In the last portion of this lecture, Hazrat Inayat Khan considers the relationship between the worship of an idol and the God ideal. The previous post in the series is here.

To the eyes of the wise in all ages the universe has become one single immanence of the divine Being. And that which cannot be compared, or which has no comparison, has been difficult to explain in the human tongue. Therefore, the idea of the wise has always been to allow man to worship God in whatever way he may be capable of picturing Him. One can trace in histories and traditions that trees, animals and birds were worshipped, also rivers and seas, and planets, the sun, and the moon. Heroes were worshipped, of all kinds. There has been worship of ancestors, of spirits, both good and evil. And the Lord of heaven was worshipped by some as the Creator, by some as the Sustainer, by some as the Destroyer, and by some as the King of all. And the wise have tolerated all aspects of worship, seeing that they all worship the same God in different forms and names, though not yet realizing that another person’s god is the same God worshipped by all. Therefore, the religion of the Hindus recognized these many gods in one God, and at the same time recognized that one God in all His myriad forms.

There came a time when God was raised from idol to ideal, and this was no doubt an improvement. Yet even in the ideal He is still an idol, and unless the question of life and its perfection can be solved by the God-ideal, by one’s love and worship of Him, one has not arrived at the object which all religions seek. 

The need for the God-ideal is like the need for a ship in which to sail through the ocean of eternity. And as there is a danger of sinking in the sea without a ship, so there is a danger of falling prey to mortality for the man without a God-ideal. The difficulty of the believer has always been as great as the difficulty of the unbeliever, for a simple believer, as a rule, knows God from the picture that his priest has given him: God the Good, or Cherisher, or Merciful; and when the believer in the just God sees injustice in life, and the believer in the kind God sees cruelty around him, and when the believer in the Cherisher-God has to face starvation, then comes the time when the cord of his belief breaks. How many in this late war have begun to doubt and question the existence of God, some even becoming total unbelievers.

Idolatry in a way has been to man like a lesson in practicing his faith and belief patiently before heedless gods of stone, prostrating himself and bowing before the idol-god made by his own hands. No answer in man’s distress, no stretching out the hand in man’s poverty, no caress or embrace of sympathy, come from that heedless god. And yet faith and belief are retained under all circumstances, and it is such belief that is founded on rock, and that stands in rain and storm, unshaken and unbroken. And after all, what is the abode of God? It is man’s belief. And upon what is He seated? His throne is man’s faith. So idolatry was the initial stage in strengthening faith and belief in God, the ideal, which alone is the source of the realization of truth.

When the world evolved to the point where a believer in God was able to see his God even in the idol and to communicate with Him by the power of his faith, then came the next lesson for the faithful, which was given by the series of prophets of Ben Israel. From Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ, the lesson was taught, which culminated in the message of Muhammad. The idea of this next lesson was to turn the idol into an ideal, and to rise from the worship of form to the abstract. By prayer, praising the Lord, by glorifying His name, by meditating upon His attributes, by admiring His righteousness, and by realizing His goodness, man created God in his own heart. This was also the purpose of idolatry, but it was only the first lesson. The second was to free one’s mind from the form; for when God is recognized in one form, then the many other forms are abandoned, because then they are all recognized as His forms also.

Man has a weakness in his nature, and it is that when anything is given to him for his good, and if he likes it, he becomes attached to it until he gets its bad results. And once he is thus attached to it he never wishes to let it go. If a physician gives a drug to his patient and the patient likes it, he indulges in it, and wishes to continue with it, until instead of being a medicine for his cure it turns into a vice for his destruction. So idolatry gradually became a vice, until the messengers had to fight it and break it as with a hammer. But in cases where it was considered only as a first lesson it brought great improvement, and prepared people to receive the second lesson of the God-ideal, which many have found difficult to learn.

No doubt it is true that God cannot be worshipped without idolatry in some form or other, although many people would think this absurd. God is what man makes Him, though His true being is beyond the capacity of man’s making, or even perceiving, and thus the real belief in God is unintelligible. Only that part of God is intelligible which man makes. Man makes it in the form of man or out of the attributes which seem to him good in man. And that is the only way of modeling God, if man ever tries to do so. To make a statue of stone in some form and to worship it as God is the primitive stage of worship, and to picture God in a human form, in the form of some hero, prophet, or savior, is a more advanced stage. But it is a higher kind of worship when man worships God. For his goodness, when he is impressed by the sublimity of His nature, when he holds the vision of divine beauty, recognizing this beauty in merit, power, or virtue, and when seeing this in its perfection he calls it God, whom he worships. This stage of God-realization is a step forward from the realization of the Deity in a limited human form.

This influence became apparent in the Hindu religion during the time of Shankaracharya, who did not interfere with those who were in the more primitive stage and worshipped idols, but tried throughout his life, in a very wise and gentle way, to make the truth known in his land. His teaching spread very slowly, yet its influence has been very helpful. In the Semitic races this higher form of worship is known to have been introduced by Abraham.