What is the importance of ‘Havan’?
Out of 33 gods, Havan or yaj is the 33rd god which purifies all the other 32 gods. In all our religious books, agnihotra or havan has been mentioned as the only way to worship gods and not God. It purifies water and air, which in turn prevent a number of diseases. As such, ‘agnihotra’ is the best deed for the welfare of others.
For health and happiness, purity of water and air is very essential. When one plans to go to an unseen place, climate of that place is inquired about and climate consists of different factors relating to water and air. The reason behind this is that on climate of a place our health and happiness depends a lot. Today, impure air and water is a great problem. In vedic culture, ‘Havan’ is the best solution to this problem. In olden times, everyone living in this country used to do ‘Agnihotra’ or ‘Havan’ every day in the morning as well as in the evening whether that person be a simple civilian or a king or a saint. Today, ‘Yaj’ and ‘Havan’ are considered to be synonyms. But ‘yaj’ is not only doing ‘Havan’. Every act, which is done for the welfare of others is ‘Yaj’. ‘Havan’ is an act, which can be called to be symbolic of ‘Yaj’. While doing ‘Havan’, all the good things namely, things of medicinal properties, things good for our bodily and mental health, things giving or generating fragrance are put in fire, which transforms the things put into it in very subtle atomic form, which can easily be absorbed by our body. As the things needed by any particular part of our body are not attached with that part of our body but are put into in our mouth, which passes the things to the digestive system of our body, which converts that particular thing into energy and supplies that energy to the needy part, likewise, if we want to purify water, the things necessary for purification of water are not put into water but instead are put into fire which in turn purifies the water. Fire has a quality by which it transforms the things put into it in their finer shapes, raises their temperature and makes them light enabling air to disperse these things in a vast area. Watery part of these things because of their high temperature gets raised by air and becomes cloud which when pour on Earth through rain purifies all the vegetation. The very base of piercing power of fire is its ability to raise the temperature of the things coming in its contact. Because of this piercing power of fire, the air of our homes, which gets impure by our respiration et cetera gets changed by the fresh air of the atmosphere. By no other mean we can change the air of our homes. By swallowing the eatables put into fire in ‘Havan’, we can get the benefit equal to only a part of the total benefits received on putting those things in fire. The purpose of using woods of mango tree, chandan tree et cetera is only that burning of these woods produce lesser smoke.
It is a sin not to do ‘Havan’. We are duty bound to purify the air, water et cetera, which get polluted by our and our pets’ daily use.