--- In [email protected], "llundrub" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So I know yagyas are the way of heyam dukam anagatam etc, > but what are the mechanics exactly? I mean, do the devas > just dig it so much that we do ceremonies that they shower > blessings? So they are not altruistic? They will only help > those who sacrifice? What are the mechanics? Are they moral? > If you only sacrificed exactly so much do you only get > exactly so much back? Or is the quality of the priest > important? If you have a huge and expensive yagya with a > shitty pundit is it not as good as a poor yagya with a great > pundit? And so on... Is it not only karma really? The amount > of energy put into the aspect of creation through ritual?
Me, I suspect that yagyas work now the way they always have -- they're a revenue generator for the people and organizations that offer them, and any benefits occur through the mechanism of the placebo effect. But there is a simple, scientific way to find out if there is anything else going on with them. Offer to perform a study tracking the effects of various yagyas, as long as the pundits perform the yagyas for free. We'll tell them that's a testing protocol, so that the test subjects for whom the yagyas are performed have no more invested in the outcome than the control group does. But the real reason is to see if any of them will do it for free. If they won't, that'll pretty much clear up once and for all what yagyas are all about, right? :-)
