(Self) Worship

Over a period of time, probably from the time when we (the human form) started thinking beyond the day-to-day survival, worship had important role in our life – if not outwardly worship, might be the worship deep within our mind and the deep feeling within us. Unfortunately, the worship started due to our (probably) inward movement completely taken a ‘U’ turn and now we started living a life with an illusion of using worship for the gain of our outward life. This ‘U’ turn might have happened at the time when the man worshiped for the first time – probably due to the miscommunication, due to the lack of understanding of followers of those days or due to millions of other reasons, which doesn’t matter for us now. But the concept of worship is spoiled over thousands of years of human life in this earth, by those who are not capable of understanding worship and still we are spoiling this term by taking it to another dimension of ‘Self worship’, may be this also might had been all along!

‘Worship’ is a beautiful term with respect to its original meaning, but very much spoiled one. When we understand, like a cell in our body which is an independent living being but collectively perform the function of our own life and similarly we are an independent entity in this earth but collectively make the life of earth possible and completely- with out exception, fall within the rules of earth for its life, we can do nothing but submitting our entire being to this ‘Maha Dharma’- in Buddhist terms or to the universal law governing the whole of existence – in rational terms or to the ‘God’ in innocent terms, is Worship. Without understanding, there cannot be any worship. And probably we need the understanding that we are not capable of understanding certain things at our current level of perception!

But, today we pretend that we understand every thing, create some concepts of our own so that our ego can sustain with the concept it created, and then perform our worship. It is not worship – It is self worship. Of course there are still many worshipers in real sense. In general, persons like us who are in the worldly life perform only ‘Self Worship’ – may it be on the name of God, or may it be on the name of creation or may it be on the name of some spiritual Guru or may it be on the name of Scriptures….

All the scriptures and Gurus tried to convey the worship or spirituality in its real sense as they experienced. But we are not the same as the Gurus or those who have written the Scriptures. Hence, it is not possible for us to experience the same as experienced by Gurus. Unless we approach the teachings of Gurus and scriptures with enough openness with in us, we translate those teachings of Gurus and scriptures according to our current experience, which is mere conceptualisation. These concepts are created by us for ourselves. On the other hand such concepts are nothing but our own mind or our own consciousness. This includes the concept of our “God’, our ‘religion’, our ‘philosophy’ and so on. In other words all such concepts are we ourselves – created by our own mind, out of its content, which is our ego and hence a completely illusionary entity.

Hence, worshiping any God, any Concept, any religion created by our own mind – may it be told by some Gurus, or may it be told by some scriptures, is nothing but worshiping ourselves – worshiping our own ego which is ‘Self Worship’. But the real meaning of ‘worship’ must be altogether different as explained above.

With this ‘self worship’ we cannot have devotion, because we are submitting ourselves to our own ego. The devotion we feel during the time our worship is towards our own ego, or an entity created by our ego. Almost every one is indulged by this ‘Self worship’. Are we achieving some thing with this ‘Self worship’? Surely, we must be achieving ‘something’ with it. Otherwise, every one cannot be indulged by it. But the worthiness of that ‘something’ may be questionable. It is certain that no body else will worship our ego other than ourselves. Even some perverted minds do that human worship or worshiping other person’s ego, it is obviously for personal outwardly gains and it is heartening to see that even more perverted minds are enjoying such human worships.

In general, our ego will not be worshiped by anybody else and hence the ego worships itself is to gain momentum for its own growth. Probably, this momentum is what our ego gets out of ‘self worship’ and this momentum may have enough worth for our ego. But, as long as the ego is there, suffering is inevitable and the momentum of ego is nothing but the momentum of our suffering.

Coming back to the surface of this problem, from the happening around us, self worship is now dominating every where. On one side people are creating abstract concepts and then worshiping those concepts – the concepts are either created by themselves or by others, and on the other side people are indulged in ‘plain vanilla’ type or simple worldly ‘self worship’ or ‘ego worship’. It may be the outcome of mere economic independence combined with lack of ‘real’ education. It is due to the lack of understanding of the relationships we have with others including the environment in which we live. When the need of physical survival is achieved, due to our inherent nature, due to the struggle the mankind had until few decades/centuries ago for survival, we are in constant search of activity. And due to our self enclosed psychological structure, probably we are unable to direct those activities towards other than ourselves. Hence, we start building comfort and luxury around us rather than directing our energy inwardly. Possibly the inward momentum might not have built into our structure. It is we ourselves to understand the worthiness/unworthiness of outward momentum and then decide to turn inward or not. If we happen to turn inwardly, the real life may be waiting for us there. If we decide not to turn, like the way we are living now- like the way our parents and grand parents lived, we may live for few more years/decades and then for sure die away, with out tasting the real life – may be a wasted opportunity