Radha Gopinath Temple Altar

( RadhaGopinath.com is the website of Sri Sri Radha Gopinath Mandir, Chowpatty, Mumbai. )

About Radha Gopinath Temple

Sri Sri Radha Gopinath Temple is all about serving and pleasing the Supreme Lord and His associates who have so kindly appeared in the form of their deities. The main altar houses, from left to right, the deities of Sri Sri Nitai Gaurachandra, Sri  Sri Radha Gopinath accompanied by Their associates Sri Lalita and Sri Vishaka, Sri Gopal, and Sri Janardan. Facing the main altar, at the opposite end of the temple hall, is the deity of Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad, the Founder Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON.

Srila Prabhupad was the one who pioneered the transplantation of the Vedic tradition of deity worship in the western hemisphere—along with complete understanding of its attested scientific basis. He opened the first temple in San Francisco with deities of Jagannath, Baladev and Subhadra, in 1966.

About Deity Worship

Spiritual life entails focusing one’s attention on the spiritual and thus absorbing oneself in spirituality. Deity worship provides the facility to focus our attention on the spiritual through focusing our attention on a physical representation of the Supreme. Therefore it is an easy and practical way to accomplish spiritual absorption. That’s the reason all the prominent religious traditions have some version of deity worship included in them.

In Christianity, the church always has a crucifix with Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone kneels down in front of him and some even weep and cry. That’s how the people of that faith focus their attention and get absorbed in spirituality. So it’s also a kind of deity worship. One of the greatest catholic saints, St. Francis of Assisi, his spiritual life really began when he went to a church in a helpless, destitute condition. When he prayed to the deity of Jesus Christ, he saw the deity cry and heard the deity speak. He was then that he was given the instruction to surrender.

In the Islamic faith they have the system of bowing down in the direction of Mecca. In doing that they are focusing their attention on Mecca, a physical place. They also worship the Kuran.

In the Jewish faith they worship their holy books, the Torah. In Jerusalem, during big festivals, they take the Torah on a procession. Placed in incredibly beautiful Gold and Silver casing, beautified by Jewels and silken clothes, the Torah is carried in a palanquin. Everyone bows down to the Torah, some dance with it, and others dance around it. Some even kiss and embrace it. Again, we see the same principle: a physical representation of the Supreme aids in absorbing the consciousness in spirituality.

But to make spiritual progress, the method of deity worship that we follow must be authorized by the scriptures and saints of the religious faith we belong to.