Significance of Pooja

Pooja is meant for self-purification.  It can be done as a prayer only (mansik pooja) or in the form of a ceremony.  The most important thing is that it is done from the heart.  In one of His discourses Guruji explained:

"We are all divine people, but our divinity has been obscured by our karmas.  And this is done by the six demons that control our mind: anger, greed, ego, desire, jealousy and lust.  We must get rid of these six demons - only then can we expose or ignite our divinity.  Only then we can move onto the righteous path.  Therefore, the priority should be to rid yourselves of these six demons.  There are many methods of getting rid of these six demons. One of them is the prayer or Pooja.  Now, what does it involve?  We offer four ingredients in the Pooja: water, flower, leaf, and fruit.

When we offer water, we must pray to the Lord, “Please, take my tears of joy and sorrow. Make me the same in happiness and unhappiness.”  If you are the same in happiness and unhappiness, then the thoughts regarding the problems of life will not come to your mind.  Then, you will be able to concentrate better during meditation.  So, by offering water regularly, we pray to the Lord to be the same in happiness and unhappiness and gradually this state is reached.

The second offering is the flower.  The flower is as tender as the heart, and the heart is love. When we offer the flower, we say to the God that we love Him.  Baba says, “Love all.”  Jesus said, “Love all.  See God in everybody and love all.”  So, when you offer a flower, say in your mind, “I will see God in everybody and love everyone as God.”

The third offering is the leaf.  The leaf represents the physical body.  When offering the leaf, we pray to the Lord, “Make use of my body for the service of humanity.”   Baba says, “Love all, serve all".  Jesus says, “Service to humanity is service to God.”  So, if you serve others, all these demons go away.  Baba says, “Help ever, hurt never".  If you hurt, you do bad karmas.  If you help, you get merit.  If you help, if you serve others, there is no ego in you.  You will not get angry with the person whom you are serving.  You will not have greed, you will not have jealousy, you will not have desires.  Thus, if you serve other people, the six demons will get away from you.

The fourth offering is the fruit.  Fruit, symbolically, represents the mind.  And the mind is at present controlled by the six demons.  And they are the ones who prompt us to do bad karmas.  So offer that mind at the Lotus feet of Bhagavan, so that your mind becomes sathwic.  You think of others and not yourselves.  You are not doing anything with selfish purpose.  You carry out selfless service.  So when your mind is sathwic, your thoughts are sathwic and your actions are sathwic.  Thus you will not do bad karmas.

As we have seen, this prayer or Pooja, is in actual fact self-purification - purification of body, soul and mind.  So, if you do this Pooja every day, a time comes when you become a really sathwic person.  To move towards liberation, this self-purification exercise is the most important one.  To enter the path of liberation, Pooja is a gate.

Whether you do short Pooja, long Pooja, or mansik Pooja, the main thing is that you must have feeling in your heart.  You can do Pooja with devotion for two minutes only, and Baba will accept it and give you full merit for it.  Baba has said that He gives a lot of energy to those who do Pooja from the heart.

After Pooja, one must do meditation for at least 15 to 20 minutes, or be away from other people, so that you don’t talk and lose the energy that you have got from Pooja."

                                    (from Guruji's Discourses in the book: From Humanity to Divinity)