[MannoFr]

@CRAVI

I like your pov.

Philosophy cannot bake bread. But to bake bread, one needs a philosophy. Why do I want to bake bread? Why should I eat? Why should I live?

Or, at a different level, how did I come into this world? Why was I not consulted? And if I have to partake of this world, who is directing this world? Can I get to meet the director and talk to him? Some of these questions were posed by Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher.

Does it all look like some kind of a game? Mythologies and scriptures serve the role of inspiring, involving and initiating laymen to play this game. Getting worked up about the multitude of gods - as if that is a bad thing - resembles the mental perspective of a four-year old.

The Hindu belief-system ( philosophy? faith ? religion? or sanatana dharma ?) employs symbolisms, metaphors and other ( literary? ) devices to express the "reality" of the observable world. It works at several levels of human consciousness/awareness - and, depending on one's psychological make-up, these symbolisms can mean one thing to one person and a different thing to another person. The "reality" can therefore appear to be subtle, too simple or too complex.

Often, more than one meaning can be implied by any single statement or imagery. If one is looking for a hidden meaning, the interpretation is dependent on one's own psycho-socio-cultural disposition.

Anyway, what or who are these gods?

Modern science reveals that, in the ultimate analysis, the 'reality' of this ‘observable’ universe, originates from one thing (one reality?) which can be comprehended through its dual manifestation: energy/matter. This contemporary perspective in science is not unlike the Hindu perspective that there is only one reality called Brahman with a dual manifestation – purusha and prakriti, or nirguna brahman and sagunabrahman. Just as Energy/matter can take various forms, similarly, brahman can manifest in various forms - including the multitude of gods that have different qualities, characters and attributes.

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, the founder of analytical psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. According to Jung, all these gods correspond to "universal archetypes", deep psychological realities. Archetypes? They are components of the sub-conscious, which are expressed through the characters and themes upon which the puranas are based. In this view, the gods mirror our conscious and unconscious drives, fears, ambitions, and so on. If a student worships Ganesha, he is expressing his psychological desire to be successful in his examinations. The bania worshipping Lakshmi is expressing his desire for wealth. The images of gods are symbolic.

A devotee chooses to worship one god or another ( ishta devata), or many gods depending on which attributes resonate with his own psychological makeup. Just because an ishta devata is worshipped, the concept of brahman is not compromised. Does a teenager idolising a sports person and/or a movie actor compromise his relationship with his parents?

Say you are using the IE browser on your PC or laptop. For printing a file, you have several options:

1) you can click on the printer icon, or
2) the text labeled 'PRINT' or
3) hit the 'ctrl' plus letter 'P' on the keyboard.

These three options are in a virtual sense three icons or images so-to-speak; are there three real printers or which one of these represents the real printer? Similarly, there is a different set of symbols/labels/icons for saving a file. And so on and so forth.