Bhakti Yoga - Devotional Yoga

A man’s actions may be compared to the flight of a bird, which needs three things –two wings and a tail– for its graceful movement. By means of the wings it balances itself in the air, and by the tail, like the rudder in a boat, it keeps its course. In a worker, love and knowledge are the two wings, and meditation the tail. When these function harmoniously, the action becomes graceful. Let us now discuss love as a spiritual discipline. This is called Bhakti Yoga or the yoga of divine love.

Love as a force of attraction operates at different levels: the material, the human, and the spiritual. On the material level it draws together the particles of an inanimate object; on the human level it joins friend and friend, parents and children, husband and wife; and on the spiritual level it unites a man with God. The real source of attraction is the spirit or God; a particle of matter cannot of itself attract another particle.

Because God as spirit pervades the whole universe and because He is the inmost self of all beings, one sees the force of attraction operating everywhere. There is no essential difference between a lower form of attraction, for instance the attraction of a mistress for her lover, and a higher form of attraction, such as the attraction of children for the mother. The apparent difference is due to the difference in the channels through which the love is expressed.

Love is a creative force, and through creation one seeks joy and immortality. Desiring this joy some that are virile in body beget offspring, and some that are virile in mind create art, compose poetry, write philosophy, organize states, or engage in similar pursuits. There are yet others, virile in spirit, who through love beget God-consciousness, the bestower of the highest good.

Through creation one hopes to become immortal. Parents expect immortality through their offspring, as the poet, the artist, the philosopher, the statesman, and the scientist through their respective work. The lover of God seeks everlasting life through union with him.
A lover finds joy in beauty and shrinks from ugliness. Birds and animals choose spring for their mating season; human lovers seek beautiful surroundings; and lovers of God always search for beauty, which for them is the good. Love based upon physical attraction, called worldly love, is short-lived, unsatisfactory, and inadequate, because the objects of such love are material forms, which are impermanent and limited. It is based upon such external factors as physical beauty, which are ephemeral, name and fame, wealth, power, and position, which too are transient. One is also afraid to offend one’s beloved for fear of losing her love. Neither spontaneous nor natural, it harbours an element of jealousy.

Furthermore, worldly love constantly changes. A baby is absorbed in his mother. When he grows up he becomes interested in his school fellows. Then he marries, and his wife fills up his heart. Next come children. Even the love of heaven, which is brightly painted by the popular religions, is a form of material love; the denizens of heaven, too, enjoy material objects. The difference between the enjoyments in heaven and on earth is not one of kind but merely one of degree; life in heaven is a continuation of earthly life. A worshipper of God is a materialist if he seeks physical enjoyment here and hereafter.

Love based upon intellectual attraction is more impersonal and enduring. Thus if friendship or conjugal love has for its support common philosophical, artistic, or other intellectual interests, it will last longer than love based upon physical factors, which contains the seeds of quick deterioration. It is a matter of common observation that the more intellectually developed the life of a person is, the less he takes pleasure in the objects of the senses. No man enjoys his food with as great satisfaction as a dog or a pig. The life of the animal lies entirely in its senses, which in many cases are keener than those of human beings. The primitive man obtains more happiness from physical objects than does an educated man; but he is denied the joy arising from the contemplation of music, philosophy, or science.

The offspring of intellectual love is more satisfying than that of physical love. What earthly offspring can compare with the intellectual offspring left behind by Homer, Kalidas, Beethoven, Asoka, or Leonardo da Vinci?
The same is true of immortality; the immortality conferred by intellectual offspring is infinitely more enduring than that conferred by physical offspring. But intellectual immortality, too, is a relative one. The most satisfying love is associated with God; divine love is immortal because God is immortal. In it there is no trace of ugliness, because God is the source of pure beauty, whose reflection one sees in the beauty of the physical and intellectual creation. When love of God fills the heart all other forms of love pale into insignificance. One star rises, then comes a bigger one, and next a still bigger. As the biggest star appears, the smaller ones become dim. At last the sun, the biggest star, appears, and all the others fade out.

God is the biggest star, and the lover of God is not interested in worldly love, physical or intellectual. Although he does not, like an agnostic or an atheist, deny heaven, he is not interested in it, because it is inadequate to satisfy the yearning of his soul. The unceasing craving of his immortal spirit finds no satisfaction in any finite, perishable material object.

The Katha Upanishad narrates the story of Nachiketa, who sought from his teacher the knowledge of the imperishable self. When tempted by the teacher with gold, cattle, children, grandchildren and a long life on earth and in heaven, the pupil said: ‘But these will endure only till tomorrow. Furthermore, their enjoyment exhausts the vigour of the sense organs. Even the longest life is short indeed. Keep your horses, dances, and songs for yourself.’

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad one reads the story of Maitreyi who was offered her share of property by Yajnavalkya, her husband and teacher, as he was about to embrace the monastic life. She said to him: ‘Venerable sir, if indeed the whole earth full of wealth belonged to me, would I be immortal through that or not?’
Yajnavalkya replied: ‘No, your life would be just like that of people who have plenty. Of immortality, however, there is no hope through wealth.’
Then Maitreyi said: ‘What should I do with that which would not make me immortal? Tell me, venerable sir, of that alone, which you know to be the means of attaining immortality.’
One cannot fully enjoy the love of God unless one rises above all worldly attractions.

In the teachings of Christ one sees the utter incompatibility between the Kingdom of Heaven which lies within a man’s heart, and the kingdom of the physical world. But worldly love is not futile, because it is also the love of the spirit; though clogged and distorted with mortal matter, it provides the love hungry soul with various steps by which love of God can finally be realized.

Through these successive steps the possessive attraction is gradually transformed into self-negating divine love. The experience gained through the enjoyment of worldly love teaches a man about its impermanence. Then he feels the irresistible attraction of God, who, like a huge magnet, is always drawing living creatures to Him. On account of the mental impurities produced by attachment to the world, a man does not feel the force of this attraction, as a needle coated with mud is not attracted by a magnet. But when his mind becomes pure through the practice of detachment, he feels the attraction of God and longs to be united with him.

Spiritual love, or bhakti, is directed only to God, whose effulgence puts to shame ‘a million suns, a million moons, and a million gods of beauty.’ He is the Personal God, or the spirit in the form of a person. One of the bhakti scriptures says: ‘The sages who are satisfied with the Supreme Self and who are free from all the tie of the world, show to the Personal God a love that knows no reason; such is the greatness of God.’ ‘He, the Lord, is of His own nature ineffable love.’

God, the object of the devotee’s love, is sometimes described as a projection of the human mind. Hinduism emphatically repudiates this view. According to non-dualism, it is Brahman which, through Maya, its own inscrutable creative power, appears as God. If the form of God is a projection of the mind, it is Brahman itself that projects this form for the purpose of creating the universe and helping the devotees. Therefore, from the non-dualistic viewpoint, the Personal God is as real as the universe and living beings. When the universe and living beings ultimately merge in Brahman (Supreme Reality), God too becomes one with it.


~Swami Nikhilananda
Sri Ramakrishna Math