(Sept 1,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – Bhakti Yoga by Swami Sivananda

Bhakti Yoga

Divine Life Society Publication: Bhakti Yoga by Swami Sivananda

WHAT IS BHAKTI ?

The devotee wants God and God alone. There is no selfish expectation or fear here and is called 'Parama Prem Rupa'. The term Bhakti comes from the root 'Bhaj', which means 'to be attached to God'. Bhajan, worship, Bhakti, Anurag, Prem, Priti are synonymous terms.

Bhakti is intense devotion, supreme love and attachment to God. First arises faith. Then follows attraction and after that adoration. Adoration leads to suppression of mundane desires. The result is single-mindedness and satisfaction. Then grow attachment and supreme love towards God.

In this type of highest Bhakti all attraction and attachment which one has for objects of enjoyment are transferred to the only dearest object, viz., God. This leads the devotee to an eternal union with his Beloved and culminates in oneness.

TYPES OF BHAKTI

One classification is Sakamya and Nishkamya Bhakti. Sakamya Bhakti is devotion with desire for material gains and well-being. But you will not get supreme satisfaction, immortality and Moksha through Sakamya Bhakti. God has already given you a good position, a good job, wife and children and enough wealth. Be contented with these. Aspire for Nishkamya Bhakti. Your heart will be purified and the Divine Grace will descend upon you. Be in communion with the Lord, you will become one with the Lord and you will enjoy all the Divine Aisvaryas (Divine attributes like wisdom, renunciation, power, etc.).

Another classification of Bhakti is Apara-Bhakti and Para-Bhakti. Apara-Bhakti is for beginners in Yoga. The beginner decorates an image with flowers and garlands, rings the bell, offers Naivedya (food-offerings), wave lights; he observes rituals and ceremonies. The Bhakta here regards the Lord as a Supreme Person, who is immanent in that image and who can be propitiated through that form only. Gradually, from Apara-Bhakti, the devotee goes to Para-Bhakti, the highest form of Bhakti. He sees the Lord and Lord alone everywhere and feels His Power manifest as the entire universe. Para-Bhakti and Jnana are one. But every Bhakta will have to start from Apara-Bhakti. Before you take your food, offer it to God mentally; and the food will be purified. When you pass through a garden of flowers, mentally offer all the flowers to the Lord in Archana (offering flowers in worship). Such practices will lead to Para-Bhakti.

Bhakti is also classified into Gauna-Bhakti and Mukhya-Bhakti. Gauna-Bhakti is the lower Bhakti and Mukhya-Bhakti is the higher type of Bhakti.

The enemy of devotion is egoism and desire. Where there is no Kama or desire, there alone will Rama (the Lord) manifest Himself. The enemies of peace and devotion are lust, anger and greed. Anger destroys your peace and your health also. When a man abuses you, keep peaceful. You lose vitality if you become a prey to fits of temper.

HOW TO CULTIVATE BHAKTI

Bhakti is not merely a stage of emotionalism, but a thorough discipline and training of one's will and the mind, a sure means to intuitive realization of God Almighty through intense love and affection for Him. It is a means to thorough apprehension of the true knowledge of Reality, beginning from the ordinary form of idol worship right upto the highest form of cosmic realization of your oneness with Him.

You can achieve this by following the eleven fundamental factors which Sri Ramanuja had prescribed. They are Abhyasa or practice of continuous thinking of God; Viveka or discrimination; Vimoka or freedom from everything else and longing for God; Satyam or truthfulness; Arjavam or straightforwardness; Kriya or doing good to others; Kalyana or wishing well-being to all; Daya or compassion; Ahimsa or non-injury; Dana or charity; and Anavasada or cheerfulness and optimism.

People question: "How can we love God whom we have not seen?"

Live in the company of saints. Hear the Lilas of God. Study the sacred scriptures. Worship Him first in His several forms as manifested in the world. Worship any image or picture of the Lord or the Guru. Recite His Name. Sing His glories. Stay for one year in Ayodhya or Brindavan, Chirakut or Pandhapur, Benares or Ananda Kutir. You will develop love for God.

Every act must be done that awakens the emotion of Bhakti. Keep the Puja(worship) room clean. Decorate the room. Burn incense. Light a lamp. Keep a clean seat. Bathe. Wear clean clothes. Apply Vibhuti (sacred ash) or Bhasma, and Kumkum on the forehead. Wear Rudraksha or Tulasi Mala. All these produce a benign influence on the mind, increase concentration and elevate the mind. They help to create the necessary Bhava or feeling to invoke the Deity that you want to worship.

Practice of right conduct, Satsanga, Japa, Smarana, Kirtan, prayer, worship, service of saints, residence in places of pilgrimage, service of the poor and the sick with divine Bhava, observance of Varnashrama duties, offering of all actions and their fruits to the Lord, feeling the presence of the Lord in all beings, prostrations before the image and saints, renunciation of earthly enjoyments and wealth, charity, austerities and vows, practice of Ahimsa, Satyam and Brahmacharya - all these will help you to develop Bhakti.

BHAVAS IN BHAKTI

When the devotee grows in devotion there is absolute self-forgetfulness. This is called Bhava. Bhava establishes a true relationship between the devotee and the Lord. Bhava then grows into Maha-Bhava wherein the devotee lives, moves and has his being in the Lord. This is Parama-Prema, the consummation of love or Supreme Love.

There are five kinds of Bhava in Bhakti. They are Shanta, Dasya, Sakhya, Vatsalya and Madhurya Bhavas. Practice whichever Bhava suits your temperament.

In Shanta Bhava, the devotee is Shanta or peaceful and is not highly emotional. His heart is filled with love and joy. Bhishma was a Shanta Bhakta. Sri Hanuman was a Dasya Bhakta. He had Dasya Bhava, servant attitude. He found joy and bliss in the service of his Master Lord Rama. In Sakhya Bhava, God is a friend and the devotee moves with the Lord on equal terms. Arjuna and Krishna used to sit, eat, talk and walk together as intimate friends. In Vatsalya Bhava, the devotee serves, feeds and looks upon God as a mother does in the case of her child and there is no fear in this Bhava.  Yasoda had this Bhava with Lord Krishna. The last is Madhurya Bhava or Kanta Bhava, the highest form of Bhakti – Atma Samarpana. This was the relation between Radha and Krishna, oneness in separation and separation in oneness. Lord Gauranga, Jayadeva, Mira and Andal had this Bhava.

A Caution: Divine love is born of sattva. But earthly lust is born of rajas and attachment to bodies. Strong selfishness is the root of worldly passion; divine love is the product of loss of egoism. This is the greatest difference between lust (kama) and divine love (prema). The two are related as darkness is related to light. The austere transformation of the human into the divine is the beginning of true love for God.

NAVA-VIDHA-BHAKTI

Devotion to God is developed in nine different ways. Intense love and supreme attachment to God through a Bhava is the common factor in all the nine modes.

In the Srimad-Bhagavata and the Vishnu Purana it is told that the nine forms of Bhakti are:

Sravana (hearing of God's Lilas and stories), Kirtana (singing of His glories), Smarana (remembrance of His name and presence), Padasevana (service of His feet), Archana (worship of God), Vandana (prostration to Lord), Dasya (cultivating the Bhava of a servant with God), Sakhya (cultivation of the friend-Bhava) and Atmanivedana (complete surrender of the self).

A devotee can take up any of these paths and reach the highest state. The highest truth is Absoluteness and the soul rises above through different states of consciousness until it attains Absolute Perfection when it becomes identical with God. This is the culmination of all aspiration and love.

FRUITS OF BHAKTI

Bhakti softens the heart and removes jealousy, hatred, lust, anger, egoism, pride and arrogance. It infuses joy, divine ecstasy, bliss, peace and knowledge. All cares, worries and anxieties, fears, mental torments and tribulations entirely vanish. The devotee is freed from the Samsaric wheel of births and deaths. He attains the immortal abode of everlasting peace, bliss and knowledge.

The fruits of Bhakti is Jnana. Jnana intensifies Bhakti. Even Jnanis like Sankara, Madhusudana and Suka Dev took to Bhakti after Realization to enjoy the sweetness of loving relationship with God.

Knowledge or wisdom will dawn by itself when you practice Bhakti Yoga. Pray to the Lord. Sing His glory, Recite His Name and become a channel of His grace. Seek, surrender and become one with the cosmic will. He will become your charioteer on the field of life and you will reach the destination, the Abode of Immortal Bliss.

Excerpts from:

Bhakti Yoga by Swami Sivananda

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(May 24,2013) Spiritual Message of the Day – To Realize God, You Have to Want God

On Attainment and Experience - To Realize God You Have to Want God

Divine Life Society Publication: Thus Awakens the Awakened One by Swami Krishnananda

·         No one who is not established in God as an entirety of existence can feel a kinship with Nature or even a sense of brotherhood with others, let alone have peace of mind within one’s own self. Unselfish dedicated work for the welfare of all (sarvabhutahite ratah) and constant devotion to God as the universality inseparable from one’s true being are marks of perfection (sthitaprajna).

·         When man’s meditation on God ends, and God begins meditation on all Creation, the consummation is reached. It is here that all questions are answered and all problems solved.

·         The highest meditation consists in the recognition of the Self in all things, so that there is no object before the Self to think or deal with. It is here that the mind melts like an exhausted camphor cake in the process of self-sublimation.

·         The highest ‘bhava’ which rouses ‘para bhakti’ in a devotee is that in which one cannot recognise even one’s own body as if forgotten since many years, for there is no body-consciousness when the mind expires in pure experience.

·         To be able to realise God, you have to first want God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is not merely to ‘think’ but to ‘feel’ through your ‘whole being’ that you cannot exist without Him. The entire personality vibrates with a longing that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world. There is a want for ‘That’ alone, and nothing short of it.

·         The sense of perfection slowly enters the mind, when it gradually learns to dovetail the various discrepant particulars of the world into a coherent whole. This stage comes when the existence and activity of the mind coalesce in an adjustment of oneself with God’s Creation.

·         Life is a process of entering into God. This is achieved by seeing God in the objects as well as the actions of the world, which is not the seeing of particulars, but of the Universal in them.

·         Tapas is the process of stilling the senses and the mind and allowing the lustre of the Atman to manifest itself spontaneously. The power of the sage is this energy of the Atman revealed by the cessation of the externalising activity of the senses and the mind.

·         Brahmabhavana, the art of the affirmation of Brahman, is called Brahmabhyasa in the words of the Yoga Vasishtha. It consists in constantly thinking of Brahman, speaking about Brahman, discoursing to one another on Brahman and depending on Brahman alone for everything that one values in life. This is the final stage of meditation.

·         It is of little consequence to one who has awakened to normal consciousness whether he or she was a king or a beggar in last night’s dream. Likewise, what one is in this world matters little to one who has awakened to the Presence of God.

·         When the senses stand together with the mind and the intellect does not shake, the state of yoga supervenes. The secret of meditation is this: The mind and the intellect should shine, but not shine upon things other than the shining awareness. This is the realisation of God within.

·         Appearance is the objectified character of Reality; and when this character is negatived in the immediacy of experience, it is not appearance that becomes Reality, but it is Reality free from objectification that knows itself as such.

·         The depth and solidity of substance in the world is similar to the distance and substantiality of things seen in a mirror. This truth is not realised in life because the body of the observer is itself involved in this reflected appearance called the world.

·         The passing of the soul from plane to plane is all a process of Consciousness within the Absolute. Just as our movements in the dream-world are actual spatial allocations of personality but are really within the circumference of mental activity - all dream being only within the mind - so is the transmigration of souls real empirically but are activities of Consciousness within its bosom.

·         It is the opinion of Bhishma that it would not take more than six months to attain Samadhi if the needed precaution is taken to prevent the mind and the senses from hovering round their objects. That this achievement has not been possible in most people shows that it is easier to glorify God than to feel it in one’s heart, and the effort at self-control is more difficult than it is announced from pulpits.

Continue to read:

On Attainment and Experience- “Thus Awakens the Awakened One” by Swami Krishnananda

If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
http://www.dlshq.org/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?

If you would like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact the General Secretary at:

generalsecretary@sivanandaonline.org