Love is One

 

"Bhakti Yoga" is a book by Swami Vivekananda. The publication date is unclear. After reading a reprint of the 1959 edition on the web, I realized that the original version (perhaps from 1896) is much longer! That could explain various strange discrepancies in the 1959 text. Also, the various reprint editions treat the text as an actual book, when it´s really a series of stenographed lectures. I should really read the 1896 edition, and maybe I will at some point, but since I spent the last two days reading the truncated version, I decided to comment on it anyway. Take this commentary with a grain of Indian sea salt, if you wish!

Vivekananda was the founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, named after his master Ramakrishna. Yet, the two men obviously had different orientations, Ramakrishna being a "mad saint" and Shakta mystic who lived in a Kali temple in Calcutta, while the more cultured Vivekananda introduced a modernized form of Advaita Vedanta philosophy to the Western world, most notably the United States. There are even suspicions that Vivekananda was heavily influenced by New Thought and other forms of very liberal Christianity, American Transcendentalism, and so on. Of course, another possibility is that he referenced such things in his writings as a way to "hook" American spiritual seekers...

Vivekananda tries to harmonize belief in an unpersonal Absolute (Brahman) with worship of a personal god (Ishvara) and unabashed polytheism and "idolatry". At one point, he uses the simile of a bird, which needs both wings and a tail to fly: the two wings are "jnana" (knowledge) and "bhakti" (devotion) respectively, while the tail (the rudder) is "yoga" (presumably he means Raja Yoga and by *that* I think kundalini yoga is meant). The goal of the seeker is to realize that Lover, Beloved and Love are One. Merging with the Absolute thus becomes a kind of bhakti or devotion. I suppose this is bhakti towards Nirguna Brahman (the "formless" Brahman without attributes). 

However, most humans simply can´t reach this stage of realization without intermediary stages. Therefore, various lower stages of bhakti are necessary, when worship, love and devotion are directed towards God conceptualized in human form. Indeed, it´s inevitable that humans see God as human-like. Vivekananda actually says that waterbuffalo would see God as a waterbuffalo! This bhakti is directed towards Ishvara ("the Lord"), the transcendental and yet personal creator and sustainer of the cosmos. Bhakti towards lower beings such as demigods or spirits isn´t necessarily "wrong", but it will not lead to moksha (liberation). However, if you imagine yourself to worship Ishvara in the form of a demigod, or even a cult object, that counts as worship of the Lord. At several points, Vivekananda actually criticizes Protestantism for having scrapped all the old Church rituals, a somewhat unexpected position of somebody who supposedly was heavily influenced by ultra-liberal Protestants!

Vivekananda expounds at some length on the various forms of Vishnu-Krishna worship: seeing God as your master, friend, child, licit lover and (the most extreme version) illicit ditto. Here, the really existing bhakti shines through in all its crazy ecstasy. At one point, Vivekananda quotes an unnamed sage who I assume is Ramakrishna. To paraphrase: "The world considers me mad, but at least I´m mad for God." At the same time, I get the distinct impression that Vivekananda´s real orientation is the exact opposite of this bhakta madness. The point is to get higher and higher, until all your desires melt away, and you love the entire universe with perfectly poised equanimity. 

The path to this point doesn´t really seem to go through bhakti as usually conceived, but rather through purity, renunciation, stillness, desirelessness, and so on. Vivekananda does talk of Love, but is there really any love if everything in the cosmos is "Love", and the Lover, Beloved and Love itself is really one? Also, the idea that everything in the universe is Love sounds like New Thought or Christian Science! Vivekananda also says that we should love God even if we don´t get any love back, as a way to train our selflessness, but isn´t the point of bhakti precisely that the devotee´s love activates God´s love for the devotee? Harmonizing bhakti for a personal god like Krishna with a more monist pespective turns out to be...difficult. 

An interesting aspect of "Bhakti Yoga" is that Vivekananda emphasizes the need for physical training and a good diet. Only strong-willed people will reach Brahman, and that includes having a strong body, due to the exertions necessary to reach the goal (presumably he means some kind of difficult body postures when doing yoga). As for the diet, it has to be "sattvic", although the author also warns his readers against "kitchen religion" (an obsession with pure and impure foods, and so on). He even provocatively says that a sage who is a paragon of moral virtue while nevertheless eating meat from swine (considered impure animals in Hinduism) is better than a moral reprobate who only eats pure foods.

Vivekananda´s "pluralist" perspective is also touched upon several times in the book. All religions (or "ideals") are equally valid in his eyes, since they all manifest the Divine and ultimately converge on the same point. He criticizes religious exclusivism and fanaticism, seeing this in effect as a lower form of bhakti, a very low form in which love of one´s own god is expressed as hatred of all the others! It was Vivekananda´s recasting of Hinduism as a tolerant religion (in the modern sense) that made his fame at the World´s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. 

With that, I end my little reflections.