After watching Kantara, everyone wonders the same thing. Are deities or Devatas really a thing? Do they exist around us, physically? Is there a way to experience them? Because our scriptures and mythological stories have tons of such examples. And when we pray, aren’t we praying to deities for their help? Why pray if they aren’t real?
PVR Narasimha Rao, a Vedic astrologer and Sanskrit scholar put up a nice video recently on YouTube where he addresses this question. He says that deities are indeed real, and can be experienced physically as well as internally.
How this is done is a different story – perhaps needing a lot of meditation.
But the question is, even if you experience something, how can you prove it? These are intensely personal incidents of course. But wouldn’t the Devatas themselves want to prove their existence?
Not at all, says PVR ji. Instead, they are like oxygen. Oxygen doesn’t care whether people know about it or not. And even if we don’t know about the oxygen around us, we are certainly breathing it, else life would be impossible. Only a scientist would try to study the air and evaluate oxygen, just like only a spiritual seeker will seek to study himself and his true nature.