Organised Religion

I was on a trip to Ganapatipule ,a famous religious place and a beautiful and clean beach in Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra.After spending a long time at the sea and the beach I decided to visit the Ganapati temple nearby.

There was a long serpentine queue for devdarshan. After getting through the queue, I reached the bosom of temple. Inside the temple , a picture of Lord Ganesha was adorned with flowers. Adjacent (!) to the idol was, a well documented ,picture-framed list of donation/prayer offerings. It enlisted various denominations of offerings to Lord Ganesha. Some people sat nearby on a desk-chair,with a big tilak on their forehead, equipped with receipts for donations/offerings and small satchels containing a picture of Ganesha and some vermilion.



As people entered the premise of temple to get blessings from the lord, the priests encouraged them to offer money to the deity. When I visited the famous Raghunath temple at Jammu , the scene was no different, only more vociferous! In fact this could be the scene anywhere in India..from Ayodhya to Nashik, from Vaishno Devi to Tirumal..

Now I do not have anything against religion as such, but what I resent is "organised religion". Today we live in a fast paced world. There is so much pressure on every one of us just to survive in this competitive world. Therefore it is imperative that many of us visit temples and shrines to seek some emotional support and motivation from the Gods.

But primitive religion has been a free man's paradise. Right from Jesus and Muhammad to Buddha,Mahavira and Nanak ,every one has been an advocate of "free religion" . They all went to people , preached among them , ate with them and lived their lives with them. They lived a simplistic life , that's why they are revered as GOD!



But mankind somehow lost the way..By taking the religion away from the masses and confining them to temples,churches and gurudwaras, they took the life away from the religion. This "organised religion" can be witnessed easily at most of the temples in India. The priest urging you to donate more , instead of asking you to seek blessings and telling you walk a path of truthful and honest life!
What a farce.. the preachings of GOD have been chronicled in all major religious books , but we need a mediator to interpret it!( or on second thoughts , do we?)
It is probably one of reasons behind the decline of religious belief all over the world with more and more people turning towards agnosticism.

These so called centres of worship have been monopolised by certain institutions and individuals over centuries. From the Brahmins, exercising their control over entry to religious places to the Old church establishment, all claim themselves as mediators between us and the GOD.Indeed the caste system in India has been intermingled with the society over centuries with repression of the shudras.
Even in this age of "modern" and technologically advanced society ,the stigma has not been washed (In fact it rears its head time and again)

So the now obvious question is do we need an "organised religion" in our lives?