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attraction vanish for him; this mighty infinite love of God
which enters his heart leaves no place for any other love to live
there. How can it be otherwise? Bhakti fills his heart with
the divine waters of the ocean of love, which is God
Himself; there is no place there for little loves. That is to say,
the Bhakta's renunciation is that Vairagya, or non-attachment
for all things, that are not God, which results from Anuraga
or great attachment to God.
This is the ideal preparation for the attainment of the
supreme Bhakti. When this renunciation comes, the gate opens
for the soul to pass through and reach the lofty regions of
Supreme Devotion or Para-Bhakti. Then it is that we begin
to understand what Para-Bhakti is; and the man who has
entered into the inner shrine of the Para-Bhakti, alone has the
right to say that all forms and symbols are useless to him as
aids to religious realisation. He alone has attained. that
supreme state of love commonly called the brotherhood of
man; the rest only talk. He sees no distinctions; the mighty
ocean of love has entered Into hIm, and he sees not man in
man, but beholds his Beloved everywhere. Through every
face shines to him his Hari. The light in the sun or the moon
is all His manifestation. Wherever there is beauty or sublimity,
to him it is all His. Such Bhaktas are still living; the world is
BHAKTA S RENUNCIATION FROM LOVE 63
never without them. Such, though bitten by a serpent, only
say that a messenger came to them from their Beloved. Such
men alone have the right to talk of universal brotherhood.
They feel no resentment; their minds never react in the form
of hatred or jealousy. The external, the sensuous; has
vanished from them for ever. How can they be angry when,
through their love, they are always able to see the Reality
behind the scenes ?
THE NATURALNESS OF BHAKTI-YOGA
AND ITS CENTRAL SE'CRET
 Those who with constant attention always worship You,
and those who worship the Undifferentiated, the Absolute
of these who are the greater Yogis?  Arjuna asked of Shri
Krishna. The answer was:  Those who concentrating their
minds on Me worship Me with eternal constancy, and are
endowed with the highest faith they are My best worshippers,
they are the greatest Yogis. Those that worship the Absolute,
the Indescribable, the Undifferentiated, the Omnipresent, the
Unthinkable, the All-comprehending, the Immovable, and
the Eternal, by controlling the play of their organs and
having the conviction of sameness in regard to all things,
they also, being engaged in doing good to all beings, come to
Me alone. But to those whose minds have been devoted to
the unmanifested Absolute, the difficulty of the struggle along
the way is much greater, for it is indeed with great difficulty
that the path of the unmanifested Absolute is trodden by any
embodied being. Those who, having offered up all their
work unto Me, with entire reliance on Me, meditate on Me
and worship Me without any attachment to anything else
them, I soon lift up from the ocean of ever-recurring births
and deaths, as their mind is wholly attached to Me. Jnana-
Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga are both referred to here. Both may
be said to have been defined in the above passage. Jnana-
Yoga is grand; it is high philosophy; and almost every human
being thinks, curiously enough, that he can surely do every-
64
NATURALNESS OF BHAKTI-YOGA 65
thing required of him by philosophy; but it is really very
difficult to live truly the life of philosophy. We are often apt
to run into great dangers in trying to guide our life by
philosophy. This world may be said to be divided between
persons of demoniacal nature who think the care-taking of
the body to be the be-all and the end-all of existence, and
persons of godly nature who realise that the body is simply a
means to an end, an instrument intended for the culture of
the soul. The devil can and indeed does quote the scriptures
for his own purpose ; and thus the way of knowle.dge
appears to offer justification to. what the bad man does. as
much as it offers inducements to what the good man does.
This is the great danger in Jnana-Yoga. But Bhakti-Yoga is
natural, sweet, and gentle; the Bhakta does not take such
high flights as the Jnana-Yogi, and, iherefore, he is. not apt
to have such big falls. Until the bondages of the soul pass
away, it cannot of course be free, whatever may be the
nature of the path that the religious man takes. Here is a
passage showing how, in the case of one of the blessed
Gopis, the soul-binding chains of both merit and demerit
were broken.  The intense pleasure in meditating on God
took away the binding effects of her good deeds. Then her
intense misery of soul in not attaining unto Him washed off
all her sinful propensities; and then she became free.
(Vishnu-Purâna).
ti½Ntaivpula ad]I[puratcya t"a,
tdàaiÝmh u> oivTnIrnze;patka.
Æ Æ Æ in#CDastya mui%
66 BHAKTI YOGA
In Bhakti-Yoga the central secret is, therefore, to know
that the various passions, and feelings, and emotions in the
human heart are not wrong in themselves; only they have to
be carefully controlled and given a higher and higher direction,
until they attain the very highest condition of excellence.
The highest direction is that which takes us to God; every
other direction is lower. We find that pleasures and pains are
very common and oft-recurring feelings in our lives. When a
man feels pain, because he has not wealth or some such
worldly thing, he is giving a wrong direction to the feeling. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]