In plain words
That being so, is it not wrong to criticise the worship of images? You keep pictures of your grandfathers and great-grandfathers in your homes and worship them with great fondness. Is there Caitanya in them? Is there compassion? Is there Prema? No. Even so, what is the inner meaning of worshipping them? They remind us of the ideals our elders handed down to us. That is why we worship their pictures, though there is no Caitanya in them. Is there Caitanya in a hundred-rupee note, six inches long and three inches wide? Is there Prema in it? No. Yet man loves it, does he not! Nowhere in the world will you find a man who hates a hundred-rupee note. Whatever his age, whatever his region, every person desires money; there is no one who hates it. How many have given up their lives for rupees! How many pour out their very lives to earn wealth! Why do people give a hundred-rupee note so much value? The Government's seal on it is the cause of its value. We honour the national flag greatly. Yet it is only a piece of inert cloth, is it not! Does anyone, then, argue, “Why should we honour it?” The fools who argue that worshipping inert images is foolishness: do they not worship the national flag? Do they not love the hundred-rupee note? It is by his own likes and dislikes alone that man worships one thing and hates another.
The Īśvara principle is the embodiment of every splendour
First of all, man must develop the faith “Īśāvāsyam idaṃ jagat”, “Īśvaraḥ sarvabhūtānām”. Every living being is itself a form of Īśvara. The Īśvara principle moves in all living beings as Caitanya. In every human being the Īśvara principle dances the tāṇḍava. Īśvara means the embodiment of every splendour. Īśvara is He who is endowed with the six splendours: wealth, Dharma, fame, power, Jñāna and Vairāgya.