I was listening to the honorable prime minister’s speech on the occasion of Pranpratishtha or consecration ceremony of Ram mandir in Ayodhya.

“मै अभी गर्भ गृह में ईश्वरीय चेतना का साक्षी बन कर आपके सामने उपस्थित हुआ हूँ | कितना कुछ कहने को है लेकिन कंठ अभी भी अवरुद्ध है, मेरा शरीर अभी भी स्पंदित है, चित अभी भी उस पल में लींन है …”

Roughly translated as ‘I have just appeared before you, being a witness of divine consciousness in the core of the temple. My throat is still blocked, my body is still throbbing, and my mind is still absorbed in the moment.’

My mind began to race when I heard Modi ji’s above lines. What does he mean when he says he has just witnessed Godly consciousness? Was he alluding to something more than what eyes could see? To understand the Hindu tradition of consecration better, a need to go beyond the rituals and connect with the ‘bhav’ behind the religious act and find ‘arth’ or the deeper meaning behind it was felt.

I was impressed yet flummoxed by the prime minister’s statement where he talked about divine consciousness in the context of the consecration ceremony. I rummaged through Google and youtube and found Jagadguru Swami Rambhadracharya ji’s interview and an article by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev where they address the ritual of Pran Pratishtha.

Sadguru always comes in handy when one has any basic questions on Sanatan dharma. His answers do satiate the intellectual quests of common people besides lighting a spark in one’s devotional quests. Swami Vivekananda is yet another ‘go-to source’ for any question on Sanatan Dharma. This article is based on what I have understood about one of the most important rituals of Prana Pratishtha of a murti based on the available discourses of these three authorities on Sanatan, in their own way. Swami Vivekananda has not addressed the ritual directly, but his justification of idol worship is worth mentioning.

What is the ritual of Pran Pratishtha?

The Prana Pratishtha rituals or the consecration of the deities happen when a new temple is built, and a Hindu deity’s idol is placed in the temple for the first time. It is said that unless the Prana Pratishtha ceremony happens in a Hindu mandir, the idol should not be opened for worship.

As per our Hindu tradition, we understand that a murti in a temple is not merely a stone. There is a whole process, a whole journey of a stone becoming a live, divine representation of Hindu astha! First, the sculptor carefully selects the stone for it. Then there is the right muhurt or an auspicious time to begin carving the stone and to place the murti in the temple; then the consecration ceremony begins.

The rites and rituals of the Prana Pratishtha are performed by priests trained in Vedic mantras. During the ceremony in a temple, mantras are chanted to invoke prana or divine life force and energy into the murtis. It includes Jalaadhivas, Annadhivaas, and Pushpaadhivaas, the rituals to immerse the deities in water, grains, and flowers, respectively, as all are sources or signs of life, representing prana in some form.

The reason is that the idol absorbs those vibes of life forces from these basic sources of life. Several other rituals like havan and yagnas to invoke the energy of agni, lighting of diyas, coconut breaking, and prasad offerings are performed by the respective yajmans as a part of the ceremony. Finally, hymns and mantras are recited to invite the deity as a revered owner and resident of the temple, and the idol’s eyes are opened for the first time. After this ceremony, the temples are open for people for ‘darshan’. People watch the idol and feel a sort of connection to the murti.

Now, a mere stone becomes divine, a live representation of Hindu astha. The tradition marks that the divine energy generates and permeates the deities. Not all can do this. One needs to qualify for doing this process by following certain satvik ways and purity of mind. A qualified yajman then establishes the unseen energy of the consciousness into the gross material. But why do we need this lengthy process, anyway?

This is a process of bringing the subtle into the gross so that common people who have no deeper experience of the subtle can have it through the gross. When we go to a temple and do the ‘darshan’ of a murti, it is not that we are only seeing the stone/metal murti. We do the ‘darshan’ of the consciousness of the energy which is being infused in the idol. We establish a relationship with the murti as we need a physical form to relate but, in our mind, we staunchly believe that God is listening as a conscious being and answering our questions. Thus, after Prana Pratishtha, we anchor our belief not to just the physical form of the murti, but to a live, divine, and conscious being.

It is only in Sanatan Dharma that this kind of worship of murtis infused with life force is prescribed. A lot of questioning minds find it unacceptable that a mere human chanting of mantras and rituals can instill prana in a stoned idol and make it so powerful to the extent that one begins to witness divine consciousness in it.

We have to understand that a vast corpus of Hindu text is poetic and mystical. Seers knew that simple minds would not be able to raise their consciousness to the level of becoming one with Brahman, as suggested by Vedik texts and finally in Vedant. Therefore, these rituals were prescribed to first bring one’s religious journey with one’s entire focus on rituals, mantra chanting, and building a relationship with the divine. The higher consciousness lies not in the stone but in one’s own divine will and faith to see God even in stone. That is the beginning! With passing time, the practitioner’s connection with the divine gets deeper and stronger as one has anchored one’s faith in the divine murti, as an elementary step.

It is not any magic when Swami Rambhadracharya ji says that he has witnessed the flow of prana in murtis after Vedic chants and has even felt the throbbing sensation in the statues. It is the power of sadhak’s intention that lets the prana circulate through the murtis, as Swami ji mentions. He recalls a time when this ceremony was done on Shri Ram’s unparalleled devotee Hanuman’s murti. Doctors were stunned to witness the throbbing vibration in the murti of Hanuman at Chitrakoot. This is a transfer of human energy into the idol, explains Swami Rambhadracharya ji.

Sadguru also gives a scientific explanation behind the ritual. “Consecration is a live process. It is like this, if you transform mud into food, we call this agriculture. If you make food into flesh and bone, we call this digestion, integration. If you make flesh into mud, we call this cremation. If you can make this flesh or even a stone or an empty space into a divine possibility, that is called consecration.”[i] He says that today, modern science in general is explaining everything in the world as a display of energy. The energy may be positive or negative, but all the phenomena are explainable in terms of ‘channelized energy’.

We can take a simple example. What we are doing in the digital world is just sharing certain frequencies through the electronic medium. The mere use of electricity and wifi connection has revolutionized technology and made communication so ginormous. It makes a simple device like a phone, a powerhouse to connect billions of minds!

Similarly, if you have the necessary technology, you can make the simple space around you into a divine exuberance, you can just take a piece of rock and make it into a god or a goddess, this is the phenomenon of consecration. It is a process to connect with the highest energy. Without Pran Pratishtha, a murti is like the latest version of an expensive iPhone without a Wi-Fi connection. Therefore, Sadguru highly recommends living in spaces that have been consecrated or ‘charged up’ with positive energy because it helps humans connect to themselves.

It doesn’t take much time to change the energy of a certain thing, place, or even person provided we do it with mindfulness and the right intention.  Everything can be changed as change is the only constant. However, only some people can feel this energy when they are in a temple because they have more awareness to feel and soak up the vibes of the surroundings.

Have you ever pondered over who has decided that diamond is several times more expensive than gold and gold is much more valuable than silver? We humans have ascertained the value and we have been abiding by it to date. Awareness of the difference is the key, not the substance itself.

Pran Pratishtha is a ritual thoughtfully added to remind the human mind that we have the murti like a powerhouse in front of us and we have to subscribe to that powerhouse to raise our own consciousness. Therefore, temple murtis are precious as we have given them value by getting them charged with powerful mantras. Pran Pratishtha is a way to set out Sankalp. It is our bhav we put in to enhance our consciousness.

We begin with this faith that the murti exudes with the prescribed qualities and in turn, will help us to grow as a sadhak. As Sadguru rightly puts it, “in this civilization that we refer to as Hindustan, we do not wait for divinity to descend but nurture and cultivate that possibility within us.”[ii]. We ourselves create those circumstances which help us lead towards divinity! All this is done to create a stable base within us; it is to build a foundation of the divine, a possibility within us, turning this body into a living temple to house the divine.

On a similar note, let us look at Swami Vivekananda’s explanation. He addressed non-Hindus on many occasions. People asked him the reason behind the Hindu faith in murtis. In one of his speeches in Chicago, he spoke voluminously about the significance of idol worship. “My brethren, we can no more think about anything without a mental image than we can live without breathing. By the law of association, the material image calls up the mental idea and vice versa.”[iii]

Swami ji further explains that Hindus have associated the idea of holiness, purity, truth, omnipresence, and such other ideas with images, statues, and forms. But this is not an end for us. It is just one step, later comes the difficult path of self-realization, the philosophy of oneness with God. In his words, “To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible”[iv] It is just a way to grasp higher spiritual truths.

Modi ji has envisaged ‘RamRajya’ in the offing because as a true Sanatani he could see more than the naked eyes could see, the unfathomable blessing of the divine and much more! 

References

Rambhadracharya Interview: प्राण प्रतिष्ठा से पहले Rambhadracharya का Exclusive Interview|Ram Mandir (youtube.com)

What is Consecration? (sadhguru.org)

Sadhguru on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 11-day Anushthan for Rama Temple Consecration | Sadhguru (youtube.com)