I learned the term puja in a spiritual community that had its roots in Indian spirituality, where the word means worship, or what we called in that community, sacramental service. Google defines puja as “the act of showing reverence to a god, spirit, or other aspect of The Divine through invocations, prayers, songs or chants, and rituals, often with light or fire.” I think that’s a pretty good definition. Lighting candles and butter lamps, sometimes holding and waving them, maybe chanting or singing, moving rhythmically, swaying back and forth “to get in the spirit,” and so on. It happened at High Mass in my childhood Catholic church. We also used Latin in those days, which added a subtle mystical or sacred and ancient dimension.
In many forms, we do things to lift ourselves into emotional states that feel expansive, energetic, ecstatic (becoming unaware of ourselves as separate), in Unity with something bigger, or with the Whole.
Such emotionally uplifting ceremony can be very beautiful. In the quiet of the Catholic chapel there is the candle in the red glass indicating the presence of the Eucharist as Jesus with a simple but beautiful glow. In some traditions, people light candles to remember the dead, as though the candles might continue the prayer or blessing after the people had left. The insides of medieval Christian churches, temples and meditation halls and chapels of many traditions around the world were build for sonic fullness and majesty, the great sounds of the organs in cathedrals or the monks chanting in their echo chambers. Those practices with lights and sounds and movement harken back to gatherings around the fire in early human clans and villages, people feeling small in the midst of seemingly infinite Nature, but at times also feeling One with the surroundings, through singing, chanting, dancing, and consciousness-changing spirit medicines.
In many traditions such ceremony is practiced to feel connected to the Divine, to the One, or the Name that shall not be named. The Whole. This. The Great Spirit. God.
For some, being in Nature is the most sublime, ecstatic, and spiritual experience they can have. It can be a connection with the Whole, and whether we seek it out for that reason, or just fall into the experience, it is often a place to lose ourselves and connect with and as something bigger.
We seek connection, just as we touch our children or lovers, smile and make eye contact with friends and some strangers, join with others in a song, respond to the cat’s meows for attention, embed ourselves in natural beauty, create things together with the rest of the “tribe,” and so on. We enjoy and seek out many forms of coming together.
Brian Swimme, the Evolutionary Cosmologist, describes the Universe being held together by allurement. I think that’s a pretty good word, especially given that in many traditions God is Love. We’re always trying to connect with that Love, find the Flow, merge with the Whole, became part of the living, breathing energy of Allurement.
Sometimes we celebrate that connection, that Allurement, the pleasure of Unity. We practice puja, and are grateful.