BHAKTI-YOGA is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, continuing, and ending in love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love of God brings us eternal freedom. “Bhakti is intense love of God,” says Nārada in his bhakti aphorisms. “When a man gets it he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever.” “This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit”—because so long as worldly desires last that kind of love does not arise. “Bhakti is greater than karma, greater than jnāna, and greater than yoga,” because these have in view the attainment of an object, while bhakti is its own fruition, “its own means, and its own end.”
Bhakti has been the one constant theme of our sages. Apart from the special writers on bhakti such as Śāndilya or Nārada, the great commentators on the Vyāsa Sutras, evident advocates of jnāna, have also something very suggestive to say about love. Even when those commentators are anxious to explain many, if not all, of the texts so as to make them impart a sort of dry knowledge, the sutras, in the chapter on worship especially, do not lend themselves to be easily manipulated in that fashion.
There is not really so much difference between jnāna and bhakti as people sometimes imagine. We shall see, as we go on, that in the end they converge and finally meet in the same point. So also is it with rāja-yoga, which, when pursued as a means to attain liberation and not (as unfortunately it has frequently become in the hands of charlatans and mystery-mongers) as an instrument to hoodwink the unwary, leads us to the same goal.
The one great advantage of bhakti is that it is the easiest and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view. Its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism or Mohammedanism or Christianity have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers on the lower planes of bhakti. That singleness of attachment (nishthā) to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, and that is to hate every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. This kind of love is somewhat like the canine instinct of guarding the master’s property from intruders; only the instinct of the dog is better than the reason of man, for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy, in whatever dress he may come before it. Again, the fanatic loses all power of judgement. Personal considerations are in his case of such absorbing interest that to him it is no question at all of what a man says—whether it is right or wrong; but the one thing he is always particularly careful to know is, who says it. The same man who is kind, good, honest, and loving to people of his own opinion will not hesitate to do the vilest deeds against persons beyond the pale of his own religious brotherhood.
But this danger exists only in that stage of bhakti which is called the gauni or preparatory stage. When bhakti has become ripe and has passed into that form which is called the parā or supreme, no more is there any fear of these hideous manifestations of fanaticism. That soul which is overpowered by this higher form of bhakti is too near the God of Love to become an instrument for the diffusion of hatred.
It is not given to all of us to be harmonious in the building up of our characters in this life; yet we know that that character is of the noblest type in which all these three—knowledge and love and rāja-yoga—are harmoniously fused. Three things are necessary for a bird to fly: the two wings, and the tail as a rudder for steering. Jnāna is the one wing, bhakti is the other, and rāja-yoga is the tail that maintains the balance. For those who cannot pursue all these three forms of worship together in harmony, and take up, therefore, bhakti alone as their way, it is necessary always to remember that forms and ceremonials, though absolutely necessary for the progressing soul, have no other value than to lead us on to that state in which we feel the most intense love of God.
There is a little difference in opinion between the teachers of knowledge and those of love, though both admit the power of bhakti. The jnānis hold bhakti to be an instrument of liberation; the bhaktas look upon it as both the instrument and the thing to be attained. To my mind this is a distinction without much difference. In fact, bhakti, when used as an instrument, really means a lower form of worship; and when this lower form is further cultivated it becomes inseparable from the higher form of bhakti. Each seems to lay great stress upon his own peculiar method of discipline, forgetting that with perfect love true knowledge is bound to come unsought, and that, at the end, true love is inseparable from perfect knowledge.
Bearing this in mind, let us try to understand what the great Vedāntic commentators have to say on the subject. In explaining an aphorism of the Vedānta Sutras, Śankara says: “Thus people say, ‘He is devoted to the king’ or ‘He is devoted to the guru.’ They say this of him who follows his king or his guru, and does so, having that following as the one end in view. Similarly they say, ‘The loving wife meditates on her loving husband away in a foreign land.’ Here also a kind of eager and continuous remembrance is meant.” This is devotion according to Śankara.
Bhagavān Rāmānuja, in his commentary on the first aphorism of the Vedānta Sutras, says:
“Meditation, again, is a constant remembrance [of the thing meditated upon], flowing like an unbroken stream of oil poured from one vessel to another. When this kind of remembering has been attained [in relation to God], all bondages break. Thus it is said in the scriptures regarding constant remembering as a means to liberation. This remembering, again, is of the same form as seeing, because it has the same meaning, as in the passage: ‘When He who is far and near is seen, the bonds of the heart are broken, all doubts vanish, and all effects of work disappear.’ He who is near can be seen, but he who is far can only be remembered. Nevertheless the scriptures say that we have to see Him who is near as well as far, thereby indicating to us that the above kind of remembering is as good as seeing. This remembrance, when exalted, assumes the same form as seeing…. Worship is constant remembering, as may be seen from the principal texts of the scriptures. Knowing, which is the same as repeated worship, has been described as constant remembering…. Thus the memory which has attained to the height of what is as good as direct perception is spoken of in the Śruti as a means of liberation. ‘This Ātman is not to be reached through various sciences, nor by intellect, nor by much study of the Vedas. Whomsoever this Ātman desires—by him is Ātman attained; unto him Ātman reveals Itself.’ Here, after saying that mere hearing, thinking, and meditating are not the means of attaining this Ātman, the Śruti says: ‘Whomsoever this Ātman desires—by him is Ātman attained.’ The extremely beloved is desired. He by whom this Ātman is extremely beloved becomes the most beloved of the Ātman. So that this beloved may attain the Ātman, the Lord Himself helps. For it has been said by the Lord: ‘Those who are constantly attached to Me and worship Me with love—I give that direction to their will by which they come to Me.’ Therefore it is said that he to whom this remembering, which is of the same nature as direct perception, is very dear, because it is dear to the object of such memory perception—he is desired by the Supreme Ātman and by him the Supreme Ātman is attained. This constant remembrance is denoted by the word bhakti.”
In commenting on the sutra of Patanjali, “Or by the worship of the Supreme Lord,” Bhoja says: “Pranidhāna (‘worship’) is that sort of bhakti in which, without one’s seeking results, such as sense enjoyments and so forth, all works are dedicated to the Lord, who is the Teacher of teachers.” Bhagavān Vyāsa also, when commenting on the same sutra, defines pranidhāna as “the form of bhakti by which the mercy of the Supreme Lord comes to the yogi and blesses him by granting him his desires.” According to Śāndilya, “bhakti is intense love of God.” The best idea of bhakti, however, is given by the king of bhaktas, Prahlāda: “May that intense and deathless love which ignorant people have for the fleeting objects of the senses not slip away from my heart as I keep meditating on Thee!”
Love for whom? For the Supreme Lord Iśvara. Love for any other being, however great, cannot be bhakti; for, as Rāmānuja says in his Śri Bhāshya, quoting an ancient āchārya, or great teacher: “From Brahmā to a clump of grass, all things that live in the world are slaves of birth and death caused by karma; therefore they cannot be helpful as objects of meditation, because they are all in ignorance and subject to change.” In commenting on the word anurakti used by Śāndilya, the commentator Svapneśvara says that it means anu, after, and rakti, attachment; that is to say, the attachment which comes after the knowledge of the nature and glory of God—else a blind attachment to anyone, such as wife or children, would be bhakti. We plainly see, therefore, that bhakti is a series or succession of mental efforts at religious realization, beginning with ordinary worship and ending in a supreme intensity of love for Iśvara.