Mrs Rakhi Chaturvedi wrote in her views and feelings on "FAITH VS KARMIC CLEANSING." It is a beautiful perspective on karma, parihara and the reasons for temple worship.
I used to think normally that since we are honest devotees of God and have unshakable faith in Guru, since we have not done anything wrong intentionally or knowingly in the present birth …nothing with us can go wrong or nothing should go wrong…knowing very well that the short span of a less than 100 years given in the current birth along with its allotted karma to dissolve is the consequence of more than 100 births we have taken in the past.
A judicious mix of both good and bad is the result of what we are today. The current birth karma works as our protection and helps us in receiving grace. When my husband faced a sudden job loss a year back we believed…Agasthya Maharishi will take care.
It has been more than a year now and the benevolent master is taking care of us but we realized that the mess of karma which we might have created in current life or in one of our previous lives needed to me cleaned by us only. We made a list of parihars suggested by Agasthya Rishi with utmost devotion and completed them ……my little human mind assumed that as soon as our parihars will get over my husband will receive an offer letter. But when a year got past I prayed to Agashya Rishi come what may… my faith must remain intact.
It is very easy to loose hope when things get tough but siddhas are loving beyond measure. I was thinking what is the point in visiting the temples and the parihars when we are not getting the “DESIRED RESULT.” The desired result was another problem which makes us restless. What we desire for us and what God desires for us can be different. When our desires overtake us we tend to overlook certain guidance.
We were advised by Maharishi in the Jeeva Nadi reading which we took in Chennai a year back to focus on our own business of consultancy to which we paid less attention as our minds were fogged by our desires.
When I visited Thavayogi a year back in 2016, his first instruction was “Always remember life is a roller coaster. It will have both ups and downs. Learn to enjoy the ride.” When I asked Thavayogi about the importance of parihars he said visiting temples will charge your batteries to face life… to face karma. He never said that you will be spared for the karmic mess you have created.
I have always felt an outpouring of energy whenever I visited temples of south India. I was thinking were they really the places to worship, pray and seek the solution or were they actually vortexes of energy which charge our batteries.
I got my answer through Jaggi Vasudev ji of Isha Yoga Foundation, in his words:
Today, everybody is a believer. Every street has at least three temples. God is everywhere. People have one dozen gods in their houses but still there is fear in their hearts, isn’t it? God is in your house but you have fear in your heart. Does it really make any sense? Now people have become God-fearing also. This is simply because there is no living experience. It is just a belief.
I don’t know how many hundreds of gods we have in India, but still look at the pathetic state in which people are living. Somehow all these gods are not able to lift them up. This is not about gods, this is just people’s own foolishness. They have never aspired for the Divine. All their aspirations are just for comfort, for wealth, for power, for pleasure, never for the Ultimate, and they think God is a tool to help them achieve all these things.
The Science of Temple-Building
In the Indian culture there is no particular belief that God is sitting somewhere and doing something. At least it was not so a few centuries ago. In India, temples were not created for worship. Only over a period of time, in the last six or seven centuries, they have become the way they are now. Temple-building is a very deep science. The parikrama, the garbagriha, the size and shape of the idol, the mudra that the idol holds and the mantras that are used to consecrate this -- if these are properly matched, a powerful vortex of energy can be created. A very positive energy is created. It is a system, a mechanism that you are creating. When I say temple, I am talking about the ancient temples. The modern temples are built just the way you build shopping complexes.
This is a way of recharging yourself with very positive vibrations of life so that you go out into the world with a very different perspective.
The temple was not created as a place of God or a place of prayer. No one was ever allowed to lead a prayer. It was created as a place of energy where everyone could go and make use of.Our perspective about life changed a lot when we visited temples of south. We felt charged and refreshed but of course those visits have given us wisdom and strength.