Posted on: Aug 10, '08
Definition of Bhakti
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 to God brings us eternal freedom.''bhakti'' ,says Narada in his explanation of the Bhakti-aphorisms,'is intense love to God' ; ' 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 come. '' Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Yoga, because these areintended for an object in view, while bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end '' .
There is not really so much difference between Knowledge[jnana] and love[bhakti] as people sometimes imagine. We shall see, as we go on, that in the end they converge and meet at the same point.
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 often 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 to a loved object,without which no genuine love can grow , is very often also the cause of denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e.by hating 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 intrusion; only, the instinct of dog is better than the reason of man , for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy in what ever dress he may come before it. Again, the fanatic loses all power of judgement. Personal considerations are in his case of such absorbing interests ,that to him , it is no question at all 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 when they are directed against persons beyond the pale of his own religious brotherhood.
But this danger exists only in that stage of Bhakti which is called the preparatory. When Bhakti has become ripe and has passed into that form which is called the 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.
We plainly see, therefore , that Bhakti is a series or succession of mental efforts at religious realisation beginning with ordinary worship and ending in a supreme intensity of love for Ishvara.
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