Pariprasna

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.

QUESTION: Is Bhakti different from Jnana? Swami Vivekananda seems to make a distinction between these.

MAHARAJ: The path of Bhakti is different from the path of Jnana. However, in their maturity they do not differ, but are to be understood as the obverse and the reverse of the same coin of spiritual realization. At the disciplinary stage there appears to be a difference. For, the Bhakta, to start with, keeps up a sense of real distinction between himself and God, which is essential for his practice. Sri Ramakrishna gives an analogy. A very loyal servant works under a master for a very long time. The master is pleased with him very much and one day puts him on his own seat and says that he is as good as himself (the master). In the same way, the Lord whom the devotee adores, loves and serves, may at the end withdraw the devotee into Himself. The devotee realizes then his unity of stuff with the Supreme Being, feels that he is the Lord’s own, recognizes Him as pervading everything and will not any longer have that sense of separation and distance from Him with which he started his devotional life.

The path of Jnana starts from the very beginning with the teaching that an aspirant’s real ‘I’ is not different from Brahman, and the sense of difference felt with reference to Him is illusory. To a practising follower of the path of Jnana, as distinguished from mere talkers on it, the denial of all limiting adjuncts as mere appearance, and therefore not actually existent, is the main part of discipline. To a Bhakta this seems quite incompatible with his outlook. But it is said that when the follower of the path of Jnana ultimately intuits Brahman, he comes to recognize that it is Brahman that has become all the Jivas and the Jagat and that Brahman’s power of manifestation—Sakti or personal God, is as real as Brahman. This at least is what we learn from the life of Totapuri who was Sri Ramakrishna’s teacher in the path of non-dualism.

Totapuri did not at first have any respect for devotional discipline, evidently because his knowledge had not become complete. But in association with Sri Ramakrishna, he realized the Divine Mother as a reality and came to recognize that Brahman is both personal and impersonal. Going at first exclusively along the discipline relating to the Impersonal, he came, in the fullness of his knowledge, to the realization, that Brahman is also Personal. In the case of the Bhakta the personal realization comes first and, in the maturity of his love, he realizes the Impersonal nonduality also.

Thus as Sadhanas, Bhakti and Jnana are different. But in their maturity both reveal the same Personal-Impersonal Being, in whom knowledge and devotion are harmonized as the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. In fact, true love alone can generate true understanding and true understanding alone can generate true love. They are complementary in their maturity, though they may look different at the start. vvv

QUESTION: How is it that such a spiritually vital concept as Bhakti finds almost no mention in the fountain-head of spirituality—the Upanishads?

MAHARAJ: This assumption is not quite correct. The truth is that we do not find therein the cult pattern of devotion, highly coloured by personalistic touches, as in the Puranas. Most of the Upasanas in the Upanishads are devotional meditations. The Antaryami Brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where we find the doctrine that the Supreme Spirit is the soul of all things and that these things are related to Him as His body, is pure devotional philosophy and is the very basis of the Bhakti aspect of Ramanuja’s doctrine. The Taittiriya Upanishad’s description of Him as Rasa is the basis of the devotional doctrines of the Vallabha and Chaitanya schools of Vaishnavism. The Kathopanishad definitely states the doctrine of grace. The whole of Svetasvatara Upanishad deals with devotion, and the very term Parabhakti, occurs in it.

The point to be borne in mind is that the Upanishads have many strands of teachings and in order to bring what they consider to be consistency into these teachings, the different Vedantic Acharyas have interpreted the text as supporting only their particular philosophical outlook and as carrying only that outlook as their ultimate purport.

Of these many interpretations, the interpretation of Sri Sankara, which maintains that Jiva and Brahman are identical, while all objectivity, including the whole cosmos, is only an appearance, is the most popular among intellectuals and in the interpretation, Bhakti passages are played down, given indirect meanings and made stepping-stones to ultimate non-duality through sublation of all distinctions.

But it must not be forgotten that the whole of the Vedanta Sutras has been interpreted by Ramanuja, Vallabha and others also and all the Upanishads too have been interpreted by the followers of these Acharyas as teaching Bhakti as the end of spiritual life. A reconciliation between these two views cannot be effected by refuting the one or the other by interpretation, or by showing one as a stepping-stone to the other, but can be effected only by recognizing that the great revelation we get through the Upanishads is of two types for equally noble aspirants, one standing for impersonal devotion (Jnana in a technical sense) ending in absorption into the Supreme Being and the other for personal devotion (Bhakti) which stands for love of the Supreme Being as one’s nearest and dearest and service of Him as the highest consummation.

The latter position has been greatly elaborated in the Puranas and has been identified by different cults with their cult-teachings. It is just that the major Upanishads, with the exception of Svetasvatara, have no direct affiliation with any particular cult. Even the identification of the Svetasvatara with the Rudra cult would appear to be very superficial and even this does not vary much from the general spirit of the Upanishads.

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