BHAKTI-YOGA

      This path is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, continuing, and ending in Love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. “Bhakti,” says Nârada in his explanation of the Bhakti-aphorisms, “is intense love to God.”—“When a man gets it, he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied for ever.”—“This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit,” because so long as worldly desires last, that kind of love does not come.

       “Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Yoga, because these are intended for an object in view, while Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means, and its own end.” Bhakti has been the one constant theme of our sages. Apart from the special writers on Bhakti, such as Shândilya or Nârada, the great commentators on the Vyâsa-Sutras, evidently advocates of Knowledge (Jnâna), have also something very suggestive to say about Love.

        Even when the commentator is anxious to explain many, if not all, of the texts so as to make them import a sort of dry knowledge, the Sutras, in the chapter on worship especially, do not lend themselves to be easily manipulated in that fashion. There is not really so much difference between Knowledge (Jnana) and Love (Bhakti) as people sometimes imagine. We shall see as we go on, that in the end they converge and meet at the same point.

        So also is it with Raja- Yoga, which, when pursued as a means to attain liberation, and not ( as unfortunately it frequently becomes in the hands of charlatans and mystery-mongers) as an instrument to hoodwink the unwary, leads us also to the same goal. The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest, and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it often times degenerates into hideous fanaticism.