Bhakti Yoga

My notes from ‘Vedanta: Voice of Freedom” – a selected compilation from the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

“Bhakti Yoga” – Chapter Highlights reproduced below:

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Bhakti yoga 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 of God brings us eternal freedom.

“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.”

To him who has experienced it, this eternal sacrifice of the self unto the Beloved Lord is higher by far than all wealth and power, than even all soaring thoughts of renown and enjoyment. The peace of the bhakta’s calm resignation is a peace that passeth all understanding and is of incomparable value.

In this state of sublime resignation, everything in the shape of attachment goes away completely, except that one all absorbing love for Him in whom all things live and move and have their being. This attachment of love for God is indeed one that does not bind the soul but effectively breaks all its bondages.

Bhakti yoga is the science of higher love. It shows us how to direct it. It shows us how to control it, how to manage it, how to use it, how to give it a new aim, as it were, and from it obtain the highest and most glorious results— that is, how to make it lead us to spiritual blessedness.

Stand as a witness, as a student, and observe the phenomena of nature. Have the feeling of personal nonattachment with regard to man, and see how this mighty feeling of love is working itself out in the world.

“Wherever there is any bliss, even though in the most sensual of things, there is a spark of that Eternal Bliss which is the Lord Himself.”

The Lord is the great magnet, and we are all like iron filings. We are being constantly attracted by Him, and all of us are struggling to reach Him.

The chief thing is to want God. We want everything except God, because our ordinary wants are supplied by the external world. It is only when our necessities have gone beyond the external world that we want a supply from the internal, from God.

What do we want? Let us ask ourselves this question every day: Do we want God? You may read all the books in the universe, but this love is not to be had by the power of speech, not by the highest intellect, not by the study of various sciences. He who desires God will get Love. Unto him God gives Himself.

The soul can receive impulse only from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find we have not developed at all spiritually.

In studying books, sometimes we are deluded into thinking that we are being spiritually helped. But if we analyze ourselves we shall find that only our intellect has been helped and not the spirit. That is the reason why almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual subjects, but when the time of action comes, we find ourselves so woefully deficient. It is because books cannot give us that impulse from outside. To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from another soul. That soul from which this impulse comes is called the guru, the teacher, and the soul to which the impulse is conveyed is called the disciple, the student.

The conditions necessary in the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance. In the teacher we must first see that he knows the secret of the scriptures.

The second condition necessary in the teacher is that he must be sinless.

The third condition is motive. We should see that he does not teach with any ulterior motive— for name or fame or anything else— but simply for love, pure love for you.

God is both Personal and Impersonal as we are personal and impersonal.

Prayer and praise are the first means of growth. Repeating the names of God has wonderful power. A mantra is a special word or sacred text or name of God chosen by the guru for repetition and reflection by the disciple. The disciple must concentrate on a personality for prayer and praise, and that is his Ishta.

After prayer and praise comes meditation. Then comes reflection on the name and on the Ishta of the individual.

It is in love that religion exists and not in ceremony— in the pure and sincere love in the heart.

External worship is only a symbol of internal worship, but internal worship and purity are the real things. Without them, external worship would be of no avail.

Unattached, yet shining in everything, is love, the motive power of the universe, without which the universe would fall to pieces in a moment. And this love is God.

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