India's Ancient Culture

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 13: True Spiritual Devotion to God

Religion is an approach to God. When this inner endeavour of the soul of man girds up its loins, as it were, to contact God, that practice comes to be known as yoga. Yoga is the union with Reality. Inasmuch as in our deliberations we have noticed that there are degrees of reality—stages of the approach of human consciousness to Reality as such—the practice of yoga also becomes a graduated series. It is not a sudden, abrupt jump from one level to another. The movement of nature through the process of evolution has been observed to be very gradual. There is not a single missing link, stage or step in this process. In evolution there is no double promotion. Everyone has to pass through every stage. Therefore, yoga becomes a systematised endeavour of the consciousness of man to gradually ascend to larger and larger dimensions and degrees of reality.

One of the special features of yoga as an inner endeavour of the soul to contact God is devotion. It has often been emphasised in scriptures of yoga that the primary qualification or requisite of a student is devotion. We may call it devotion, bhakti, or we may call it mumukshatva, the longing for freedom or liberation. It has been told to us again and again that perhaps the only qualification that is expected of us is wanting it. If we want God, God comes. If we do not want God, the question does not arise. Our heart has to ask for it. “Ask, and it shall be given; knock and it the door will be opened to you; seek and you shall find it,” is a prophet's saying. If we do not seek, if we do not knock and we do not long for it, any amount of austerity, japa, standing on one leg, sleepless nights, etc., will be of no avail. Yoga takes many forms. Austerities of different types also are prescribed as part and parcel of divine devotion, but they are only auxiliary. They are assistants, but they themselves do not constitute yoga proper.

In the practice of yoga—we would now like to call it the path of devotion, love of God—the soul, to which we made reference during our previous session, occupies a peculiar position in the structure of the cosmos and attempts to stand face to face with God. Devotion to God is a kind of summoning which is expected to place the soul face to face with God. Love of God, devotion to God, even a prayerful mood in respect of God, any kind of asking in terms of God symbolises an inward attitude of being face to face with God. This being face to face is an essential requisite of any kind of devotion one may call spiritual. The only difference is the characteristic or the nature of this being face to face. One can be face to face with God even if God is said to be a little distant. God may be in the seventh heaven, very far away geographically, but even then one can be face to face with Him. We can visualise the presence of that Almighty in the seventh heaven as if He is looking at us or we are looking at Him.

The distance between the soul of the devotee and the location of God is not what is important. The important thing is the attitude. The structure of the mind is such that it can place itself in the context of continuous association with anything in the world by being face to face with it, even if the object concerned is geographically far away. Suppose there is a person in London and we are in India, here in Rishikesh. We can be face to face with that person by juxtaposing the attitude of our psyche in such a manner that we are visualising that person, as it were, as if that person is just looking at us. And if our concentration is intense enough, even if that person is not facing us, he will be made to face us. Some peculiar idea will arise in the mind of that person without the knowledge of the cause thereof, and that person may turn his or her eyes in the direction of our eyes. This is a very low form of telepathic action. We can contact anybody in the world, whatever be the distance of that person from our location, and action at a distance, known as telekinesis, can take place.

Action at a distance is possible because there is no distance finally. If distance were really there, action at a distance would not be possible. Telekinesis would be a total impossibility. The mind acting in terms of distant objects could not be practicable if distance really obtains between the mind and an object; but really there is no such distance. The universe is an organism, as we have been hearing again and again. It is a living entity. It is a wholeness with a soul animating it, prana vibrating everywhere. Therefore, there cannot be distance between one part of the cosmos and another part of the cosmos, in the same way as there is really no meaningful distance between our head and our toes, for instance. In one sense there is a distance; a five-and-a-half-foot or a six-foot distance is there between the toes and the head. There is a distance which can be measured by a ruler, yet there is no distance because it is an organism. We do not have to take time to communicate a message from the head to the feet or from the feet to the head. Timelessly, without distance, as it were, communication from one part of the body reaches another part of the body. Timeless communication is possible only in a spaceless circumstance. So is the structure of the universe.

We have to remember, again and again, that the universe is formed in the same way as the organism of the physical personality. The cosmos, called the macrocosm, is a counterpart in the spatio-temporal realm of the microcosm, which is the human individual. The microcosm, which is the human personality, is a cross-section of the total cosmos. All the degrees of reality, all the levels of being, all the fourteen worlds, or any number of worlds that the universe may be constituted of, are found in the human personality. The whole world is dancing in our cells. That is to say, distance as we think of it in terms of mathematical measurement does not really obtain, finally, if only our mind is capable of accepting this truth, and accepting it from the bottom of our heart. We should not accept this truth merely because somebody said it is so. Our heart has to reason out the worthwhileness of this situation, and the heart has its own reason which reason does not know, as people say.

So in religious encounter with God, the devotee does not feel a distance between himself and God. “Oh God, You are so far away. When will You come? How many days, how many months, how many years will You take to come and see me?” This doubt does not arise in the mind of a devotee. The intensity of feeling, whatever be its nature, abolishes the concept of space. A loved object or a hated object, if it becomes an intensely concentrated arrangement in the pattern of the psyche of the person concerned, will appear very near, as if it is touching one's nose, though for other reasons it may be far away from oneself. Psychoanalysis or telekinesis is not our subject. I mention it only as a diversion, as a matter of illustration.

The point in religious consciousness is the placement of oneself in the context of God's existence. This is love of God. In all religious prescriptions, this injunction is laid that one has to be face to face with God in one's devotion. God should look at us, and we should look at Him. There is no problem as far as God is concerned, because He has all eyes. Every little leaf in the tree is an eye of God. Every little dust, every atom and every sand particle on the shore of the ocean is an eye of God. Every speck of space is an eye of God. There is a famous verse in the Bhagavadgita. Sarvataḥ-pāṇipādaṁ tat sarvato'kṣiśiromukham (B.G. 13.13): “That Being has eyes everywhere, hands and feet everywhere, heads everywhere, limbs everywhere spread out, and there is not one little nook or corner in this world where His presence cannot be felt.” God looks at us, whatever be the position we are occupying, and so it is up to us to place ourselves in the context of the visualisation of God's presence rather than expect God to adjust Himself to us. God does not have to adjust Himself at all because He is already adjusted to every situation in the world. Every kind of circumstance or condition in the world has already been set in tune with the position of God from His point of view, because of the omnipresence of God.

The love of God, therefore, becomes intensified the more we are able to accept the presence of God as all eyes, all power, and all presence. The immanence of God is also the nearness of God, so near that He is touching our skin. We cannot contain this thought for a long time, and so sometimes we may feel tremors, shaking, a kind of jerk in the physical system as if some shock is injected into our body if the thought of the nearness of God continues very intensely for a few minutes. Let it continue even for five minutes. We will not be able to tolerate it because we will feel as if some high-voltage current is passing through our body.

The mind feels a lot of difficulty in acquainting itself with this high-power contact which becomes the immediate consequence of such a visualisation. The intensity of the feeling of the presence of God depends upon the extent of our concentration on the all-pervading nature of God. In the earlier stages, this all-pervading nature cannot become a content of our mind. Very few of us will always be able to keep in our heart the feeling that God is everywhere, in every place, so that even on the road we are walking on Him, as it were. This kind of feeling is rare. In very intense forms of mystical communion we may be able to feel a kind of drowning ourselves in that feeling of the all-pervading nature of God, but normally this is very difficult.

Therefore, in the earliest stages of devotion, the concept of God, or the placement of God in front of one's own self, the visualisation, the juxtaposition of God face to face with oneself, has to take the shape of a kind of personality which is very near us—as a person standing before us, as it were. The largeness of God, which is the cosmic expanse, becomes a person like Christ standing before you, or Sri Krishna or Rama, or whatever our feeling of devotion to God is. When we pray, we feel somebody very near us, listening to us, and not only listening but condescending to listen and implement our request.

An energy of assurance proceeds, as it were, beam-like, sun-ray-like, emanating from this personality and touching us. Sunlight warms us, and we may begin to feel such a kind of warmth, some kind of touch, a tingling sensation as if some ants are crawling through our nerves, and we will not know what is actually happening to us. It is like a little electric current being passed through our body. We cannot know what we feel at that time. We cannot explain it; we just feel it. An electric current was passing through us, and we felt something. What did we feel at that time? We have to feel it for ourselves. We cannot explain to people what we feel when a current is passing through our body. It is not jerk, it is not shock, it is not many things. It is something which only we know, and nobody else can know. This kind of experience will be our heritage when the concentration increases.

How does concentration increase? Many a time there are complaints from devotees that the mind is not concentrating, that it is moving here and there. Why does it move here and there? Why does the mind flit from one thing to another thing? Why is our beloved not able to attract us sufficiently? Is not God our beloved? Or is our beloved other than God? Are we wanting God as a kind of instrument to bring us in contact with our beloved, who is other than God? Sometimes this happens. We have lost something; there has been bereavement, and we cry for union with what we have lost. It may be a loss of property, it may be a loss of millions of dollars in business, it may be a loss of someone dear and near, and we may cry before God not because we want God, but because we want to use Him as a policeman who will somehow or other escort us to that which we have lost.

Now, is this the kind of feeling that we are likely to be entertaining in ourselves in our devotion? If that is the case, the mind will certainly not concentrate. We do not want a policeman. He is only an assistant to take us to that place which is in our heart. But God is not to be taken as an instrument. We have already convinced ourselves through our observations and studies that God is not a means to something else. We cannot utilise God as an instrument for somebody else, for something with which we have to come in contact. A bereaved mother prays to God, “Bring me in contact with my little child that I lost yesterday.” Do we call it devotion? It is a kind of devotion. We love God, of course. We have to love Him because we want His assistance in our desire to come in contact with our lost child. Spiritual devotion, this is not.

To repeat once again, religion, which has been the subject of our discussion since many days, is our manner of contacting God. Inasmuch as the manner of contacting God depends upon the concept of God that we are entertaining in our mind, this has to be very carefully taken care of. What do we think about God? Why should we think about Him? What for is our devotion to Him? What do we expect from Him? There is an element of expectation from the object which we love. This is the first stage of devotion; a little bit of selfishness is there, creeping in. In all our mortal loves, there is always an expectation that the love be returned. “I love you, and you care not for me in spite of my loving you. This does not please me. I have been so kind and compassionate towards you, but there is not a single gesture of reciprocation or indication of your acceptance of my affection.” This is selfish love. It may be a father loving his son or a mother loving her child, but these loves in the world are conditioned. Unconditioned love, we cannot find in this world. “If you behave in this manner, I will love you. If your behaviour is contrary to the expectations of mine, I shall kick you out.” This is anybody's love in the world. Therefore, there is always separation. The father is separate from the son, the husband is separate from the wife, the mother is separate from the child, and so on. The condition of separation is that we cannot tolerate any attitude that we do not expect from that person whom we love. This kind of love is not in any way connected with the love of God. Sometimes our love of God looks like mortal love. “If I cannot expect anything from God, why should I love Him?” This may also be a question from inside. “After all, there should be some justification in loving God. If God can give me nothing, why should I be bothered about Him?”

Now, can God give us something? Even intensely honest devotion to God may raise questions of this kind. Well, preliminary instructions in devotion, or the path of bhakti, tell us that abundance will be our heritage. God will give us everything. This 'everything' is very important. God will give us not God Himself; that is not what we want. What is the good of that? We say, “If I love you and I expect nothing from you except yourself only, do I want you to sit on my lap? I love you because I expect something from you. I do not expect you only.” So is the purely mortal and secular attitude that is foisted upon us and God.

Philosophers of the acutest type also have doubts of this kind: “What is the use of liberation if nothing will come out of that liberated condition? What am I going to do in that condition of freedom?” You are utterly free spiritually, you are a liberated person. Now a question will arise in your mind: “What will I do when I am totally free? In that hallowed condition of spiritual freedom in the heaven of God I am placed totally carefree, no doubt. Then afterwards, what will happen to me?” Again the question of “afterwards, what will happen to me” arises, because there are two questions connected with two aspects of your involvement in life. The term 'afterwards' implies the continuance of time even in eternity. You have accepted that God is an eternal, timeless Being. But the question of what will happen to you afterwards, after attaining God, is a question that introduces the very time factor that you have kicked out, and left far behind, in the eternity of God. The lingering continuance of the time process is the reason behind your thinking of the past, present and future even in the assumed eternity of God.

You ask, “What will happen to me after I attain God?” Why do you bring this word 'after' if time is not present there? Can the time-bound mind of a devotee conceive what eternity is? No. 'Eternity' is only a word in the dictionary. For us it means nothing practically. We cannot imagine anything except as being located somewhere, in some place, and at some time. So God also is conceived in that manner: as an all-pervading, spatially expanded, cosmic existence. 'Spatially expanded' is the whole point, and 'existing now'. This 'now' is also a temporal word. “Afterwards, what happens to me?” Questions of this kind are due to a lingering of the time process. “What will I do there?” This is the hackneyed involvement of the human personality in activity. What are you doing? What is your occupation? You must be doing something. Can you expect there to be a person who is doing nothing, who does not move? Every person is involved in some doing, and therefore a similar question arises: “What will I do after I attain God?” You have carried two things from this world to the realm of God. One thing is the idea that you have to do something there in the presence of God, and the second thing is a doubt: “What will be my situation there? What kind of job will God entrust to me?”

These ideas are to be boiled down to a nullity by the further acceptance of the all-inclusiveness of God. Rarely do we find a person who wants only God. Why is it so rare? Because of the lingering doubt: “It will amount to nothing practical for me. If I have nothing to gain from God but I have only God in front of me, what will I do with Him? God says 'Here I am'. What is the use of saying 'Here I am'? I want something from God, and God says 'You take Me, as I have nothing else'.” God cannot give you anything, because He does not possess any property. God has no money with Him. He has no land. He has no friends.

I remember a humorous line in Milton's Paradise Lost. Adam complains to God, “Lord, you have created friends, colleagues, relations for other species. For me there is no friend, no colleague. You have left me alone, miserable. Why should I not have a friend and a colleague when other species have them? Trees are living with trees, and I have nobody. I am alone.” God answers, “Adam, since eternity I have been alone. I have no friends, and of course I have no colleagues. Do you believe that I am an unhappy person?” Adam cannot say that God is unhappy. God is the highest of happiness. How could God be happy with no friends around Him, with no property, with nothing to call His own? God is alone. Can you imagine being alone, with nobody around you socially, and yet being immensely happy? You will be utterly miserable, as a lost soul. You will feel estranged if you are not socially placed. So it is likely that your concept of God is sometimes tarnished by this sociological action-bound and time-bound relation, which has to gradually be shed by ardent practice.

In the earliest stages of devotion, therefore, let these factors come. It does not matter. God is standing in front of you as Jesus Christ who will bless you, as Lord Krishna who is going to bless you in one form. Conceive your God in any way you like—as large a man as He could be, or as small an individual as He could be. You can even conceive God as an idol. The devotee has all freedom to choose the spiritual technique. There is no restriction whatsoever. Your god is your God. Take your god, whatever be the nature of that god. I do not prescribe any particular form or put any stipulation before you. Have your own god, but he must be your God. He should not be something else. You may have your own god; I do not want you to take my god or somebody else's god. But be sure that you are asking for your God. The term 'god' implies nothing other than that which can attract you, an inclusiveness of all the values that are capable of conception in your mind, and you cannot afford that the mind go somewhere else because you will be betraying the earlier assurance given to your own self that God is an all-inclusive value. If God is not all-inclusive, He is not God, and you are pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp, a phantasm, because your value is elsewhere in this world. It is essential to convince oneself that since the concept of God is all-inclusive, the drifting of the mind from God is meaningless.

Therefore, the prescription is that your God should be your Ishta-devata, as it is called in Sanskrit. Your God is your devata, and devata is a Sanskrit word for your deity, your emblem of Godhood. Ishta means beloved. The word 'beloved' is very important. God is your beloved, and your heart cannot go anywhere else except in terms of your beloved. If you cannot understand the meaning of the word 'beloved', so much the loss for you. The term implies an all-absorbing ideal in front of you. The beloved is that which absorbs you root and branch, melts every cell of your body, liquefies you totally, as it were, and it ceases to be in front of you because you have become that, or it has entered you. Only those who have loved one-hundred percent will know what love is. But nobody can love anything one-hundred percent. There is always a little reservation even in the best of loves. You add the word 'if' in all your loves, whatever they be. But God love is not an 'if' or a 'but' or a 'because of', and so on. There are no conditions. It is unconditional surrender.

The unconditional surrender of the devotee in respect of God is meaningful because of the all-inclusiveness of God. Impress upon your mind again and again that because God is all-inclusive, all things shall be well. If you are doubting whether God is enough and He should not give something else, a little concession is given to your weakness in such great statements as “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Are you happy? If you seek God, do not be under the impression that, after all, only God will come and nothing else will come, that it is emptiness. To make you feel that it is not emptiness, believe that you are going to be filled with an abundance of all things, even of this world. Let it be; let us take into consideration the values of this world also. All gold, all silver, all honey, all milk—that also will come. God is not incapable of bestowing upon you even that. When the dog goes, the tail also goes. When God comes, all that He is capable of blessing you with will also be there. Abundance in the most absolute sense will follow from your total absorption in the all-inclusiveness of God. So let your doubts go. Doubts are your traitors. If there are traitors in this world, doubts themselves are the traitors. There is nobody else who can deceive you. All things shall be yours.

Sometimes God gives Himself, and sometimes God gives something other than Himself. There is an illustration in the Mahabharata. There were two contending parties, Arjuna on the one side and Duryodhana on the other side. War was going to take place. Sri Krishna was there as a well-known hero of that time, a great warrior owning a large army, and his assistance was of course considered as desirable. 

Arjuna and Duryodhana, the contending parties, both went to Dvarka to seek the help of Sri Krishna. It is said in the Mahabharata that Lord Krishna was resting at that time. He was reclining on his couch, half dozing. Knowing that the Lord was lying down and was half-asleep, not wanting to disturb him, Duryodhana sat on a chair near his head. Arjuna, knowing the Lord was resting, stood at his feet, folding his hands. There was a difference between their attitudes: the one sat on a chair near his head, and the other one stood at his feet, folding his hands. After a little while, the reclining Krishna opened his eyes, and the first thing that he saw was that which was standing at his feet.

Sri Krishna asked, “How are you, Arjuna?”

“No sir. I came first,” somebody retorted from behind.

“Oh, you have come, Duryodhana. What is the matter? How is it?”

Duryodhana said, “Well, you see, you know everything. What shall I say? A war is about to take place. There is no other alternative. We want your help. Arjuna has come for your help, and I also want it.”

“What can I give you?” Sri Krishna said. “You see, there are only two things. I have got a large army, Narayani Sena. It is almost invincible. If you want to take it, you can take it. The other thing is myself. I am a single man here. If you want to take me, you can take me instead. But I will not fight. I will not take up arms. I will not be a participant in the battle. I will be merely sitting and watching. You can take me if you like, merely as a person who will watch. Otherwise, you can take the army. Anyway, I will ask Arjuna first.”

Duryodhana said, “No. I should speak first because I came first.”

Sri Krishna said, “Maybe. But after all, I saw Arjuna first. Secondly, he is younger to you. As a younger brother, I think he must be given the choice first. And why are you so very adamant? Let Arjuna speak. What do you want, Arjuna? Do you want a large army, invincible, do you want or me sitting quiet and doing nothing?”

Arjuna said, “I want you only, Lord.”

“I have won the battle,” Duryodhana thought. “This foolish Arjuna has chosen a person who will do no work, will only eat and sit quiet. What good is this person?” Duryodhana said, “I want the army, great Master.”

“Take the army,” said Sri Krishna.

Duryodhana went in jubilation, and declared before his people that he had already won the war. “Already I have won the war because that invincible army is with me, and that fool has chosen a man who will not do anything.”

After Duryodhana left, Sri Krishna put a question to Arjuna: “How is it that you have been so indiscreet? What made you choose me when I told you that I will not do anything? You could have chosen the army. That man has taken it. How is it that you have been so foolish, Arjuna? What is the good of my unnecessarily being there in your house, in the battlefield, just sitting and watching?”

Arjuna replied, “Your presence itself will be my victory.”

The whole point is that God is one, and the things in the world are many. We always think that many things are better than one thing. Many dollars are more valuable than one dollar; many people can do more work than one person. Many things, many things, many things—one thing is no good. We are accustomed to value all things in the world in terms of quantum, as large as possible. Duryodhana was a person who measured things quantitatively. He thought the larger number was better than the lesser number. What good is one person in light of the possession of a millionfold powerful army? But he made a mistake in calculation. The many that he took in the form of soldiers in the army were like drops. There were many in the army, no doubt, and Sri Krishna was just one, but Krishna was the ocean. This was only one, but it was an ocean. The other one was manifold drops, and millions of drops cannot be regarded as larger than one, because the one is an ocean. So the ocean was chosen by Arjuna and the drops were chosen by Duryodhana, under the impression that many things are better than one thing.

The idea of oneness, which is associated with God, is not to be thought of as a computed item. God is not one in a mathematical sense. One is smaller than ten or hundreds, but this is not the way in which we have to think of God as one. God is not the number one. It is a different oneness altogether. 'Oneness' is a term that we use due to the poverty of our language. All the manyness or the multitude of this great universe of expanse is included in that one. As I put it before in the illustration, all the drops are included in the ocean; though the ocean is one, the drops are many.

Here is an instance where Sri Krishna offered himself as the ocean offering itself. He did not give anything. There was nothing to give, because the ocean cannot give anything except itself, and all other things are within it. In certain cases, God will give you secular benefits also. God is capable of doing that, as it happened in the case of the story of Sudama.

A friend, an old schoolmate of Sri Krishna, who was poverty-stricken and wanted some financial help from Sri Krishna, went to Dvarka. He was received well, taken care of, and given good lodging. The next day he was given a farewell without being asked as to why he had come. “Do you want anything from me?”—even those words did not come from Krishna. The poor man did not know what had happened. “I came for a little financial assistance, trekking all the way through the deserts of Gujarat. I walked from Ujjain to Dvarka. What for? He has taken care of me with great affection—nice bedding, lodging and boarding, he spoke sweet words, shampooed my feet—and then the next morning, what happened? He bid me farewell but did not ask why I came. Oh, what a pity, what a pity!” He was weeping. When he returned home, he found a gorgeous palace shining where his hut had been. This is how you can expect secular abundance from God. Or if you do not want that, God Himself will come. But anyhow, it is not good for you to expect anything from God, so in your prayers to God, let God speak to you in the manner in which He would like to speak to you.

Thus, again to come to the point, in earlier stages of devotion you may place your god as a standing personality according to your predilection—Devi, Durga, Ganesha, Christ, whatever it is. It is an emblem, a representation, a focusing point, a pinpointed energy centre, as it were, of the whole cosmos, an ambassador standing before you on behalf of a large government, and whatever he utters is equal to the government speaking; if he promises something, it is the government which he represents that is promising it. This personality—Christ standing before you, Krishna standing before you—is not a person. It is the representation of the power of the whole universe standing before you. When you speak to it, the whole cosmos replies. With this assurance, place yourself in the proper context, juxtaposed before this tremendous personality, God come in form.