Devotion

[Guest guest]

Dear Sadananda,

 

Your answer to Robin's question Re Devotion is one of

the most beatiful posts I've read for a long time.

I liked it very much when you wrote "true devotion is

not emotional - it is actually

intellectual". And also: "Just stand back and enjoy

the tamaashha or entertainment - you cannot but marvel

at His incredible play - just stand apart and enjoy -

that is devotion."

 

Very beautifully expressed.

However, I've never considered myself a bhakti type,

not even when I was still a Christian. I tend to

consider bhakti to be a mental attitude based on

dualism: you are a devotee of a divinity only insofar

as you feel yourself to be separated from That and

longing for unity with IT. But once you accept that you

are nothing other that That, what place is there left

for bhakti? If there is only Consciousness, if you as

an individual entity are just imaginary, if the only

reality in you is That, then there is no separation and

no place for a relation of devotion between an

imaginaty you and That.

 

And yet I liked what you wrote. Because you stress the

part of intellectual understanding in devotion. I think

that everything boils down to understanding, to clearly

seeing the true nature of things. If you have that, you

have everything, you lack nothing, even if you are not

enlightened. Am I wrong?

 

Miguel Angel