Bhakti Ki Shakti-5

If you haven’t read my previous post in this series it is here.

SV says,

When a man has forgotten himself altogether, and does not feel that anything belongs to him, then he acquires the state of Tadiyata; everything is sacred to him, because it belongs to the Beloved.

… until a man reaches the highest point of ever-ready and ever-willing self-sacrifice, he cannot become a perfect Bhakta.

He makes a remarkable point further in the chapter which demands careful attention:-

“It is the horrible body-idea that breeds all selfishness in the world, just this one delusion that we are wholly the body we own, and that we must by all possible means try our best to preserve and to please it. If you know that you are positively other than your body, you have then none to fight with or struggle against; you are dead to all ideas of selfishness. So the Bhakta declares that we have to hold ourselves as if we are altogether dead to all things of the world; and that is indeed self-surrender.”

I found this para of him quite profound which is,

“…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 realize the ideal in external objects, that all external objects are as nothing compared when compared with the ideal itself; and in course of time, he acquires the power of realizing the highest and the most generalized 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.”

Here SV talks about “the inner ideal”. This inner ideal is nothing but- Perfect Love which is perfectly fearless. When such an ideal is projected on external objects, people and other nouns, they are found to be inadequate and insufficient to help us realize that perfect state of love. Naturally, then a seeker starts to turn inwards and as SV says, “in course of time, he acquires the power of realizing the highest and the most generalized abstract ideal entirely as an abstraction that is to him quite alive and real.” This abstraction is nothing but-GOD. And this God, 

To him(the seeker), He is only the God of Love; He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes.