The Devotional Mindset

God remains just a three-letter word to us as long as we have not had our fill of worldly pleasure and pain. In Sri Ramakrishna’s words, the mother keeps herself busy with her cooking as long as the child remains happy playing with the toys. Second, we do not feel the need for God as long as our needs are met by the world. We need God mostly to help us in our worldly agenda: name, fame, prosperity, cure from diseases and so on. Such devotion is not much different from barter, though it is better to pray to God than depend on one’s puny little ego. Among the four classes of people who worship God, Sri Krishna calls such devotees arta (the afflicted) and artharthi (seekers of prosperity)¹. There is a plus side to such devotion: It inculcates and strengthens in the devotee the habit of turning to God. In course of time, this can help him turn to God for God’s sake.

Qualities a Devotee Can Gainfully Cultivate

True devotion to God for God begins with the third class of devotees, whom Sri Krishna calls jijnasu. Having had their fill of what the world has to offer and being convinced of its ephemeral and miserable nature, they look for the real meaning of human existence. They begin their quest for an abiding reality. In other words, they seek to know their real nature, the nature of God, and their relationship with Him. Are there any guidelines by which such seekers could conduct themselves? The Bhagavad-gita says yes. In its second and fourteenth chapters Sri Krishna describes the traits of a man of steady wisdom (sthitaprajna) and of one who has transcended the gunas (trigunatita). According to Sri Shankaracharya these traits are enumerated with a view to helping spiritual aspirants acquire these qualities by special effort, since the traits of a realized soul are the means of attaining realization². Verses 13 to 19 of the twelfth chapter of the Gita describe the characteristics that endear a devotee to God. According to Sri Shankara, these qualities describe a sannyasin’s life. According to Sri Ramanuja, however, these traits are the devotional elements in a karma yogi who adores God through his work. Either way, a jijnasu can gainfully cultivate these traits in his search for God. These traits can be grouped under four heads: The devotee’s mindset, his attitude towards others, towards the world and towards work. In this essay we discuss the devotee’s mindset.

Freedom from the Sense of ‘I’ and ‘Mine’

The ideal is to be free from egotism and the sense of possession regarding things animate and inanimate. That is easier said than done. Sri Ramakrishna describes two types of ego: (1) The unripe ego that entangles one to sense enjoyments, making one feel ‘I am the doer. I am the son of a wealthy man. I am learned. I am rich. How dare anyone slight me?’; (2) the ripe ego, which is also called the servant ego³, devotee ego or knowledge ego. Rather than worry about getting rid of his ego, a seeker on the path of devotion tries to cultivate and strengthen the ripe ego. He feels that God is the Master and he His servant. In Sri Ramakrishna’s words, ‘One should have such burning faith in God that one can say: "What? I have repeated the name of God, and can sin still cling to me? How can I be a sinner any more? How can I be in bondage any more?"’ (138) Without this strong faith in oneself any professed faith in God can only be in name and of not much help in one’s spiritual endeavor. That explains Swami Vivekananda’s emphasis on faith in oneself before faith in God.

The devotee ego is based on one’s certitude about and relationship with the indwelling God. Such an ‘I’ gradually weans the aspirant from his attachment to body and mind, the root of attraction to sense objects. The devotee imagines himself to be a spark of the divine Fire, called God. He derives strength from the fact that all auspicious qualities in God – like purity, strength, fearlessness and eternity – are his too, even as the fire’s burning power inheres no less in the spark. The knowledge ego is based on the luminous, spiritual core of the aspirant’s personality. He learns to dwell more and more on the Atman, negating his ephemeral body-mind-based personality.

The devotee ego says ‘not I, not I, but Thou’, ‘I’ referring to the body-mind complex and ‘Thou’ denoting the indwelling God behind it. The knowledge ego, on the other hand, says ‘not this, not this, but I’, where ‘I’ refers to the Atman, the core divine reality in the aspirant and ‘this’ signifies everything other than the Atman, beginning from the aspirant’s mind and body and covering everything of the gross and subtle worlds. Despite the difference in temperament, both devotee ego and knowledge ego stress the reduction of identification with body-mind and greater proximity to and identification with God.

Pure, Ever-contended

Contentment is a tall order for devotees of the ‘afflicted’ and ‘after-prosperity’ types. A true devotee trains his body and mind not to become too demanding. He nourishes his body looking upon it as an abode of God. He is content with bare minimum necessities for his existence and tries to think more and more of God. He cultivates his discriminative faculty, buddhi, and tries to remain independent of the body, mind, senses and their mutual connection. He trains himself not to have preferences and prejudices.

He cultivates both outer and inner purity, the former by regular wash and the latter by cultivating purity of mind. He does a quality audit on the inputs through his sense organs and trains his mind to think positive thoughts. In Swamiji’s words, The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them"⁴. The devotee ego strengthens the aspirant’s will power, which helps him struggle with his past mental impressions.

Dedicating Manas and Buddhi to God

Manas is the deliberative faculty in man that makes him cogitate on the pros and cons of the options before him. Buddhi is the discriminative or decision-making faculty in him. It is also the seat of will power. Buddhi does not grow with age, but needs to be cultivated. It is rightly said that growing old is mandatory, not growing wise. The more decisive a man is in small things, the more discriminative and decisive he will be in greater things. Decision-making is indeed difficult in that it involves assuming responsibility for the consequences. While for organizations a committee may help spread the responsibility, there is no option for an individual other than exercising the decision-making faculty in him. Habitual indecision may postpone having to face the consequences –– that the delay worsens the situation is another matter –– but it also postpones the cultivation and strengthening of buddhi, the indispensable first step towards success, worldly or spiritual. Of course, deciding not to decide on something for a time is a different matter. May be, more details are needed for the decision. What is important is to exercise buddhi, the decision-making faculty.

Sri Krishna uses the word mayyarpita – manobuddhih to describe his dear devotee. The term means that the devotee’s manas and buddhi are focused on God. Sri Ramanuja elucidates the point: The devotee’s manas and buddhi are dedicated to the Lord in that he is convinced that Lord Vasudeva alone is being propitiated by his activities and when duly propitiated, He would grant him the direct vision of the Self.

In any case, dedicating one’s manas and buddhi presupposes a systematic spiritual discipline. In the graded path of devotion outlined in the Gita (12.8 – 11), Sri Krishna assures that a devotee with his manas and buddhi riveted on Him is certain to live in Him from then on (Sri Ramanuja more acceptably interprets atha urdhvam to mean `from then on’ instead of ‘after death’). If a devotee considers this difficult, Sri Krishna asks him to take to abhyasa yoga, or the yoga of practice. Sri Ramakrishna explains abhyasa yoga with an example:

At Kamarpukur I have seen women of the carpenter families selling flattened rice. Let me tell you how alert they are while doing their business. The pestle of the husking-machine that flattens the paddy constantly falls into the hole of the mortar. The woman turns the paddy in the hole with one hand and with the other holds her baby on her lap as she nurses it. In the mean time, the customers arrive. The machine goes on pounding the paddy, and she carries on her bargains with the customers … You see, she has all these things to do at the same time – nurse the baby, turn the paddy as the pestle pounds it, take the flattened rice out of the hole, and talk to the buyers. This is called the yoga of practice. Fifteen parts of her mind out of sixteen are fixed on the pestle of the husking- machine, lest it should pound her hand. With only one part of her mind she nurses the baby and talks to the buyers. Likewise, ….. a householder should devote fifteen parts of his mind to God; otherwise, he will face ruin and fall into the clutches of Death. He should perform the duties of the world with only one part of his mind. (367 – 8)

To continue with Sri Krishna’s graded path of devotion. He offers an alternative for those who find the yoga of practice difficult: ‘Work for My sake; even by such actions you will attain perfection.’ For those not capable of following this, Sri Krishna has the last option: ‘Offer the fruits of all your actions to Me.’

A devotee with his manas and buddhi dedicated to God is described as sthiramatih, steady-minded with regard to spiritual truths. He sticks to the essentials of religion, which is to realize the divinity latent in him. He judges things by how far they conduce to his transformation from animal nature to human nature to divine nature. He values the ‘secondary details’ of religion (`doctrines or dogmas, or rituals or books, or temples or forms’)⁵ only to the extent they help transform his character.

Firmness of Conviction

A firm conviction in the divinity behind the world and its inherence in man is fundamental to meaningful devotion. A true devotee is not assailed by arguments to the contrary, because his conviction is born of spiritual discipline, not vain scholarship. He is convinced that his prayers for devotion are certain to reach God, who hears even the sound of anklets on the feet of an ant⁶. With an example Sri Ramakrishna’s illustrates the perseverance of a devotee of firm conviction:

Sometimes it happens that discriminating between the Real and the unreal, a man loses his faith in the existence of God. But a devotee who sincerely yearns for God does not give up his meditation even though he is invaded by atheistic ideas. A man whose father and grandfather have been farmers continues his farming though he doesn’t get any crop in a year of drought.(238)

Detachment from the Household

The term aniketah literally means ‘one who has no abode’. This has obvious reference to the sannyasin. To be of significance to others, the term has to be understood to mean one who is not attached to his home, his family. There is truth in the saying ‘There is nothing wrong in being a householder, but let not the house hold you.’ Sri Ramakrishna’s example of a maidservant in the house of a rich man illustrates the point. She performs all the household duties, but her thoughts are fixed on her own home in her native village. She brings up her master’s children as if they were her own. But in her own mind she knows very well that they do not belong to her at all. (81)

Other Mental Traits

Detached from his lower nature and more identified with his pure ‘I’, a devotee has certain distinguishing mental traits:

Freedom from joy and anger: Worldly joy arises from the contact of sense organs with sense objects; worry results from the severance of this contact. Anger and lack of forbearance are a sequel to obstacles in the way of sense enjoyment. A devotee does not hanker after worldly things, for his search is directed within, to God, the source of abiding joy. He is free from desire, anger and greed, the threefold gateway to hell⁷. Sri Krishna considers him a yogi and a happy man who is able to withstand even while alive the impulses arising from lust and anger⁸. Sri Shridhara Svamin’s gloss on this verse (5.23) cannot be more impressive: "A dead man does not succumb to the impulses arising from lust and anger when weeping young maidens touch his body or when his son and wife cremate his body. If a man is able to withstand such impulses even while alive, he is a yogi, he is a happy man."

Freedom from fear, worry and anxiety: Since he is free from the desire to possess sense objects, a devotee is free from fear. Nothing in this world is exempt from fear. In the forceful words of Bhartrihari, ‘In enjoyments is the fear of disease; in social position the fear of falling off; in wealth the fear of (hostile) kings; in adoration the fear of humiliation; in strength the fear of enemies; in beauty the fear of old age; in scholarship the fear of opponents; in virtue the fear of slander; and in body the fear of death. Everything in this world is fraught with fear; renunciation alone is fearlessness.’⁹

A bhakta’s renunciation is not a forced giving up. As he moves closer to God, lesser things drop off by themselves. He gives up the lower for something higher. According to Narada, a bhakta’s love is not desire-oriented because it is of the form of renunciation.10

Worry and anxiety result from getting worked up about the turn of events, expecting a favorable outcome every time. A devotee is free from such anxiety because he turns to God for the solution of his problems, and believes that God does listen to his prayers and will give him adequate strength to face problems. Sri Ramakrishna’s life illustrates an important point. Even amid the excruciating pain of throat cancer, he continued to dwell in God and help others advance on the way to God. A devotee will do well to remember his saying, ‘Let the body and pain take care of themselves; O mind, you be happy.’ A true devotee does not pray for cure of his disease, but for devotion and strength to go through the ordeal.

Impartiality: Having no axe to grind, a devotee does not take sides in an issue. He is equally disposed towards all, but maintains a healthy detachment from people.

***

We have discussed certain distinguishing mental traits by which the true devotee is known from a shopkeeper in religion. The true devotee’s attitude towards the world, towards others and towards work – these will be the subject of the next editorial.

References:

1. Bhagavadgita, 7.16
2. Sri Shankaracharya on the Gita, 2.55; 14.25.
3. M, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 2002), 860.
4. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols. (Calcutta: advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989; 9, 1997), 2.300.
5. Ibid., 1.124.
6. Gospel, 916.
7. Gita, 16.21.
8. Ibid, 5.23.
9. Vairagya Shatakam, 31.
10. Narada Bhakti Sutras, 7.

© "Prabuddha Bharata" (November, 2003) published by Advaita Ashrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata 700 014. Website: www.advaitaonline.com. Reprinted with permission.

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