Swami Vivekananda discusses the Hindu concept of idol worship. He explains that idol worship is a means for developing one's conception of the divine, as most cannot grasp the abstract concept of God. All religions use symbols and images as aids to worship - such as crosses, temples, or turning towards Mecca. Idol worship in Hinduism is not compulsory, but provides spiritual support for those who need symbols to focus their worship. Ultimately, one must progress beyond external rituals and symbols to directly realize the divine within.

1. Swami Vivekananda
BY hindudatabase | http://hindudatabase.blogspot.com/

2. God is eternal, without any form, omnipresent. To
think of Him as possessing any form is
blasphemy. But the secret of image worship is
that you are trying to develop your vision of
Divinity in one thing.

3. All of you have been taught to believe in an
omnipresent God. Try to think of it. How
few of you can have any idea of what
omnipresence means! If you struggle
hard, you will get something like the idea
of ocean, or of the sky, or of a vast stretch
of green earth, or of a desert

4. All these are material images, and so long
as you cannot conceive of the abstract as
abstract, of the ideal as the ideal, you will
have to resort to these forms, these
material images. It does not make much
difference whether these images are inside
or outside the mind.

5. We are all born idolators, and idolatry is good,
because it is in the nature of man. Who can get
beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man.
The rest are all idolators. So long as we see the
universe before us, with its forms and shapes,
we are all idolators. This is a gigantic symbol we
are worshipping. He who says that he is the
body, is a born idolator.

6. We are spirit, spirit that has no form or
shape, spirit that is infinite, and not matter.
Therefore any one who cannot grasp the
abstract, who cannot think of himself as he
is, except in and through matter, as the
body, is an idolator. And yet how people fight
among themselves, calling one another
idolators! In other words, each says, his idol
is right, and the others' are wrong.

7. Two sorts of persons never require any
image--the human animal who never
thinks of any religion, and the perfected
being who has passed through these
stages. Between these two points all of us
require some sort of ideal, outside and
inside.

8. The Christians think that when God came in
the form of a dove it was all right, but if He
comes in the form of a fish, as the Hindus
say, it is very wrong and superstitious.

9. The Jews think if an idol be made in the
form of a chest with two angels sitting on
it, and a book on it, it is all right, but if it is
in the form of a man or a woman, it is
awful.

10. The Mohammedans think that when they
pray, if they try to form a mental image of
the temple with the Kaaba, the black stone
in it, and turn towards the west, it is all
right, but if you form the image in the
shape of a church it is idolatry. This is the
defect of image worship.

11. We may worship anything be seeing God in
it, if we can forget the idol and see God
there. We must not project any image upon
God. But we may fill any image with that
Life which is God. Only forget the
image, and you are right enough---for "out
of Him comes everything".

12. He is everything. We may worship a picture
as God, but not God as the picture. God in
the picture is right, but the picture as God
is wrong. God in the image is perfectly
right. There is no danger there. This is the
real worship of God.

13. Superstition is a great enemy of man, but
bigotry is worse. Why does a Christian go
to church? Why is the cross holy? Why is
the face turned toward the sky in prayer?
Why are there so many images in the
Catholic Church? Why are there so many
images in the minds of Protestants when
they pray?

14. My brethren, we can no more think about
anything without a mental image than we
can live without breathing. By the law of
association the material image calls up the
mental idea and vice versa.

15. This is why the Hindu uses an external
symbol when he worships. He will tell you,
it helps to keep his mind fixed on the Being
to whom he prays. He knows as well as
you do that the image is not God, is not
omnipresent.

16. After all how much does omnipresence
mean to almost the whole world? It stands
merely as a word, a symbol. Has God
superficial area? If not, when we repeat
the word "omnipresent", we think of the
extended sky or of space, that is all.

17. Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu
has recognized it. Every other religion lays down
certain fixed dogmas, and tries to force society to
adopt them. It places before society only one
coat which must fit Jack and John and Henry, all
alike. If it does not fit John or Henry, he must go
without a coat to cover his body.

18. The Hindus have discovered that the absolute
can only be realized, or thought of, or stated,
through the relative, and the images, crosses
and crescents are simply so many symbols---
so many pegs to hang the spiritual ideas on.
It is not that this help is necessary for every
one, but those that do not need it have no
right to say that it is wrong. Nor is it
compulsory in Hinduism.

19. It has been a trite saying, that idolatry is wrong, and
every man swallows it at the present time without
questioning. I once thought so, and to pay the
penalty of that I had to learn my lesson sitting at
the feet of a man who realised everything through
idols; I allude to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Take
a thousand idols more if you can produce
Ramakrishna Paramhamsas through idol worship,
and may God speed you!

20. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It
is not the mother of harlots. On the other hand it is
the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp high
spiritual truths.
Man is to become divine by realizing the divine.
Idols, or temples or churches or books are only the
supports, the helps, of his spiritual childhood; but
on and on he must progress.

21. Therefore, we should get rid of these
childish notions. We should get beyond the
prattle of men who think that religion is
merely a mass of frothy words, that it is
only a system of doctrines; to whom
religion is only a little intellectual assent or
dissent; …

22. …to whom religion' is believing in certain
words which their own priests tell them; to
whom religion is something which their
forefathers believed; to whom religion is a
certain form of ideas and superstitions to
which they cling, because they are their
national superstitions.

23. We should get beyond all these, and look at
humanity as one vast organism, slowly
coming towards light----a wonderful
plant, slowly unfolding itself to that wonderful
truth which is called God---and the first
gyrations, the first motions, towards this are
always through matter and ritual.