The Lord is not a hungry man who is dependent on our offerings, or a beggar who needs us to build a house for His residence. As Prabhupāda elaborates, “We may construct a gorgeous temple and spend thousands of dollars, but such a temple is not required by the Lord. The Lord has many millions of temples for His residence, and He does not need our attempt. He does not require opulent activity at all.”
If the Lord does not need our offerings, why do we endeavor to cook nice dishes and construct opulent temples for Him? This is precisely one of the challenges of devotional service. In material welfare, we work to satisfy the needs of people who have less than us, like the hungry and homeless. This gives us a sense of superiority, seeing ourselves as the providers and maintainers. This is part of the reason we are in this material world: we want to be the maintainers of others, the object of love and gratitude, which are positions that belong to the Lord.
When we come to devotional service, we are confronted with the idea of serving someone who has everything and is not in need of our offerings. The Lord is already served by millions of gopis and goddesses of fortune, and has no need for our offerings. He has already His abode in the spiritual world, full of kalpa-vṛkṣa trees and cintāmaṇi stones, and has no need for a temple made out of bricks. Instead of offering something as a favor, to satisfy one’s need, we offer something to the Lord as a way to try to attract His attention for our own benefit. We have to get rid of our false ego and situate ourselves in a position of humility.
In this spirit, we cook our offerings the best we can, and put all our attention and resources into building a house where we can invite the Lord to reside in the form of the deity. Not because He needs it, but because we are anxious for the opportunity to offer some service to Him. This is how devotional love is expressed.
As Prabhupāda concludes, “If we engage our money in constructing a gorgeous temple, we are freed from the reactions of our endeavors. This is for our benefit. In addition, if we attempt to do something nice for the Supreme Lord, He is pleased with us and gives us His benediction. In conclusion, the gorgeous arrangements are not for the Lord’s sake but for our own. If we somehow or other receive blessings and benedictions from the Lord, our consciousness can be purified and we can become eligible to return home, back to Godhead.”
The soul is eternally connected to the Lord in a bond of love. The key, however, is purification. To relate to the Lord, we need to become purified from material contamination, including the tendency to control. The process for becoming purified of these contaminations is serving the Lord in a humble spirit. In the platform of pure love, everything is possible. Sometimes the Lord becomes dependent on His devotee, and sometimes He is controlled by His devotee, but this is completely different from the contaminated material platform permeated by lust.
