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We have written something regarding "Bhakti Yoga" in our Advanced Course, and, we hope, have taught it also all through our other lessons, for we fail to see how one can teach or study any of the branches of Yoga without being filled with a sense of Love and Union with the Source of all Life. To know the Giver of Life, is to love him, and the more we know of him, the more love will we manifest.
The Sanscrit name, Bhakti, is rendered devotion, or fervour, or faith, or fervent love; and in spite of alien ideas associated with bhakti, bhakti is much more akin to Faith than are many of the features of Hinduism to the Christian analogues with whose names they are ticketed. For example, bhakti practically implies a personal god, not the impersonal pantheistic Brahma.
But both divisions are scrupulous about caste observances and the ceremonial purity of their food. They are separated by nice questions of doctrine, especially as to the nature of prapatti, resignation or self-surrender to the deity, a sentiment slightly different from bhakti which is active faith or devotion.
Intense devotion to some personal god, generally Vishnu the preserver, under the name Hari, or either of Vishnu's chief incarnations, Ram or Krishna, is the usual manifestation of bhakti. In actual practice it displays itself in ecstatic dancing or singing, or in exclaiming the name of the god or goddess, or in self-lacerations in his or her honour.
We judged the idea of salvation by knowledge, or by intense concentration of mind, to be genuinely felt, because it could override the idea of caste. Applying the same test here, we must acknowledge the genuineness of feeling in bhakti. In actual practice the repudiation of caste no doubt varies greatly. In some cases, caste is dropped only during the fit of fervour or bhakti.
In India, there is the existence, within and alongside the austere worship of the unconditioned Brahma, of the ardent personal Vaishnavite devotion to the heart's Lord, known as Bhakti Marga. "Without Thee, O Beloved, I cannot rest; Thy goodness towards me I cannot reckon. Tho' every hair on my body becomes a tongue A thousandth part of the thanks due to Thee I cannot tell."
Bhakti is the religion of many millions of India, combined more or less with the conventional externals of sacrifice and offerings and pilgrimages and employment of brahmans, which together constitute the third path of salvation, by karma or works. That ecstatic adoration is religion for many millions of India, although the name bhakti may never pass their lips.
In the Ṛig Veda this same Indra is called a deliverer and advocate; a friend, a brother and a father; even a father and mother in one. Here the worshipper does not talk of bhakti because he does not analyze his feelings, but clearly these phrases are inspired by affectionate devotion. Nor is the spirit of bhakti absent from Buddhism.
Its first great text-book is the Bhagavad-gîtâ, but it is also mentioned in the last verse of the Śvetâśvatara Upanishad and Pâṇini appears to allude to bhakti felt for Vâsudeva. The Kaṭhâ Upanishad contains the following passage: "That Âtman cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding nor by much learning. He whom the Âtman chooses, by him the Âtman can be gained.
But there is no evidence that this is the historical development of the bhakti sentiment, and if the Bhagavad-gîtâ is emphatic in enjoining the worship of Kṛishṇa only, the Śvetâśvatara and Maitrâyanîya Upanishads favour Śiva, and he is abundantly extolled in many parts of the Mahâbhârata.
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