Pariprasna
August 2019
Srimat Swami Tapasyananda Ji (1904 – 1991), was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ramakrishna Order. His deeply convincing answers to devotees’ questions raised in spiritual retreats and in personal letters have been published in book form as Spiritual Quest: Questions & Answers. Pariprasna is a selection from this book.
The Vedanta Kesari
34
QUESTION: The expression Jnanamisra-bhakti (Bhakti mixed with Jnana) is frequently used in Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature. Kindly explain its real meaning and how it should be practised. How is it different from ordinary Bhakti? MAHARAJ: To make the matter clear, the expression ‘ordinary Bhakti’ must be explained. Ordinary Bhakti can be understood to mean ‘conventional devotion,’ i.e., acceptance of certain creeds and practices and of certain devotional observances that have come to one through family tradition. But it becomes genuine Bhakti only when it is made dynamic by Sraddha, the deep-seated acceptance of spiritual values as a dominant factor in life. In all Bhakti there is an element of Jnana. For man to love anything, there must be some preceding knowledge of it. But the demand for knowledge ceases when a strong link of affection is established. This affection may be based on the gains you are likely to have by serving the person faithfully and winning his favour; or it may be based on the feeling that the person is one’s ‘own’, irrespective of what one gets from him or not. When anything is one’s ‘own’, it becomes sweet, irrespective of gains. Now in Bhakti also, these factors can be observed. Generally man thinks of God as the omnipotent and omniscient Creator. The divine majesty is in the forefront of his thought and to win the favour of such a being by prayer and adoration is considered very necessary for his welfare here and hereafter. But when man becomes more philosophical in outlook and less and less anthropomorphic in his conception, his mind is weaned away from thoughts of worldly return. He thinks more and more of the basic relationship between him and the Supreme Being and he draws more and more emotional sustenance from a sense of his dependence on Him and His capacity and readiness to save man from Samsara (worldly bondage). It ends in self-surrender through philosophic reflection and adoration. This kind of devotion is what is called Bhakti which is mixed with Jnana. In its highest development, it may end in mergence in the Divine. In contrast to this, there is a kind of devotion with the main emphasis on sentiment. Here the majesty of God, though known in a way, is only in the background of thought. That God is one’s ‘own’ becomes so dominant in this kind of devotion that the sense of His nearness practically displaces the sense of His might. How a soul can have such a sense of nearness as to feel the Omnipresent and the Omnipotent to be an object to be loved in a personal way as father, mother, friend, husband, etc., is one of the mysterious aspects of divine love. This kind of love is chiefly
