HOW BHAKTI AND JNANA YOGA INTERTWINE
Ramakrishna, the great master, has said that in this time and age, Bhakti yoga is more important because it implies total devotion not only to your guru but to everyone you are in contact with. The basis of bhakti yoga is to allow the heart to flow in total devotion, for if the devotion is lacking, there is no bhakti. To find true bhakti, in the first stages, requires an object of bhakti; that object can be anyone, even my picture.
So, from abstraction, you bring life to concreteness. You try to love something abstract, and you cannot do it. It is only after you reach a higher stage of evolution that you can be devoted to abstraction, but with the abstraction, you find subtraction and bhakti disappears and when bhakti disappears, your mind starts functioning in contemplation where you could analyse the reserves of your bhakti and in that analysis you will find the full force of your devotion because your devotion or bhakti is governed by thought forces in your mind. How else will you recognise bhakti if jnana yoga or the thought processes are not recognised? So, Jnana yoga forms a part of your bhakti.
As you progress in your contemplation and understanding of your bhakti, your feeling deepens, because bhakti consists of love. When that constitution is formed, bhakti and Jnana yoga, or contemplation, join hand in hand. So, you develop a feeling of love, supported by analysis of the mind, because Jnana yoga is about understanding the workings of bhakti, which is the heart. So, when this combination occurs, it is like mixing colours: you take yellow and blue, and it forms green. Look at the combination. Like oxygen and hydrogen, their combination forms water, which is different from either oxygen or hydrogen. It is a very scientific process. It is not mystical, as some people think; it is practical.
BY BECOMING A MASTER OF YOURSELF, YOU MERGE INTO DIVINITY, PURE CONSCIOUSNESS
To bring the practicality of bhakti and jnana, it must be externally expressed, and that expression comes through karma yoga. So, to repeat again, in practicality, it has to find its own physical expression, and the physical expression of karma yoga can only be through the actions of your lives. Action in life is not only physical, but the action of life originates in the thought processes of the mind, for the mind is also action; every thought you think is an action. The thought is of a subtle level, and the physical action is of a grosser level.
If you can combine the subtle level with the grosser level, what a great difference it will make to your life. So, the conclusion is that bhakti yoga, jnana yoga and karma yoga have to be combined, and when this combination comes about, then you enter the realms of a raja yoga. Raja yoga means the royal path, and when you enter this royal path, you experience the reality of life, and what is the reality of life? Can anyone tell me? The reality of life is to exist in reality. And what is reality? Reality is to be yourself. I might have said in other lectures throughout the world, be yourself. I will never tell you to be like Krishna or Buddha or Christ; be yourself, and by being yourself, you will understand your reality, and by understanding your reality, you will have formed a perfect combination of bhakti, Jnana, and karma, and have Raj Yoga. Raja yoga, raja means the king or queen, the same thing, because a king cannot exist without his queen. So, when this combination is formed, you become a king or a queen unto yourself, and a king can command, and what do you want to command? You want to command that peace and joy in your life. So simple.
So, once you become a master of yourself, you can take bhakti yoga, jnana yoga, karma yoga, and raja yoga, and then you can take out your handkerchief and blow it all away. Then you will not need the thousands and thousands of soldiers in your army, the army of your consciousness, because you can rise above petty consciousness and become pure consciousness. And by becoming pure consciousness, you have merged into this one Divinity because Divinity is nothing else but pure consciousness and that pure consciousness is within you all. It is just a bit folded, that is all. It just requires constant cognition and recognition.
UPLIFTMENT THROUGH SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND PRACTICE
How many of you go through your day thinking of that purity within you? And that is why you suffer. You idiots. So, in every action, karma, always have a thought of Divinity in your mind and let that be the lighthouse, and the lighthouse is there because the rocks in the sea are all around, and because of the lighthouse, your ship of life does not bump against the rocks. The lighthouse has a light; switch it on so the light can burn, and your ship of life will not smash itself against the rocks. The lighthouse within you is the guiding light, so you can avoid all the rocks that could smash the ship of your life. So simple, switch on the light.
People get into many problems and troubles. Because they do not switch on the light, which is done through your spiritual practices, your life will transform. As I look at you, I can read all your problems. Why must you suffer? Be joyful like me. That is why I am with you to tell the one secret of joy, and the secrets are not private; they are open secrets. A true master opens his heart, and by opening his heart, he lets out all the love to everyone.
No one in this course can ever leave being the same person. They will always leave with some upliftment and joy; my travelling thousands of miles to come here would be useless. My duty in life is to show the way, a real way to make your lives better and happier.
The words I speak to you are not for these forty people in the hall, but they are spoken for generations and generations and generations to come. For truth is always immortal.
THE KING OF GURUS
To come back to the subject again, that you start from where you are, if you are devotionally minded, you start with bhakti yoga, if you are intellectually oriented, you start with Jnana yoga, and if you are a very practical person, you start with karma yoga, which means be good, do good. And then to repeat again, the combination of these brings you the real way of Raja Yoga.
Why do you think my guru, Swami Pavitranandaji, gave me this spiritual name of Gururaj, the king of gurus? Because after mastering the various aspects of life, he called me Gururaj, the king of gurus, and, as a personal note, my life is dedicated to the service of humanity. What do I need? One slice of bread, a cup of milk or tea, a bit of shoes to put on, perhaps, and I only put on these clothes to seem decent because I do not want to insult all these lovely ladies in the audience, because as I told you, I think, I do not know if somewhere else, I could turn up in my underpants or even totally naked, because I have got nothing to hide because what all these guys have, I also got. Oh, I like to laugh.
Do you see the point I am trying to make? It is to be totally uninhibited. As soon as you find the repressions and inhibitions, your problems start, but to be uninhibited, with no repressions, your mind becomes free.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang ES – Los Tres Yogas
