Now woi'shipping Tsvara and Him alone is Bhakti; the Wor- ship of anything else, Deva, or Pitri, or any other being cannot 32 be Bhakti. The various kinds of worship of the various Devos are all to be included in ritualistic Karma, which gives to the worshipper only a particular result in the form of some celestial enjoyment, but can neither give rise to Bhakti nor lead to Mukti. One thing, therefore, has to be carefully borne in mind. If, as it may happen in some cases, the highly philosophic ideal supreme Brahman is Himself dragged down by Pratikd-worship to the level of the Pratiht, and the Pratikd itself is taken to be the Atman of the worshipper, or his Antaraydmin,i\ie worshipper gets entirely misled, as no Pratiht can really be the Atman of the worshipper. But where Brahman Himself is the object of worship, and the Pratiht stands only as a substitute or a sug- gestion thereof, that is to say, where through the Pratiht the omnipresent Brahman is worshipped — the Pratikd itself being idealized into the cause of all, the Brahman — the worship is posi- tively beneficial; nay, it is absolutely necessary for all mankind, until they have all got beyond the primary or preparatory state of the mind in regard to worship. When, therefore, any gods or other beings are worshipped in and for themselves, such worship is only a ritualistic Karma; and as a Vidyd (science) it gives us only the fruit belonging to that particular Vidyd; but when the Devas or any other beings are looked upon as Brahman and worshipped, the result obtained is the same as by the worship- ping of Isvara. This explains how, in many cases, both in the SVttffs and the Smritis, a god, or a sage, or some other extra- ordinary being is taken up and lifted, as it were, out of its own nature and idealized into Brahman, and is then worship- ped. Says the Adwaitin, ‘Is not everything Brahman when the name and the form have been removed from it’. ‘ Is not He, the Lord, the innermost self of every one?’ says the Visishtddwaitin, of even the worship of the Adityas^ etc.. Brahman Him- self bestows, because he is the Ruler of all,” says S^ankara in his BrahmaSutra-Bhdshya ^ sailor; q?r: n^3 ^ “ Here in this way does Brahman become the object of worship, because He, as Brahman^ is superposed on the PratiMs, just as Vishnu, etc., are superposed upon images, &c."
The same ideas apply to the worship of the Pratimds as do to that of the Pratikds; that is to say, if the image stands for a god or a saint, the worship is not the result of Bhakti, and does not lead to liberation; but if it stands for the one God, the wor- ship thereof will bring both Bhakti and Mukti. Of the principal religions of the world we see Vedantism, Buddhism, and certain forms of Christianity freely using images; only two religions, Mahomedanisra and Protestantism, refuse such help. Yet the Mahomedans use the graves of their saints and martyrs almost in the place of images; the Protestants, in rejecting all concrete helps to religion, are drifting away every year farther and farther from spirituality, and at present there is scarcely any difference between the advanced Protestants and the followers of Auguste Comte, or the Agnostics who preach ethics alone. Again, in Christianity and Mahomedanism what- ever exists of image-worship is made to fall under that category in which the Prattkd or the Pratimd is worshipped in itself but not as a “ help to the vision” of God; therefore it is at best only of the nature of ritualistic Karma, and cannot produce either Bhakti or Mukti. In this form of image-worship the allegiance of the soul is given to other things than /Aaro, and, therefore, such use of images or graves, of temples or tombs, is real idolatry; yet it is in itself neither sinful nor 5 34 wicked — it is a rite — a Karma, and worshippers must and will get the fruit thereof.
The Chosen Ideal The next thing to be considered is what we know as Ishta Nislithd. One who aspires to be a Bhakta must know that “ so many opinions are so many ways.” He must know that all the various sects of the various religions are the various manifestations of the glory of the same Lord. “ They call You by so many names; they divide Yon, as it were, by different names, yet in each one of these is to be found Your omnipotence You reach the worshipper through all of the.se; neither is there any.speciality of time so long as the soul has intense love for You...You are so easy of approach; it is my mi.sfortune that I cannot love You.” Not only this, the Bhakta must take care not to hate, nor even to criticize, those radiant sons of light who are the founders of various sects; he has not even to hear them spoken ill (d. Very few, indeed, are those who are at once the possessors of an extensive sym- pathy and power of appreciation as well as an intensity of love. We find as a rule that liberal and.sympatlietie sects lose the intensity of religious feeling, «nd in their hands reli- gion is apt to degenerate into a kind of politico-sucial club life. On the other hand intensely narrow sectaries, whilst displaying a very commendable love of their own ideals, are seen to have acquired every particle of that love by hating every one who is not exactly of the same opinion as they are. Would to God that, this world was full of men who were as intense in their love as world-wide in their sympathies' But such are only few and far between. Yet we know that it is practicable to educate large numbers of human beiogs into the ideal of a wonderful blend- ing of both the width and the intensity of love; and the way to do tjiat is by this path of the Ishta Nishthd or the “chosen ideal.’^ Every sect of every religion presents only one ideal of its own to mankind, but the eternal Vedaiitic religion opens to mankind an intinite number of doors for ingress into the inner shrine of Divinity, and places before humanity an almost inexhaustible array of idenls, there being in each of them a manifestation of the Eternal One. With the kindest solicitude the Vedanta points out to aspiring men and women the numerous roads hewn out of the solid rock of the realities of human life by the glorious sons, or human manifestations, of God in the past and in the present, and stands with outstretched arms to welcome all — to welcome even those that are yet to be — to that Homo of Truth and that Ocean of Bliss wherein the human soul liberated out of the net of Mdyd may transport itself with per- fect freedom and with eternal joy.
Bhakti-Yofja, therefore, Jays on us the imperative command not to hate or deny any one of the various paths that lead to salvation. Yet the growing plant must be hedged around to protect it until it has grown into a tree. The tender plant of spirituality will die if exposed too early to the action of a constant change of ideas and ideals. Many people, in the name of what may be called religious liberalism, may be seen to be feeding their idle curiosity with a continuous succession of different ideals. With them hearing new things grows into a sort of disease, a sort of religious drink-mania. They want to hear new things just to get a sort of temporary nervous ex- citement, and, when one such exciting influence has had its effect on them, they are ready for another. Religion is with these people a sort of intellectual opium-eatiug, and there it ends. “ There is another sort of men,» says Bhagavan Rama, krishna. “ who are like the pearl oyster of the story. The pearl oyster leaves its bed at the bottom of the sea, and comes up to the surface to catch the rain water when the star Sv&ti is in the ascendant. It floats about on the surface of the sea with its shell wide open until it has succeeded in catching a drop of the rain water, and then it dives deep down to its sea- bed and there rests until it has succeeded in fashioning a beautiful pearl out of that rain drop.”
This is indeed the most poetical and forcible way in which the theory of Ishta Nishtfid has ever been put. This Eka Nishthdy or devotion to one ideal is absolutely necessary for the beginner in the practice of religious devotion. He must say with Hanuman in the Rdmdi/ana — “ Though I know that the Lord of Sri and the Lord of Janaki are one and the same manifestation of the hame Supreme Being, yet my all in all is the lotus-eyed Rama;” or, as was said by the sage Tulasid&s, he must say — “ Take the sweetness of all, sit with all take the name of all, say yea, yea, but keep your seat firm.” Then, if the devotional aspirant is sincere, out of this little seed will come out a gigantic tree like the Indian banyan sending branch after branch and root after root to all sides, till it covers the entire field of reli- gion. Thus will the true devotee realize that He who was his own ideal in life is worshipped in all ideals by all sects, under all names, and through all forms.
The Method and the Means.
In regard to the method and the means of Bhakti'Yogavfe read in the commentary of Bhagavan R^lmanuja on the Vedanta Sutras: — ‘‘The attaining of That comes through discrimi- nation, ooti trolling the passions, practice, sacrificial work, puri- ty, strength, and suppression of excessive joy.” Viveka or discrimination is, according to Ramanuja, the discriminating, among other things, the pure food from the impure. Accordinjf to him, food becomes impure from three causes: namely, (1) by the nature of the food itself, as in the case of garlic,etc.; (2) owing to its coming from wicked and accursed persons; and (3) from physical impurities, such as dirt, or hair, etc. The Srutis say, “ When the food is pure the Sattva elements gets purified, the memory becomes unwavering,” and RAraftnuja quotes this from the Chhdndogya Upanishad.
The question of food has always been one of the most vital with the Bhaktas. Apart from the extravagance into which some of the Bhakti sects have run, there is a great truth underlying this question of food. We must remember that, according to the Sdnkhya philosophy the sattva^ rajas, and tamas, which in the state of homogeneous equilibrium form the Prakriti and in tlie heterogeneous disturbed condition form the universe, are both the substance and the quality of Prakriti. As such they are the materials out of which every hnraan form has been manu- factured, and the predominance of the sattva material is what is absolutely necessary for spiritual development. The mate- rials which we receive through our food into our body-stiucture go a great way to determine our mental constitution; therefore the food we eat has to be particularly taken care of. However, in this matter as in others, the fanaticism into which the dis- ciples invariably fall is not to be laid at the door of the masters.
And this discrimination of food is after all of Pecondary im- portance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by S'ankara in his BhUhya on the Upaniehads in a different way by giving an entirely different meaning to the word dhwra, trans- lated generally as food. According to him, “ That which is gathered iu ia AMm. The knowledge of the sengationg gnch as aound, ete., is gathered in for the enjoyment of the etqoyer (self); the purification of the knowledge which gathers in the 38 perception of the senses is the purifying of the food (dhdra). The word ‘ purification -of-food’ means the acquiring of the know- ledge of sensations untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion; such is the meaning. Therefore, such knowledge or dhdra being purified the material of the possessor of it — the internal oigan — will become purified, and the sattva being purified an unbroken memory of the infinite One who has been known in His real nature will result.”
These two explanations are apparently conflicting, yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what may be called the finer body, viz.^ the mind, are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh. But the control of the grosser is absolutely necessary to enable one to arrive at the control of the finer. The beginner, therefore, must pay particular attention to all such dietetic rules as have come down from the line of his accredited teach- ers; but the extravagant, meaningless fanaticism, which has driven religion entirely to the kitchen, as may be noticed in the case of many of our sects, without any hope of the noble truth of that religion cvercoming out to the sunlight of spirituality is a peculiar soit of pure and simple materialism. It is neither Gndna, nor BhaUi, nor Karma; it is a special kind of lunacy, and those who pin their souls to it are more likely to go to lunatic asylums than to Brahma4oka. So it stands to reason that dis- crimination in the choice of food is necessary for the attainment of this higher state of mental composition which can not be easily obtained otherwise.
Controlling the passions is the next thing to be attended to. To restrain the Indriyas (organs) from going towards the objects of the senses, to control them and^briug them under the guidance of the will is the very central virtue in religious 39 oalture. Then comes the jTactineof self restraint and self denial. All the immense possibilities of divine renlisatioa in the soul cannot get aotualised without struggle and without such practice on the part of the aspiring devotee. “ The mind must always think of the Lord.” It is very hard at first to compel the mind to think of the Lord always, but with every new effort the power to do so grows stronger in us. “By practice, oh son of Kunti, and by non-attachment is It attained,^ says S'ri Krishna in the Gita. And then as to sacrificial work it is understood that the five great sacrifices have to be performed as usual.
as usual.
Purity is absolutely the basic work, the bed-rock upon which the whole BhaJeti-huilding rests. Cleansing the ex- ternal body and discriminating the food are both easy, but without internal (deanline.ss and witliout purity, these ex- ternal observances are of no value whatsoever. In the list of the qualities conducive to purity, as given by Kamrinuja, there are enumerated, Safya, truthfulness; Arjava, sin- cerity; Bttyd, doing good to others without any gain to one’s self; Ahimsdf not injuring others by thonglit or word or deed; Ahhidhyd, not coveting other's goods, not thinking vain thoughts, and not brooding over injuries rc(;eived from another. In this list the one idea that deserves special notice is non-injury to others. This duty of non-injury, so to speak of it, is obligatory on us in relation to all beings; »s with some, it does not simply mean the not-injuring of human beings and mercilessness towards the lower animals; nor, as with some others, does it mean the protecting of cats and dogs and the feeding of ants with sugar, with liberty to injure brother man in every horrible way. It is remarkable that almost every good idea in this world can be carried to a disgusting extreme. A good practice carried 40 40 to an extreme and worked in accordance with tbe letter of the law becomes a positive evil. The stinking monks of cer tain religions sects, who do not bathe lest the vermin on their bodies should be killed, never think of the discomfort and disease they bring to their fellow human beings. They do not, how- ever, belong to the religion of the Vedas!
The test of Ahimsd is absence of jealousy. Any man may do a good deed or make a good gift on the spur of the moment, or under the pressure of some superstition or priestcraft; but the real lover of mankind is he who is jealous of none. The so-called great men of the world may all be seen to become jealous of each other for a small name, for a little fame, and for a few bits of gold. So long as this jealousy exists in a heart it is far away from the perfection of Ahimsd. The cow does not eat meat, nor does the sheep. Are they great Yogins^ great non-injurers (Ahimsakas)? Any fool may abstain from eating this or that; surely that gives him no more distinction than to herbivorous animals. The man who will mercilessly cheat widows and orphans, and do tlie vilest deeds for money, is worse than any brute, even if he lives entirely on grass alone. The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to any one, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy, that man is the Bhakta^ he is the Yogin, he is the Gum of all, even though he lives every day of his life on the flesh of swine. Therefore we must always remember that external practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity. It is better to have internal purity alone when minute attention to external observan- ces is not practicable. But woe unto the man and woe unto the nation, that forgets the real, internal, spiritual essentials of religion, and mechanically clutches with death-like grasp 4l all the external forms and never lets them go. The forms have value only so far as they are the expressions of the life within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy.
The next means to the attainment of Bhakti-Yoga is strength (anavasdda). “ This Atman is not to be attained by the weak,” says the ^ruti. Both physical weakness and men- tal weakness are meant here. “The strong, the hardy,” are the only fit students. What can puny, little, decrepit things do? They will break to pieces, whenever the mysterious forces of the body and mind are even slightly awakened by the practice of any of the Yogas. It is “ the young, the healthy, the strong” that can score success. Physical strength, therefore, is absolutely necessary. It is the strong body alone that can bear the shock of re-action resulting from the attempt to control the organs. He who wants to become a Bhakta must be sti'ong, must be healthy. When the miserably weak attempt any of the Yogas, they are likely to get some incurable malady, or they weaken their minds. Voluntarily weakening the body is really no prescription for spiritual enlightenment.
The mentally weak also cannot succeed in attaining the Atman. The person who aspires to be a Bhakta must be cheer- ful. In the Western world the ideal of a religious man is that he never smiles, that a dark cloud rau.st always hang over his face, which, again, must be lotig-drawn with the jaws almost collapsed. People with emaciated bodies and long faces are fit subjects for the physician, they are not Yogins. It is the cheer- ful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difliculties. And this, the hardest '•^taskof all, the cutting of our way out of the net of Mdyd, is the work reserved only for giant wills.
6 42 Yet at tbe same time excessive mirth should be avoided (anuddharsha). Excessive mirth makes us unfit for serious thought. It also flitters away the energies of the mind in vain. The stronger the will, the less the yielding to the sway of the emotions. Excessive hilarity is quite as objectionable as too much of sad seriousness, and all religious realisation is possible only when the mind is in a steady, peaceful condi- tion of harmonious equilibrium.
It is thus that one may begin to learn how to love the Lord.
PARA-BHAKTI.
OR SUPREME DEVOTION.
The Preparatory Renunciation.
We have now finished the consideration of what may be ' called the preparatory Bhaktiy and are entering on the stndy of :the Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. We have to speak of "jfc preparation to the practice of this Para-Bhakti. All such preparations are intended only for the purification of the soul., 'The repetition of names, the rituals, the forms, and the symbols, jail these various things are for the purification of the soul. The 'greatest purifier among all such things, a purifier without which no one can enter the regions of this higher devotion (Para- J Iihakti)y is renunciation. It is a frightening thing to many; yet, without it, there cannot be any spiritual growth. In all our I Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping stone ^^and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture — -renunciation. This is religion — renunciation. When the human soul draws back from the things of the world and tries to go Jinto deeper things; when man, the spirit which is here somehow be- ,^ng concretised and materialised, understands that he is thereby i^lgoing to be destroyed and to be reduced almost into mere matter, j;^nd turns his face away from matter; then begins renunciation, lihen begins real spiritual growth. The Karma-Yogins l^nunciation is in the shape of giving up all'ihe fruits of hi#, i;j>ctions; he is not attached to tho resglts of bis labors; he doea*.
44 not care for any reward here or hereafter. The Bdja^Yogin knows that the whole of nature is intended for the soul to acquire experience, and that the result of all the experiences of the soul is for it to become aware of its eternal separateness fiora nature. The human soul has to understand and realize that it has been spirit, and not matter, through eternity; and that this con- junction of it with matter is and can be only for a time- The Bnja-Yogm learns the lesson of renunciation through his own experience of nature. The Jndna-Yogin has the harshest of all renunciations to go through, as he lias to realise from the very first that the whole of this solid-looking nature is all an illusion. He has to understand that all that is any kind of manifestation of power in nature belongs to the soul, and not to nature. He has to know, from the very start, that all knowledge and all experiences are in the.soul, and not in nature; so he has at once and by the sheer force of rational conviction to tear himself off from all bondage to nature. He lets nature and all her things go, he lets them vanish and tries to stand alone!
Of all renunciations, the most natural, so to say, is that of the Bhakti-Yogin. Here there is no violence, nothing to give up, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from whicli we have violently to separate ourselves; the Bhaktas renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as the things around us. We see the manifestation of this sort of renunciation, although more or less in the cause of caricatures, every day around us. A man begins to love a woman; after a while he loves another, and the first woman he lets go. She drops out of his mind smoothly, gently, with- out his feeling tlie wantof her at all. A woman loves a man; she then begins to love another man, and the first one drops off from her mind quite naturally. A man loves his own 46 city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense love for his little city drops oE smoothly, naturally. Again, a man learns to love the vrhole world; his love for his country, his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off, without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence. Uncultured man loves the pleasures of the eenses intensely; as he becomes cultured he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense-enjoy- ments become less and less. No man can enjoy a meal with the same gusto of pleasure as a dog or a wolf, but those pleasures, which a man gets from intellectual experiences and achieve- ments, the dog can never enjoy. At first, pleasure is in association with the lower senses; but as soon as an animal reaches a higher plane of existence, the lower kind of pleasures becomes less intense. In human society the nearer the man is to the animal, the stronger is his pleasure in the senses; and the higher and the more cultured the man is, the greater is his pleasure in intellectual and such other finer pursuits. So, when a man gets even higher than the plane of the intellect, higher than that of mere thought, when he gets to the plane of spirituality and of divine inspiration, he finds there a state of bliss, compared to which all thepleasnies of the senses, or even of the intellect, are as nothing. When the moon shines brightly all the stars become dim, and when the sun shines the moon herself becomes dim. The renunciation necessary for the attainment of Bhakti is not obtained by killing any- thing, but just comes in as naturally as, in the presence of an increasingly stronger light, the less intense ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself, That love of God grows and assumes 4^ a form which is called Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions, and sects, countries and nation- alities, all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God. Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks get loosened and freely float on the water. Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free. So, in this renunciation auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no dryness, no struggle, no repression or sup- pression. The Bhakia has not to suppress any single one of his emotions, he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.
The Bhakta’s Renunciation Results from Love.
We see love everywhere in nature. Whatever in society is good and great and sublime, is the working out of that love; whatever in society is very bad, nay diabolical, is also the ill- directed w'orking out of the same emotion of love. It is this same emotion that gives us the pure and holy conjugal love between husband and wife, as well as the sort of love which goes to satisfy the lowest forms of animal passion. The emotion is the same, but ils manifestation is different in the different cases. It is the same feeling of love, well or ill directed, that impels one man to do good and to give all he has to the poor, while it makes another man cut the throats of his brethren and take away all their possessions. The former loves others as much as the latter loves himself. The direction of the love is bad in the case of this latter, but it is right and proper in the other case. The same fire that cooks a meal for us may burn 49