A. ~ It is a thing, wicked and sinful. People should never worship images. Th spread of mental darkness is due to the prevalence of idolatry.
Q. How can we contemplate God without an object or idol?
A. ~ We should think of God just in the same way as we think or form a notion of pleasure and pain. Thus images are not required for contemplation.
Q. What actions are most praiseworthy, and should be performed?
A. ~ The doing of Sandhya morning and evening, the practice of truth, the exercise of benevolence, and so on.
Q. Should not Sandhya be performed thrice a day?
A. ~ No. The morning and evening are the only times for devotion.
Q. Is the act of repeating God’s name or mantras, the performance of a tedious ceremonial, as done by the modern Brahmans, proper?
A. ~ People should try to know God, and imitate Him in their works. Mechanical repetitions and ceremonials are of no use.
Q. Has God any form or color?
A. ~ God has neither form nor color. He is incorporeal and infinite. Whatever is seen in the world, shadows forth His greatness. The universe being made by Him may be allegorically regarded as a means for allaying the mental thirst for a sight of Him.
Q. Why is God
A. ~ Were God to make His appearance in the world, every one would turn up to Him and importune Him to decree a gratification of his desires, and thus disorder and confusion would spread everywhere. At the same time, by means of the elements of which the human body is composed, the vision of God is impossible. How indeed can man see Him who has created him?
Q. How can God be known when He is not seen?
A. ~ Seen He is. All these things, men, animals, trees, etc., seen upon the face of the earth, point to their Maker. In this way He is seen through all His works. And he can be recognized even as we recognize pleasure and pain.
Q. Is or is not Brahma (God) in all of us?
A. ~ He is in all of us. He is known to us just in the same way as we know pleasure and pain.
Q. Is he uniform everywhere, or is He more in some and less in other objects?
A. ~ He is everywhere alike, only that He is manifested in us in proportion to the glory of the divine intelligence in our mind, i.e. wisdom.
Q. What are devatas (gods)?
A. ~ The are called devatas (gods) who are learned and intelligent, i.e., who are true pandits.
Q. Is it a sin to see the Ramleela or Rasleela?
A. ~ Yes it is a sin, equal to commission of a thousand crimes. Similarly, the worship of idols is sinful; for not likeness can be taken when there is no form, and where there is no form, there can be no image. It is allowable to take photos or execute other kind of pictures of persons to have them before us for being looked at or for remembrance. But it is improper to make pictures of images of God and thus caricature Him.
Q. How long as Sanskrit been in the world and why is called ‘good’?
A.~ Sanskrit is from eternity, it is pure and correct, it has no match. For example, ba in Persian is expressed or represented as Bay, and in English as Bee; but ba (unencumbered with ay or ee) is only represented truly in Sanskrit.
Q. The Vedas contain praise of God. Has He written His own praise?
A. ~ As parents instruct their children to serve their parents and teachers and obey their elders, even so has God, by way of instruction, given us the Vedas.
Q. When God has neither form nor body, how can He have mouth to utter the Vedas with?
A. ~ God inspired them in the hearts of the four sages, - Agni, Vayu, Aditya and Angira.
Q. It is clear that these sages wrote the Vedas, is it not?
A. ~ No, they are from God; for the sages then had no knowledge whatever.
Q. How did God communicate to them the Vedas?
A. ~ Out of His mercy and power He inspired the ‘supreme knowledge’ in their hearts. As they were first at creation, they had no means of gaining knowledge, so god inspired them with it and thus it si God/s knowledge.
Q. Is the soul one or many?
A. ~ The soul is uniform in its nature, but its entities are many.
