[Posted
Feb 11, 2009]Editor's note: If all you want is "love, health and prosperity" for this term of existence in the material world, you're welcome to try Claire Brightwater's concoction, but if you want transcendental happiness, the ancient Vedic texts prescribe charanamrita, with the assurance of liberation from the cycle of repeated birth and death and purification from all karmic reactions. More below:
There is this specific statement in the Padma Purana: "A person who honors the prasada [remnants of food offered to the Lord] and regularly eats it, not exactly in front of the Deity, along with charanamrita [the water offered to the lotus feet of the Lord, which is mixed with seeds of the tulasi tree], immediately can achieve the results of pious activities which are obtained through ten thousand performances of sacrificial rites."
Charanamrita is obtained in the morning while the Lord is being washed before dressing. Scented with perfumes and flowers, the water comes gliding down through His lotus feet and is collected and mixed with yogurt. In this way this charanamrita not only becomes very tastefully flavored, but also has tremendous spiritual value. As described in the Padma Purana, even a person who has never been able to give in charity, who has never been able to perform a great sacrifice, who has never been able to study the Vedas, who has never been able to worship the Lord—or, in other words, even one who has never done any pious activities—will become eligible to enter into the kingdom of God if he simply drinks the charanamrita which is kept in the temple. In the temple it is the custom that the charanamrita be kept in a big pot. The devotees who come to visit and offer respects to the Deity take three drops of charanamrita very submissively and feel themselves happy in transcendental bliss.