03 Feb 2005
A statue cannot test your real essence in sacrifice. When you offer food to a statue, your sacrifice is only by words and by mind [since the statue never eats the offered food]. But when you sacrifice food to the human incarnation, your sacrifice is real because the human form of the Lord eats the food. Thus the reality of the worship comes out only when the Lord is in human form. Shaktuprastha was tested by the Lord in human form and not by a statue.