Page 6 - Towards The Goal Of Beautiful Life

culture, providence, etc. also go wrong. We should, therefore, first try to understand the
correct concept of God.

General Belief
Majority of the people in the world believe in the existence of God and also believe

that God blesses or punishes them. Based on such beliefs, people develop a faith that
they must endeavour to earn blessings of God and to avoid His curses. This faith

motivated people to perform different types of religious rites and rituals in order to
acquire God's blessings and to avoid his curses. In course of time, these rituals took the

form of worship, religious services and devotion to God. These rites and rituals eventually
took firm roots in the minds of people and became part and parcel of their religions.

Erroneous Concept of Worship

In these various types of God's worship, majority of the people practice stone idol
worship in some form or other. People belonging to a certain religion install an idol of

God and worship Him, while people of some other religion do not practice stone idol
worship of God, but install a stone idol of the apostle of their religion and worship him.

Similarly, people belonging to a particular religion install a stone idol of a Godman or a
saint and worship him, while people of some other religion worship the scriptures of their

religion. So also, followers of a certain religion pray before the tombs or mausoleums of
their saints. In brief, as stated above, the so-called devotees of God belonging to

different religions in the world perform stone idol worship in some form or the other. As a
matter of fact, all these various types of worship do not ensure worship of the real God,

because the emphasis is on worshipping the symbols of imaginary God. Hence it will be
interesting to understand the fundamental object of stone idol worship and the reason for

its propagation. Originally, the concept of idol of God was perpetuated with the sole
intention that people should have some symbol of God, which they can see with their

eyes and worship Him. However, in course of time, people overlooked the original
intention and developed a strong conviction, that the stone idol is God Himself. As a

matter of fact, the sages and saints were fully aware of the fact that the stone idol was
not God and could never be so. However, considering the difficulty of the common people

in comprehending the true divine nature of God through the sense organs, the sages
propagated the practice of God's adoration in the form of stone idol worship. In course of

time, the stone idol worship deteriorated and developed into personification of God,
which was quite contrary to its original intended concept, with the result that such stone

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