8 August 2014 - QA 5

Dear Gurudev, when we shouldn’t get stuck with the five senses, why do we light a diya, incense sticks and offer flowers while doing pooja?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

See, you can make all these offering, and you can do none of these as well. A pooja can happen just in your meditation. These practices are a tradition, and it creates an atmosphere so people have been doing it.
Let us suppose that there is a ceremony and nobody lights any lamps, you will notice that there is a lack of luster in the ceremony or celebration. So to add color to celebrations, all this is done, i.e., lighting lamps and incense sticks, decoration with flowers, etc. It is just like how we use confetti on birthday parties.
Can birthdays be celebrated without a cake and confetti? Yes, you can celebrate without these items, but then there is something lacking. When there is a celebration, you like to decorate the room with some flowers, you do something to create a festive atmosphere, isn't it. In the same way, lighting lamps and burning incense sticks is to create a sense of celebration, it is to create an atmosphere of celebration, that is all. There is nothing more to it. When such an atmosphere is created, the positive ions increase in the atmosphere.

Since a long time the this tradition has been going on and so we continue the tradition. From thousands of years, it has been a tradition that on a specific day with specific mantras (chants) we put specific herbs in the fire and create an atmosphere (yagya). And these practices definitely creates subtle vibrations; subtle energy which nullifies the negativity, and this has been proved already.