Question: Thank you for your speech. While practicing hatha yoga I get relief. Is it necessary to go to the church to have stronger connection, union with God? What is your attitude to God’s temples? Are you a Catholic?
Answer: You have to decide. It is not my position to tell you go to the church or don’t go to the church. You have to decide.
However I will make it clear God is not only in the church or in the temple, or in the mosque, or in the synagogue. God is everywhere. He is in your heart. He is not only in this building or institution. So the process of yoga is not about temples, it is not about joining things, etc. It is about loving and serving God. That is the teaching.
Now, it is not to say that, you know, God is not also in the temple. See, in the Vedic system there are temples and in the temples there are deities. And one can go there and serve the deity, make offerings, chant in front of the deity, offer prayers and so on. You see, but it doesn’t mean that is the only place.
So as your relationship with God develops, really develops, if you went into a temple where there is a bona fide deity of God, you would see not a wooden or marble or paper form but you would see the Personality of Godhead.
So these kinds of things you have to understand. It is advanced understanding.
Am I a Catholic? No. I am a servant, I am trying to be a servant of the Supreme Lord.