ATTACHMENT TO GOD or DEVOTION
“MY BHAKTI”
After listening to so much of debate on matters relating to my way of life which has tremendously changed from that of my parents and grand parents, I felt that there was a need for me to clarify some of the issues regarding my attachment to God and my devotion for the sake of my future generation. Although I was raised as a Hindu, I can no longer enjoy the increasing imposture and so many aspects of double dealings and sanctimony that the current confused religious leaders are unilaterally imposing on us. Many ceremonies and ways are only an aspect of show-off and puppetry which in simple terms can be termed as hypocrisy or dhakosla, dhong and pakhand.
Therefore, I have decided to be an original Hindu where and when absolute freedom was given to a devotee to perform the devotional activities and refrain from all the hypocrisies that are now emerging to harm the new breed of followers. These are my personal views and opinions and people other than those who agree with me are free to go on living with their dubious, boloney and sanctimonious beliefs. I have no qualms with that but would press on regardless.
The term Bhakti means 'to be attached to God'. Bhajan, worship, Bhakti, Anurag, Prem, Priti are synonymous Hindi terms. Bhakti is love for love's sake. The devotee wants God and God alone. There is no selfish expectation here. There is no fear also. The devotee feels, believes, conceives and imagines that his feeling is an Ocean of Love.
Bhakti is the slender thread of love that binds the heart of a devotee with the Lord. Bhakti is intense devotion and supreme attachment to God. Bhakti is supreme love for God. It is the spontaneous out-pouring of love and devotion towards the Beloved. It is pure, unselfish, divine love. There is not a bit of bargaining or expectation of anything here. This higher feeling is indescribable in words. It has to be sincerely experienced by the devotee. Bhakti is a sacred, higher emotion with sublime sentiments that unites the devotees with the Lord.
Let us see how love develops. First faith arises, 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 may have 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 DEVOTION
Bhakti is of various kinds. One classification is DESIRE FOR MATERIAL GAINS and the other is UNSELFISH DEVOTION. Whatever you want the Lord will certainly give you, if your devotion is intense and if your prayers are sincerely offered from the bottom of your heart. But you will not get supreme satisfaction, immortality and Moksha through selfish devotion.
Your Bhakti should always be unselfish. God has already given you a good life, position, a good job, family, wife and children and enough wealth. Be contented with these. Aspire for nothing more than just attachment with the Lord. 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 attributes like wisdom, renunciation, power, love and knowledge. You will be able to see the Lord with your inner eye. He will help you to dwell in Him. At the same time He will give you all the divine attributes without asking for He is the one who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
The beginners decorate an image of God with flowers and garlands, ring the bell, offer food-offerings, wave lights and perform other ceremonial things. Nothing belongs to us because everything is God given therefore it is futility in offering anything that is His to Him. He does not want anything else but our love and devotion. So there is no real need for us to observe any dissembling rituals and ceremonies. These are for self satisfaction and concocted by people for their own benefits. The devotee should regard the Lord as a Supreme Person, who is immanent or inherent in that image and who can be propitiated or appeased through that form only.
He has no expanded heart. He is a sectarian. He dislikes other kinds of devotees who worship other gods. We must see the Lord and Lord alone everywhere and feel His Power manifest as the entire universe. In our prayers we do say that "Thou art all-pervading; Thou art the Supreme Light, in whose borrowed light the sun, the moon, the stars and the fire shine.”
Thus the devotee who recognizes the transcendental nature of God may take the 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 as an offering in worship. When you pass through the bazaar and see a sweetmeat shop, mentally offer all the sweetmeats as food to the Lord. Such practices will lead to divine devotion and will help us save on money, time and efforts and instead of wasting food and foliage we should give these to the needy and the poor to use.
Let us go from stage to stage. Just as a flower grows in the garden, so also gradually develop love and devotion in the garden of our heart. The enemy of devotion is egoism and desire. Where there is no Kama or desire, there alone will be the Lord Himself. The enemies of peace and devotion are lust, anger and greed. Anger destroys your peace and your health also. When a person abuses you, keep peaceful. When blood begins to boil, it is impoverished. You lose vitality if you become a prey to fits of temper.
HOW TO CULTIVATE DEVOTION
It would be a gross mistake if you consider devotion as merely a stage of emotionalism, while it is actually 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 up to the highest form of cosmic realisation of your oneness with Him.
Rather than wasting our time, energy and funds on unnecessary and obsolete ceremonies and hypocrisy we can achieve this by following various fundamental factors such as the practice of continuous thinking of God; or being anti discriminatory; or freedom from everything else and longing for God; or truthfulness; or straightforwardness; or doing good to others; or wishing well-being to all; or compassion; or non-injury; or charity; and or cheerfulness and optimism.
I have had some people put a question to me: "How can we love God whom we have not seen?"
Live in the company of knowledgeable people. Hear the glory and fame of God. Study the sacred scriptures. Worship Him first in His one form as manifested in the world. Worship the Lord or your Guru. Recite His Name. Sing His glories. Pray in your home which is the best temple. You will naturally develop deep love for God.
Every human act must be done that awakens the emotion of devotion. Keep your heart the worship room pure and clean always. Decorate your internal self. Light a lamp inside you. All these and other similar believable activities produce a benign influence on the mind and elevate the mind. They generate piety. They help to create the necessary feeling to invoke the God that you want to worship. The mind will be easily concentrated.
Practice of right conduct, prayer, worship, interaction with knowledgeable people service to the mankind, service of the poor and the sick with divine feeling, observance of family duties, offering of all actions and their fruits to the Lord, feeling the presence of the Lord in all beings, renunciation of earthly enjoyments and wealth, charity, austerities and vows, practice of non violence- all these will help you to develop devotion to God.
There is no room whatsoever for any form of bargaining with the God by asking Him to help you and you will perform a particular ceremonial activity. We cannot be an ideal devotee if we are not able to regard everyone as equal and have respect for all the ways of life of all human beings irrespective of their colour, creed and beliefs.
ABSOLUTE FEELINGS OF SELF-FORGETFULNESS IN DEVOTION
When the devotee grows in devotion there is absolute feeling of self-forgetfulness (Bhav). This establishes a true relationship between the devotee and the Lord. This self-forgetfulness then grows into extreme self-forgetfulness wherein the devotee lives, moves and has his being in the Lord. This is the consummation of love or Supreme Love.
There are many kinds of absolute feelings of self-forgetfulness we can display towards the Almighty and these feelings are natural to human beings and so these are easy to practice whichever suits our temperament.
In the peaceful devotion the devotee does not jump, sing loudly with loud music or goes wild musically and dances. He is not highly emotional. His heart is filled with love and joy. A quiet corner in the home is the best temple. This is enough to mediate.
Then there is service to the Almighty where the devotee prays regularly and finds joy and bliss in the service of mankind.
When the devotee accepts God as a friend, as Arjun had this feeling towards Lord Krishna, the devotee moves with the Lord on equal terms. Arjun and Krishna used to sit, eat, talk and walk together as intimate friends. We can do this as well.
Then the devotee looks upon God as a child like Yasoda and Basdeo who had this feeling with Lord Krishna and Dashrath and Kaushalya had the same feeling for Lord Rama. There is no fear in this feeling, because God is your pet child. The devotee serves, feeds, and looks upon God as a mother does in the case of her child.
There are other feelings for the Lord where the devotee regards the Lord as the Lover. This was the relation between Radha and Krishna and Meera and Krishna. This is total submission to the Lord. The lover and the beloved become one. The devotee and God feel one with each other and still maintain separateness in order to enjoy the bliss of the play of love between them. This is oneness in separation and separation in oneness. Of course, our scriptures have many examples of absolute devotion where people like Sabri and Kewat become one with the Lord.
This kind of absolute feeling of self-forgetfulness is absolutely different from conjugality of earthly experience. One should not be mistaken for the other. Earthly conjugality is purely selfish and is undertaken only because it gives pleasure to one's own self. But in love for God it is because it gives pleasure to God and not for the sake of the devotee. Divine love is not selfish. It is born of truth, beauty and goodness whereas earthly lust is born of attachment to bodies. Earthly conjugality is the outcome of egoistic self-regarding egoistic feeling, while divine communion is the outcome of other-regarding feeling devoid of egoism. Strong selfishness is the root of worldly passion; divine love is the product of loss of egoism.
This is the greatest difference between lust and divine love. The two are related as darkness is related to light. No development of earthly affection, however perfect it may be, can lead one to supreme joy of divine communion. Lust lurks in the heart due to the passion that burns in the core of things. Divine love should be known to the all of us of this world, however unreligious we may be. The secret of divine love cannot be understood, and should not be tried to be understood, so long as man is only a man and woman only a woman. The austere transformation of the human into the divine is the beginning of true love for God.
Devotion to God is developed in many different ways as said previously. It is supreme attachment to God through an absolute feeling of self-forgetfulness predominant in the devotee. Intense love is the common factor in all these modes. Exclusive love for God is expressed through various methods. All devotions of this type are above the formalities of the world. They are untouched by the laws of human way of life and are out and out concerned with God.
Good conduct and discipline which are in accordance with perfect human moral law are an auxiliary to pure devotion and it follows that the true devotion comes to us wherever we go and whatever we do. There is no place for false, obsolete and unwanted traditional and ceremonial activities. Freedom to be with the Lord is the essence of devotion. There is no one way to be with the Lord. God does not want any double- dealing or puppetry.
One cannot develop true devotion to God if one is crooked in his heart, dirty in ones thinking and is unnecessarily argumentative on obsolete and outdated religious issues. Logic and rational thinking is part of deep devotion.
People can still have objects of love in this world and possess worldly things or have an honest family life. There is no need to starve or torture our body but look after our health well by eating nourishing food and being with the Lord. Detachment from all objects will not form a good part of devotion but sound discipline would lead us to be with the Lord. In fact this is what He would prefer the most. Love for the world and love for the Lord are inseparable conditions. We can conduct our family, business and personal life as the Lord dictates by being honest in all our deeds. That is devotion for the modern human being.
I believe that there are multiple forms of devotion and these include:
A devotee can practice any method of devotion which suits him best. Through that he will attain divine illumination.
The devotee should develop an impartial knowledge of the way of life that a good human being should follow without getting bogged into the irrelevant and unnecessary ceremonial activities. The enlightened devotee should try his best to live in the ideals that promote truth, beauty and goodness. I cannot put more emphasis on this issue. There is no place for any hypocrisy or to display any sanctimony and puppetry in becoming a devotee of God. An honest devotee should become liberated, be totally free from all forms of dissemblance or double dealing and enjoy the Supreme Bliss.
Worship can be done either with external materials or merely through an internal feeling or any other stronger feeling. The latter one is an advanced form of worship which only people who have more purified intellect and less boloney can do. The purpose of worship is to please the Lord, to purify the heart through surrender of the ego and love of God. There should be no “stage show” for devotion.
No amount of visits to temples or sacred places would assist a person to become a good devotee. The scriptures cannot be followed blindly to do the activities related to devotion. A good devotee would always think clearly, logically and rationally to conduct any ceremonial activities that maintain tradition but if any change is necessary then it should be done as the devotee thinks fit and proper. There should be no compulsion from anyone and the devotees should have the complete freedom to practice the way of life that best suits them. There should not be any blind following because this would reveal ignorance and stupidity.
I believe that it is good to be always with the Lord, to treat Him as one's own dear relative or a friend belonging to one's own family, to be in His company at all times, and to love Him as one's own self. This is how I see as my devotion to the Lord. How do friends, real friends, love in this world? What amount of love do they possess between one another? Such a love should be developed towards God instead of towards mankind alone so that our physical love turns into spiritual love. There is a transformation of the mundane into the Eternal.
If the devotee offers everything to God, including his body, mind and soul and he keeps nothing for himself to lose even his own self then he has no personal and independent existence. He has given up his self for God. He has become part and parcel of God. God takes care of him and God treats him as Himself. Grief and sorrow, pleasure and pain, the devotee treats as gifts sent by God and does not attach him to them. He considers himself as a follower of God and an instrument in the hands of God. The devotee then sees the image of God in every living thing.
This self-surrender is Absolute Love for God exclusively. There is nothing but God-consciousness in the devotee. Even against his own wishes, the devotee shall become one with God and lose his individuality. This is the law of being. 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.
It is indeed very sad that some people who have ascertained religious strength have begun to dictate terms to do things and perform ceremonies in their particular way and to their particular liking and financial gains. This is one of the reasons why the right thinking people are distancing themselves from obsolete and unnecessary religious ceremonies and matters.
FRUITS OF DEVOTION
Absolute devotion in any person 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 wheel of births and deaths. He attains the immortal abode of everlasting peace, bliss and knowledge. The atma or the soul merges with the Lord or paramatma after death. The reincarnation of soul comes to an end.
The fruit of devotion is appropriate knowledge to lead a good way of life rather than be bogged down in unnecessary and unwarranted ceremonies that have no meaning and substance for modern living. This knowledge intensifies our devotion. Knowledge or wisdom will dawn by itself when you practice Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti is the pleasant, smooth, direct road to God. Bhakti is sweet in the beginning, sweet in the middle and sweet in the end. It gives the highest, undeceiving bliss. Every person has the right to conduct the religious ceremonies the way they like, when they like it and at what place to perform these. There is no compulsion when it comes to devotion.
Therefore I feel that we should kindle love divine in our hearts and mind, for this is the immediate way to the Kingdom of God and a better way to live and enjoy life on this earth and beyond. I will continue to pray to the Lord, sing His glory, recite His Name and try to become a channel of His grace the way and place I prefer. I will not only seek His will and do His will but will surrender to His will. I will not worry too much about the past obsolete and unnecessary traditional and ceremonial practices of any community or society. A good human being is a perfect Hindu for me.
When I surrender unto the Lord I am confident that He will become my charioteer on the field of life. He will drive my chariot well. I will reach the destination, the Abode of Immortal Bliss, my Nirvana. Nothing else matters to me.
My initial prayer is simple.
Asato Maa Sad Gamaya
Tamaso Maa Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityor Maa Amritam Gamaya
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti
Oh Lord, lead me from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality.
Give me Peace, Make my life Peaceful and help me attain Peace in my words, deeds and thoughts.
I wake up or go to sleep with my prayers. I love to recite the Gayatri Mantra as and when I feel the need and urge.
Om Bhur Bhuva Swaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat
God is dear to us like our own soul, He is the Dispeller of our pains, and Giver of happiness. We meditate on the supremely adorable Light of the Divine Creator, that it may His radiant power inspire our thought and understanding and illuminate our intellect. O God destroy our sins and direct our mental faculties in the right direction to give us peace and prosperity.
Once everyday I recite my Maha Mrityunjaya.
OM. Tryambakam Yajamahe, Sugandhim Pushti-Vardhanam, Urvarukamiva Bandhanaan, Mrityor MukshiYa mamritaat .
I concentrate on my third eye which lies behind the two eyes and this gives me the power to feel the presence of Almighty God and by this I feel happy, satisfied and peaceful in life. I know that immortality is not possible but some extension can be given to my death by the supreme powers of the Lord. Like the cucumber I treasure within me the three most important elements of humanity and they are truth, beauty and goodness.
Of course I end my day with my urge for personal and universal peace.
Om Dhew Shanti Antarikshaguang
Shanti Prithvi Shanti Rewa Shanti Roshadaya
Shanti Vanaspataya Shanti Vishvayedeva
Shanti Brahma Shanti Sarva Shanti Reva
Shanti Saama Shanti Redhi
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti
May there be peace in the heavenly region; may there be peace in the atmosphere, peace may reign on the earth, the waters of ocean and rivers be cool, the herbs be healed, the plants become peace-giving, may there be harmony in the celestial objects and perfection in knowledge, everything in the universe be peace, may peace pervade everywhere. May that peace come to me and to all of us.
This is the spiritual side of my life and I love it very much.
