So I build temples. Worship, remember, is sacrifice. You make sacred what you offer to the gods. You offer the very choicest of gifts—you cannot offer anything else. How could you? You wake up early, and go to the temple garden at dawn—you pluck jasmine and tulasi leaves. The leaves and flowers glisten with dew. And coming home, you prepare a plate of fruits—plantains and coconuts. You make fresh sandal paste, you do it every morning, after your riverine ablutions. With well-washed clothes (that you bring down from the bamboo hangers, which have dried them overnight)—you wear these, and with ashes on your forehead, you start on your worship, Shiva or Vishnu, whosoever your chosen god be. And now seated on your sacrificial wooden seat, you clean the idol, say the Shivalinga, with fresh water from the river, and seating him or her, the deity, you verbally give the deity its life breath, prana, after which you offer Ganesha, the Lord of Wisdom, adoration, and ask with high-sounding Sanskrit liturgical verses, you beg that he eliminate all obstacles to clarity, to holiness. And now you start worshipping the main idol, with the gathered flower and tulasi leaves (were he Shiva), put sandal paste on him, light incense sticks, finally burn camphor before him in celebration. For, when the offering burns and shines, is the truth, the god, seen. Remember when you see the god, the truth, there is no object seen. That is, where you know the object, there is no object. The object has dissolved (burnt out) and become ‘I’. It is the same as the Self of the Upanishads, that Yajnyavalkya or Yama spoke of. I am deep down myself the Shiva, like the Shiva I bathed for worship, gave flowers and made burnt offerings. I placed him outside to be sure to understand him explicitly. Now that I know who he is, this idol will be put back into his copper or silver casket, and I will forget him till the next dawn, when I go into the temple garden again. However I shall realize, someday, who I am.