this contradiction, the seeker has to conclude that religion, rituals god, and its code of conducts are meant for the mass that is not receptive to self-knowledge.
When the Self is not the form but Self is the Soul, which is in the form of consciousness than how the physical conduct-oriented orthodoxy can get Self-knowledge or Bramha Gnana or Atma Gnana.:~
Santthosh Kumaar
