Only Bhakti is the path of joy
In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna describes the joy that a devotee feels in the execution of devotional service. Those who emphasize the jnana, karma and yoga practices described in the Gita have no understanding of how the bhakta experiences such joy in his love for the Lord and the association of other devotees.
Their minds fixed on me, their lives totally dedicated to me, they spend their time in explaining the path of devotion to one another. Speaking of me constantly, they feel intense delight and pleasure. [Gita 10.9]
The Bhagavata Purana also describes the joy the devotee feels in the company of other devotees.
If you have the good fortune to be in the company of devotees, you will hear of my glories, which are like magic medicine for the ears and heart. By becoming absorbed in these talks, you will quickly traverse the path of liberation, from faith, to joy, to love. (SB 3.25.25)
Swami Veda Bharati paraphrases Vyasa's Bhashya to YS 2.14, "For ordinary people, pain is felt to be discordant with one's own nature, whereas the yogi has this feeling of natural discordance whether he experiences either pleasure or pain."
The bhakta experiences a similar discord whenever he even hears of the notion of kaivalya or mukti, where consciousness and the object of consciousness are so merged as to make any awareness of an Other impossible.
Is it possible to have being without an object of being? Perhaps... But what is the meaning of being if it be like that of a rock or a lump of clay?
Is it possible to have consciousness without an object of consciousness? Perhaps, but what is the meaning of such consciousness? What is its purpose? What is its joy?
Is it possible to have bliss without love? And is it possible to have love without an object of love? And the supreme bliss must come in relation to the Most Complete Being, the fountainhead of all being, consciousness and bliss.
No wonder Prabodhananda says that being "solo" (kaivalya) is hell. My apologies to all my yogi friends and to Swami Veda himself. I cannot stop feeling this way. I love yoga and I love my yogi friends, but for me, kaivalyaṁ narakāyate. Or like our Raghunath Das says, kathā mukti-vyāghryā na śṛṇu kila sarvātma-gilanīḥ: "Don't even listen to the talks of liberation. They are like a tiger which will surely swallow your soul."
Bhakti is the natural condition of the soul. One must cultivate BOTH Oneness and Otherness. But recognizing the Other is in itself a path to the Oneness of love. Oneness without Otherness contradicts the natural relation of the part to the whole.
Some say that to become Brahman means to become Love itself. This is actually closer to the Vaishnava view, but is still inadequate. Yes, Love is the all-pervading Ground of Being, but if the Supreme Truth is Love, then variety, distinction, even that of God and individual soul, must be eternal!
The proper understanding of aham brahmāsmi is that we become Love, and that we become one with the object of Love in love. In his inconceivable nature, God is the one, undifferentiated Absolute, who in order to fully manifest his potential for love, divides himself into the infinite multiplicity of human experience. To describe or experience the former without the latter is an inadequate description or experience of the Absolute.
If you have become love, then have you lost your personhood or kept it? Does love exist without a subject and an object? As soon as there is love there must be both! And such love can only exist within the matrix of the individual soul's love for the Supreme Soul and the reciprocation of that love through grace.
Please don't take offense. I believe in the sincerity of all seekers. And I respect each and everyone's niṣṭhā. But I was taught long ago that the desire for liberation was the "last snare of nescience," and I cannot give up the conviction that this is the truth. The desire for liberation is the trap of sattva-guna; it is the refusal to give up the last latent bahir-mukhatā or reluctance to serve God, in other words, to give up one's own claim to actually be God.
But what kind of God must we become to become God!! On the way we accumulate a few mystic powers, but those too we must give up to become the salt dissolved into the ocean, the ghaṭākāśa become paṭākāśa, or to become floating monads in a sea of undifferentiation. To become god we must give up the very jewel of our personhood.
And even when we pretend to try to attenuate our egoistic desire for liberation by a Bodhisattva doctrine of delaying liberation or nirvāṇa until "all souls are liberated", it is still a false love, because we only seek to make them too "negative" Gods in the same image: "the-grapes-are-sour-gods" "sore-loser" gods.
Enlightenment without service to the personal God is darkness. You can be one with God, but you cannot BE God. Freedom from suffering is only half of the hen, the other half, the positive half, is love of God. The bhaktas have things to learn from yogis and jnanis and karmis, but the fundamental Truth is that we are eternal servants of God, and liberation from anarthas only serves to makes us more perfect servants. If we abandon the positive half, what does it gain us to be rid of the negative?
mac-cittā mad-gata-prāṇā
bodhayantaḥ parasparam |
kathayantaś ca māṁ nityaṁ
tuṣyanti ca ramanti ca ||
Their minds fixed on me, their lives totally dedicated to me, they spend their time in explaining the path of devotion to one another. Speaking of me constantly, they feel intense delight and pleasure. [Gita 10.9]
The Bhagavata Purana also describes the joy the devotee feels in the company of other devotees.
satāṁ prasangāt mama vīrya-saṁvido
bhavanti hṛt-karṇa-rasāyanāḥ kathāḥ
taj-joṣaṇād āśv apavarga-vartmani
śraddhā ratir bhaktir anukramiṣyati
Swami Veda Bharati paraphrases Vyasa's Bhashya to YS 2.14, "For ordinary people, pain is felt to be discordant with one's own nature, whereas the yogi has this feeling of natural discordance whether he experiences either pleasure or pain."
The bhakta experiences a similar discord whenever he even hears of the notion of kaivalya or mukti, where consciousness and the object of consciousness are so merged as to make any awareness of an Other impossible.
Is it possible to have being without an object of being? Perhaps... But what is the meaning of being if it be like that of a rock or a lump of clay?
Is it possible to have consciousness without an object of consciousness? Perhaps, but what is the meaning of such consciousness? What is its purpose? What is its joy?
Is it possible to have bliss without love? And is it possible to have love without an object of love? And the supreme bliss must come in relation to the Most Complete Being, the fountainhead of all being, consciousness and bliss.
No wonder Prabodhananda says that being "solo" (kaivalya) is hell. My apologies to all my yogi friends and to Swami Veda himself. I cannot stop feeling this way. I love yoga and I love my yogi friends, but for me, kaivalyaṁ narakāyate. Or like our Raghunath Das says, kathā mukti-vyāghryā na śṛṇu kila sarvātma-gilanīḥ: "Don't even listen to the talks of liberation. They are like a tiger which will surely swallow your soul."
Bhakti is the natural condition of the soul. One must cultivate BOTH Oneness and Otherness. But recognizing the Other is in itself a path to the Oneness of love. Oneness without Otherness contradicts the natural relation of the part to the whole.
Some say that to become Brahman means to become Love itself. This is actually closer to the Vaishnava view, but is still inadequate. Yes, Love is the all-pervading Ground of Being, but if the Supreme Truth is Love, then variety, distinction, even that of God and individual soul, must be eternal!
The proper understanding of aham brahmāsmi is that we become Love, and that we become one with the object of Love in love. In his inconceivable nature, God is the one, undifferentiated Absolute, who in order to fully manifest his potential for love, divides himself into the infinite multiplicity of human experience. To describe or experience the former without the latter is an inadequate description or experience of the Absolute.
If you have become love, then have you lost your personhood or kept it? Does love exist without a subject and an object? As soon as there is love there must be both! And such love can only exist within the matrix of the individual soul's love for the Supreme Soul and the reciprocation of that love through grace.
Please don't take offense. I believe in the sincerity of all seekers. And I respect each and everyone's niṣṭhā. But I was taught long ago that the desire for liberation was the "last snare of nescience," and I cannot give up the conviction that this is the truth. The desire for liberation is the trap of sattva-guna; it is the refusal to give up the last latent bahir-mukhatā or reluctance to serve God, in other words, to give up one's own claim to actually be God.
But what kind of God must we become to become God!! On the way we accumulate a few mystic powers, but those too we must give up to become the salt dissolved into the ocean, the ghaṭākāśa become paṭākāśa, or to become floating monads in a sea of undifferentiation. To become god we must give up the very jewel of our personhood.
And even when we pretend to try to attenuate our egoistic desire for liberation by a Bodhisattva doctrine of delaying liberation or nirvāṇa until "all souls are liberated", it is still a false love, because we only seek to make them too "negative" Gods in the same image: "the-grapes-are-sour-gods" "sore-loser" gods.
Enlightenment without service to the personal God is darkness. You can be one with God, but you cannot BE God. Freedom from suffering is only half of the hen, the other half, the positive half, is love of God. The bhaktas have things to learn from yogis and jnanis and karmis, but the fundamental Truth is that we are eternal servants of God, and liberation from anarthas only serves to makes us more perfect servants. If we abandon the positive half, what does it gain us to be rid of the negative?
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Bye, Guus