All-Consuming Devotion to God

Divine Life Society Publication: In The Light of Devotion by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana and dhyana are the seven accessories of yoga. Dhyana or the meditation itself is of seven kinds,  and it is attended with seven kinds of transformations. With this I have given in a nutshell the essence of the teachings of yoga philosophy, psychology and its practice. This does not mean that the methods of meditation are completely exhausted by the yoga system of Patanjali. There are also other methods of meditation—for example the bhakti method. The devotees of God have their own ways of contemplating God. Their way is not necessarily this analytical, psychological and philosophical method of Patanjali. Their method is more of love, longing and even weeping for God. Only the saints who love God exclusively can tell us what love of God truly is. It is impossible to describe love of God, as we also cannot describe what God is. Even saints and sages who had this experience refuse to explain it, because it cannot be explained.

The love of God is a love that we are having for creation as a whole, because God is manifested in the world. These saints who loved God loved the world, and they made no distinction between the two. Their hearts went out to the Beloved, and we can imagine what it might mean for a heart to go for something beloved. Those who have lived in the world will know what it is for a heart to be moved, and what it means for a heart to go for something it deeply loves. It is not our senses going, not our personality going, and not our speech going—it is something else that goes. Our soul is moved. Nobody can say what it is actually, because we cannot know what happens when a soul is moved. We cease to be anymore when our soul is moved towards something.

When our personality in its manifestation as the sense organs, the mental faculty and so on is moved, we may be aware of what is happening. But when our soul is moved, we cannot know what is happening—just something happens, that is all. Love of God is a sudden, ultimate transformation in which the mind longs for God alone and does not want anything else. This cannot be explained with any amount of philosophical analysis. We can know it only to some extent by study of the lives of saints. Study the life of Christ, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Theresa, of Gauranga Mahaprabhu and of the great acharyas who founded the bhakti cults in India. Read the Srimad Bhagavata Purana and read about the love of the gopis for Lord Krishna. We will be wonderstruck as to how this level of love could exist. Is it possible? Can we conceive of such a thing? But that is love of God. The love of God has again certain stages of development. It does not suddenly drop from the skies. The bhakti scriptures describe elaborate processes of the development of love for God. These are very strange things and are especially unknown to people in the West. It is not that devotees of God did not live in the West—there were some—but they were more prominent in the Eastern countries, and especially in India.

For those who are interested in the study of this psychology of the intense love of God or devotion, I would suggest one or two books—the most prominent being the one written by a disciple of Gauranga Mahaprabhu, the great saint of Bengal, namely, Bhaktirasam Ratasindhu. It is a very beautiful book. Bhaktirasam Ratasindhu means ‘the ocean of the essence of devotion’. This book is published in its English translation by the ‘Institute of Philosophy’ in Vrindavan. We should also read the Srimad Bhagavata Purana. We should read it in the original, but of course those who don’t read Sanskrit can read it in any good translation. The third one is the Narada Bhakti Sutras. This is one book worth reading, and it is a very exhaustive work. We can have an idea through these books about the approach of the devotee to God.

The devotee of God generally regards God not merely as an Absolute in the philosophical sense. It is very difficult to love God in the absoluteness of His being, though there is one stage of devotion which is compatible with the highest of philosophical knowledge. They call it ‘parachute’ or supreme devotion, where devotion becomes identical with knowledge. That is however something very difficult to understand. In ordinary language when we speak of devotion to God, we mean love of God as someone or something, and not everything or nothing. The devotee does not regard God here as everything, as one school of philosophy would say, or God as nothing, as another school says. He is something and is someone whom the devotee can approach with an expectation of response from Him. The God of the devotee is one who responds to the love of the devotee. If there were no response, we could not love, so God responds to the devotees’ calls.

The Srimad Bhagavadgita is the ‘mother’ of all the texts of devotion, but it is a very elevated text, and it is difficult for a beginner to extract the essence out of it. I didn’t suggest it as one of the texts of bhakti yoga, though it also is a very great aid in understanding the devotion to God. In one of the verses of the Srimad Bhagavadgita, God is said to take care of the devotee fully, and that the only responsibility of the devotee is to love God—he has no other responsibility. He does not have to study books or to go to school or do this and that. He has no responsibility, no function to perform, and no other yoga except for intense thinking, longing and loving of God. As I said, God is conceived by the devotees as someone who can respond to this affection. “Oh God, please come! I am dying of separation from you.” When such a cry comes from the devotee, God should be able to respond to that cry. That is the essence of devotion, and we can easily imagine what could be the concept of God in the mind of such a devotee who wants an immediate response. It might be like the child wanting a response from the parent, like a friend expecting a response from a friend, the servant expecting a response from the master, or the husband expecting a response from the wife, or she from him. The human expectation of a sympathetic response is sublimated into a divine emotion in love of God.

Excerpts from: All-Consuming Devotion to God - In The Light of Devotion by Sri Swami Krishnananda