The God of Love is His Own Proof
 

I'm reading "Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works" and just came to this passage.

https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.i..._own_proof.htm

What is the ideal of the lover who has quite passed beyond the idea of selfishness, of bartering and bargaining, and who knows no fear? Even to the great God such a man will say, "I will give You my all, and I do not want anything from You; indeed there is nothing that I can call my own." When a man has acquired this conviction, his ideal becomes one of perfect love, one of perfect fearlessness of love. The highest ideal of such a person has no narrowness of particularity about it; it is love universal, love without limits and bonds, love itself, absolute love. This grand ideal of the religion of love is worshipped and loved absolutely as such without the aid of any symbols or suggestions. This is the highest form of Para-Bhakti — the worship of such an all-comprehending ideal as the ideal; all the other forms of Bhakti are only stages on the way to reach it.

All our failures and all our successes in following the religion of love are on the road to the realisation of that one ideal. Object after object is taken up, and the inner ideal is successively projected on them all; and all such external objects are found inadequate as exponents of the ever-expanding inner ideal and are naturally rejected one after another. At last the aspirant begins to think that it is vain to try to realise the ideal in external objects, that all external objects are as nothing when compared with the ideal itself; and, in course of time, he acquires the power of realising the highest and the most generalised abstract ideal entirely as an abstraction that is to him quite alive and real. When the devotee has reached this point, he is no more impelled to ask whether God can be demonstrated or not, whether He is omnipotent and omniscient or not. To him He is only the God of Love; He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes. He, as love, is self-evident. It requires no proofs to demonstrate the existence of the beloved to the lover. The magistrate-Gods of other forms of religion may require a good deal of proof prove Them, but the Bhakta does not and cannot think of such Gods at all. To him God exists entirely as love. "None, O beloved, loves the husband for the husband's sake, but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the husband that the husband is loved; none, O beloved, loves the wife for the wife's sake, but it is for the sake of the Self who is in the wife that the wife is loved."



To me this is the intersection of Bhakti and Jnana. What I mean is Jnana states Self (Consciousness) is self-revealing and self-evident. Two means to the same end. Self = Existence = Consciousness = Love.

Hi JASG,

I like that and yes, there are different paths to the same destination. The reason is, we are all different. Some of us follow knowledge based paths, others with big hearts, naturally swing towards Bhakti practices and so on. Within each different society there are different mind types and so there are many paths.

paths to God
 

Indeed Jnan and Bhakti are beautiful paths to God although not easy to follow (I am talking about myself ). Some even start with Karma -action also fully steeped in divine work.

Though we may start from somewhere along the path our paths converge and there is no negation of other paths . To reach a peak we may different base camps . But the peak is peak and only one.

Beautiful.

Fleshing it out a little further and from my perspective, it seems Bhakti & Jnana are the main practices and Karma & Raja supporting practices. Of course the hard-care traditional Vedantist would suggest all practices are necessary to some extent and I tend to agree.

Raja definitely brings about clarity of mind, and that does help with understanding and especially insight.

Karma Yoga provides practices that are complimentary to and supportive of both Bhakti (Work for God) and Jnana (Work as Witness).

I'm analytical so I gravitate to Jnana, and I'm also contemplative so Raja and the Karma practice of Work as Witness suit me well.

I grew up Roman Catholic so I do have a Bhakti background, however it's just not my strong suit and at some point I probably need to put more effort into its practices, however not in the traditional sense of the religion. I do admire and resonate with Jesus' core teachings so that's my gateway.

Question, then. Why do you think it is called Raja Yoga?
I don't have a particular ans. I was surprised to see it considered 'supporting'.

For newbies - which Yogananda's Kriya Yoga, for example, is under the umbrella of....meaning Raja Yoga.

Oh, raj or raja meaning the king of yogas.
Maha= great
raj= king
atma=soul: Mahatma Ghandi

There are young people here lately, thought I'd teach a couple of basics.

Well, this is like poetry. :smile:

My perspective is the Advaita perspective and from it Raja Yoga practices bring about clarity of mind. It's plowing the field for the planting of seeds, one being purity of mind which is in the realm of Karma Yoga. Ethics and morality if you will.

It is also said Bhakti Yoga alone can bring about both these ends and I suppose it really depends on one's nature as to which of these is the best choice, however it's advisable to practice all of them to some extent. It seems to make sense to tailor the effort to the seeker's nature.

In the end and again the Advaita perspective is the only why to erase ignorance is with knowledge, and that's Jnana Yoga, but for the teachings to be fully realized and irreversibly embodied requires supreme clarity and purity of mind. If one can reach that lofty height one is Enlightened.

Putting it in the context of my personal experience I had been meditating on and off for a decade and I was touching that deep inner space of tranquility while sitting and occasionally outside of sitting, however it wasn't until I came across some of Sadhguru's videos speaking of opening up a space between consciousness and mind and then the formal teachings of Advaita that the floodgates opened and the significance dawned on me, leading to a very profound experience. It just didn't "stick". Call it an Awakening to Self-Realization. Clarity of mind made me much more receptive to the teachings and I don't think either one alone would have produced the same result, at least not within that time frame.

By no means did I have then nor do I have now supreme clarity of mind and I certainly don't have anywhere near close to supreme purity of mind. LOL! So I started working in Karma Yoga practice (Work as Witness) and diving much more deeply into the teachings (Jnana). It's making a very noticeable difference.

Can you please be aware that when you copy from someone elses work it could have copy right restrictions.



Namaste

Point taken. In the future I'll keep it to a sentence or two.