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Updated: August 3, 2024
It is well that every one should learn the wisdom of "Gnani Yoga," that he may realize the wonderful truths underlying life the science of Being. And, most assuredly every one should know something of Bhakti Yogi, that he may understand the great teachings regarding the Love underlying all life. We have written a work on "Hatha Yoga," and a course on "Raja Yoga" which is now in book form.
Bhakti is often associated with the doctrine of the playfulness of God. This idea so strange to Europe may have its roots partly in the odd non-moral attributes of some early deities. Thus the Rudra of the Śatarudrîya hymn is a queer character and a trickster.
The doctrine of bhakti is common to both Vishnuites and Śivaites. It is perhaps in general estimation associated with the former more than with the latter, but this is because the Bhagavad-gîtâ and various forms of devotion to Kṛishṇa are well known, whereas the Tamil literature of Dravidian Śivaism is ignored by many European scholars.
If what I have frequently repeated in these chapters be correct that in the nineteenth century educated India has become largely monotheistic, it is in keeping therewith that the prevailing conception of religion should have changed, alongside, from the quest of Saving Knowledge to that of Bhakti or enthusiastic devotion to a person.
The distinction made by the Bhakti form of Hinduism between the Manifest and the Unmanifest God seeks to express this same truth; and shows that this idea, in one form or another, is a necessity for religious thought.
Then Krishna has had his life re-written and his cult revived purged of the old excesses of the Krishna-bhakti. More recently, Chaitanya, the religious teacher in Bengal in the fifteenth century, has been adopted by certain of the educated class in Bengal as an object of bhakti. Here, it seems to me, is found the place of Christ in the mind of educated India.
Augustine in defining faith says: "Quid est credere in Deum? credendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in eum ire, et ejus membris incorporari." This is an excellent paraphrase of bhakti and the words have an oriental ring which is not quite that of the New Testament.
Also, it was said, that Cadman Sahib had the coldest-blooded courage a man ever took into the jungle, almost like a bhakti yogin who had altogether conquered fear. Skag bowed in satisfaction. Had he not looked twice at the face under the helmet and followed without words? "How far do they go into the jungle for tigers?" he asked. "An hour's journey, or a day, as it happens.
When bhakti was once accepted as a part of Indian religion, it was erected into a principle, analogous or superior to knowledge and was defined in Sûtras similar to those of the Sâṅkhya and Vedânta. But its importance in philosophy is small, whereas its power as an impulse in popular religion has been enormous.
Lacerations and what we would call penances, be it remembered, are done to the honour of a Deity; they are not a discipline like the self-whipping of the Flagellants and the jumping of the Jumpers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Bhakti," says Sir Monier Williams, "is really a kind of 'meritorious work, and not equivalent to 'faith' in the Christian sense."
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