Sri Ramakrishna on Bhakti (Devotion)

• Devotion also has its sattva. The devotee who possesses the quality of sattva meditates secretly. Perhaps he meditates inside his mosquito net. And a sattvic devotee never flatters anybody for money.
• When a person has devotion of the rajasic type, he may wear a holy mark on his forehead and a rosary of rudraksha interspersed with gold beads. When he worships, he dresses himself in a silk cloth.
• A man with the devotion of tamas has burning faith. Such a devotee forces the Lord like a dacoit forces a man to part with his wealth.
• It is easier to reach God by the path of love and devotion.
• By following the path of devotion, one can attain the knowledge of Brahman.
• As long as you haven’t acquired love for God, your devotion is unripe. When you have love for Him, your devotion is called ripe.
• A person who has unripe devotion cannot internalize spiritual instructions or talk about God. It is only when the photographer’s glass is coated black with love for God, so to speak, that it catches an image and is retained.
• All spiritual practices are done for the sake of attaining God. The more you meditate on Him, the less will be your attachment for the ordinary things of the world. The more devotion you have for His lotus feet, the less desire you will have for sense objects, and the less your mind will concern itself with physical comfort.
• Bhakti, or love of God, is the essence. When you develop love for Him, discrimination and dispassion come by themselves.
• If one has sincere love of God, all come under his control – whether it is the king, wicked people, or a wife. If you have sincere bhakti for the Lord, the wife also comes gradually to this path. If you are good, God willing, she can also become good.
• The Akhanda Sachchidananda cannot be known by all, but he who attains Nitya (the Absolute) and yet lives in His lila (sport) to enjoy himself with Him has ripe bhakti. Only after you have seen the queen in the foreign land (England), can you describe her, her work, and anything else about her.
• Does the Lord care for wealth? No, He is under the control of bhakti. What does He value? Not money but a feeling heart for Him, intense love, devotion, discrimination and dispassion for His sake.
• Bhakti is the one thing needed – love for the Lord. Just by believing in the lunar, the solar and the stellar regions, and in great souls, does not mean that one is seeking the Lord. One should practice spiritual disciplines to gain bhakti for His lotus feet; one must call for Him with a longing heart.
• Three things are necessary for God’s avirbhava in an image: one, the devotion of the priest; two, a beautiful image; and three, the devotion of the master of the house.
• There is no harm in keeping the ‘ego of devotion,’ or the ‘ego of knowledge,’ or the ‘ego of a child.’ Shankaracharya retained the ‘ego of knowledge’ for the purpose of teaching mankind.
• At that time I went about asking people what had happened to me. Bholanath said to me, ‘The Mahabharata talks of it: how a man would occupy his mind after coming down from samadhi. He needs bhakti and the company of devotees – otherwise, where would he rest his mind?’
• When the river of bhakti overflows, there is pole deep water in the fields.
• When a man is inebriated with God’s love, he does not accept injunctions of the Vedas. He picks durva grass and doesn’t pick it up from the earth. He picks whatever comes in his hands. While gathering tulsi leaves, he wantonly breaks its branches!
• Nothing more is needed after one has attained bhakti!
• Faith and bhakti! One can attain Him easily through love and devotion. He can be grasped through the ecstasy of love.
• One gradually acquires love and devotion for God by practicing the chanting of the Lord’s name and glories.
• He who has genuine love and devotion to God does not care for wealth, health and such things. He reflects that the austerities and repetition of God’s name are not for creature comforts, for name and fame, or for wealth. All these are ephemeral – just a matter of two days.
• No one can sketch a divine character without love and devotion for God in his heart.
• The other day I told you the meaning of bhakti – to worship God with your body, mind and speech. ‘With the body’ means to worship and serve Him with your hands, to go to His shrine with your feet, to hear the chanting of His name and glories with your ears, and to see His image with your eyes. ‘With the mind’ means to contemplate and meditate on Him constantly, and to remember and think about His divine sport. ‘With speech’ means to sing hymns and chant His name and glories.
• There is no pride in the ego of devotion. It does not create ignorance; on the contrary, it helps one to realize God. This ego is not to be counted as an ordinary ego – just as hinche greens are not ordinary greens, which make you ill. By eating hinche leaves, one is cured of an excess of bile – it does one good. Sugar candy is not like ordinary sweets. Sweets are generally harmful, but sugar candy removes acidity.
• Bhakti is not to be counted as a desire. Sri Ramakrishna — It is like hinche leaves, which are not counted as greens. Hinche controls an excess of bile.
• One cannot attain God by learning and scholarship. What can one comprehend of God by reasoning? Everyone must do whatever brings loving devotion to His lotus feet.
• When love and devotion for God matures, one experiences ecstasy. It is followed by mahabhava. After mahabhava comes ecstatic love and then the attainment of the goal (God-realization).
• Having developed such devotion for God that a devotee sees everything permeated with divine consciousness: Krishna as consciousness, His abode as consciousness, the devotees as divine, everything permeated with consciousness. Only a very few devotees attain such love for God.
• The gift of spiritual knowledge and love for God is higher than the gift of food. Therefore, Chaitanya Deva disseminated bhakti even among outcastes. The body is prone to sorrow as well as happiness. You have come here to eat mangoes. Eat them and leave. Spiritual knowledge and love for God are what is needed. God alone is the substance, all else is nothing.
• There are three kinds of bhakti, depending on one’s nature: the sattva of bhakti, the rajas of bhakti and the tamas of bhakti.
• In sattvic bhakti, only God knows about it. Such a devotee loves God secretly, perhaps meditating under his mosquito net without anyone knowing about it. When one develops the purest sattva – sattva of sattva – the vision of God is very near, just as at dawn one knows that there will be no more delay for the sun to rise.
• Those who have rajasic bhakti have a desire for people to see that they are devotees. They perform the worship with sixteen items. They go into the temple wearing pure silk. They wear a rudraksha rosary round their necks. The rosary has pearls and here and there gold rudrakshas.
• The tamas of bhakti is devotion like an attack of dacoits. Dacoits are armed with weapons while committing dacoity and have no fear even of eight police officers. They shout, ‘Kill, rob!’ Like mad people they shout, ‘Hara, Hara, Hara; Vyom, Vyom! Victory to Kali!’ They have immense strength of mind, and burning faith.
• Through love of God suspension of breath comes about by itself. When the mind is concentrated, the breathing becomes regular. Only when the mind is concentrated is the breath steadied, and when the breath is steady, the mind becomes one-pointed – the intellect becomes steady. The person who experiences this isn’t even aware of it.
• He is beyond one or two – beyond speech and mind. To go from the phenomenal to the Absolute and then return to the relative from the Absolute is called mature love for God.
• Make an effort to attain love for God. You have taken birth as a human being only for that. You have come to the garden to eat mangoes. What need is there to know how many thousands of branches and how many millions of leaves there are in the garden? What is the use of knowledge about what happens after death?
• You don’t believe in God with form. There is no harm in that. It’s enough to have single-minded devotion to the formless God. Even so, you should cultivate the longing that the believers in God with form have. When you call upon Him as Mother, your love and devotion increase.
• Love for God is what is essential. God resides in everything, so whom do I call a devotee? The person whose mind ever dwells on God. This doesn’t happen if one is egoistic and proud.
• There is a way to extinguish caste difference. That way is bhakti, or love for God. A devotee knows no caste. Love for God cleanses the body, the mind and soul. Gaur and Nitai spread the name of Hari and embraced all, including the pariah.
• A brahmin is no brahmin without love for God, and a pariah is no longer a pariah when he has love for God. An untouchable becomes pure, sanctified, by love for God.
• Love for God is the essential thing. Who can know God through reasoning? I want love of God. Why do I need to know His boundless glories? If I can become inebriated by only one bottle of wine, why do I need to know how much wine is in the wine shop? A pot of water is enough to quench my thirst. Why do I need to know how much water is on the earth?
• Bhakti is the essential thing. You acquire love for God by constantly chanting His name and glories.
• Pray to God for love and devotion. Dhruva’s devotion was motivated – he practiced austerities to gain a kingdom. But Prahlada’s devotion was motiveless, ahetuki bhakti.
• Develop the tamas of bhakti. Say, ‘What! I have repeated the name of Rama? I have repeated the name of Kali? What bondage have I? What fruit of action is there for me?’
• Bhakti indeed is the essence. The genuine devotee has no fear, no feelings of anxiety. The Mother knows all. The cat holds the mouse in one way but its own kitten in quite another.
• In the path of bhakti, or love, one believes in incarnations of God. When a woman of the sect saw the state I was in, she said, ‘Father, you have realized the truth within. Don’t dance so much. Grapes should be preserved carefully, in cotton.’ When a woman conceives, her mother-in-law gradually decreases her work. A sign of God-realization is that the person’s duties slowly drop off. There is a jewel of a man inside this person.
• When you develop love for Hari, you don’t distinguish between castes.
• Only devotion for His lotus feet is the real thing, everything else is illusion.
• There are five kinds of light: the light of a lamp, the light from another kind of fire, the light from the moon, the light of the sun and the light of the sun and moon together. Love for God is the moon, knowledge is the sun.
• Sometimes you can see the moon in the sky even before the sun has set. In an Incarnation of God and those like him, the moon of devotion and the sun of knowledge appear together.
• Can knowledge and love for God come in a single receptacle just by wishing for it? Only a special kind of person can possess both. Some bamboo has big holes and some very small. Is it possible for everybody to comprehend God within him? Is it possible for a one-seer pot to contain two seers of milk?
• Love for God is the essence. There is love with a motive and there is also motiveless devotion, pure love and devotion, love that seeks no return. Keshab Sen and his group didn’t know about motiveless love. In this love the devotee has no desire for return, he only has devotion for the lotus feet of the Lord.
• Then there is ecstatic love, as if love for God is overflowing. ‘The devotee laughs, weeps and dances in ecstasy’ – it’s like Chaitanya Deva’s. Rama said to Lakshmana, ‘Brother, wherever you find overflowing love, know that I am present.’
• Sattvic bhakti means an attitude of humility and modesty, while tamasic bhakti shows itself in the attitude of a highway robber: ‘I have recited His name, how can I sin? You are my real Mother, You will have to reveal Yourself to me.’

Naradiya Bhakti

• For the Kaliyuga the path of love and devotion as preached by Narada is enjoined. Where is the time to perform all those rituals mentioned in the scriptures?
• According to Narada, bhakti is the injunction for the age of Kali. On this path one first develops love and devotion to God, then it matures into bhava. Higher than bhava is mahabhava and prema. An ordinary mortal does not attain mahabhava and prema. He who has attained it has attained the Substance, namely realized God.
• Bhakti, according to Narada, is suited for the age of Kali: One must constantly chant His name and glories. Those who have no time should singlemindedly chant His name morning and evening, repeating, ‘Haribol, Haribol,’ while clapping their hands.
• Life depends on food in the Kaliyuga. The path of devotion enjoined by Narada is best suited to this age. God is a matter of the heart. How can He be held devoid of any feelings of the heart?
• In the Kaliyuga where is the time to perform rituals as prescribed in the Vedas? So love for God according to Narada is enjoined for this age.
• The path of devotion according to Narada is chanting His name and glories. Karma yoga is not suited to the Kaliyuga. The path of love for God is the right path.

Prema Bhakti

• One can see God through love alone – but it must be ripe, prema bhakti, or raga bhakti. Only after gaining that kind of love can you love God as the son loves his mother, or the mother loves her child, or the wife loves her husband.
• If you must be mad, be not mad for the things of this world. Be mad for God!
• How many trees are in a garden and how many branches each tree has – what is the use of such calculation? You’ve come to the garden to eat mangoes. Eat them and leave. It’s only to attain love and devotion to God that you’ve taken birth as a human being. Eat the mangoes and be satisfied.
• One becomes a man of knowledge who is born with an element of Shiva. His mind always goes to that knowledge ‘only Brahman is real, the world is an illusion.’ If one is born of Vishnu, one possesses loving devotion. This intense love will never leave you.
• All men look alike on the outside, but some of them have ‘sweetened milk’ within. The puli (a ring shaped sweetmeat with some filling in it) may have lentils for its filling, or sweetened milk. In both cases it looks alike. A filling of ‘sweetened milk’ is the desire to know the Lord and to have ecstatic love for Him.
• If a person feels intoxicated with God’s love, there is no father, no mother, and no wife for him. He may have so much love for the Lord that he may appear to be mad! Such a person has no duties. He is freed from all his debts. What is intoxication with love for God like? In that state one forgets the world.
• ‘When you are intoxicated with ecstatic love, you see God in all beings. The gopis (milkmaids) saw Sri Krishna in all beings – saw everything filled with Sri Krishna. They would say, ‘We indeed are Krishna!’ This was their state of intoxication with God.
• Chanting of the Lord’s name with love is the one thing needed. All the rest is of little value. Prema and bhakti is the reality, all else is unreal.
• Without inborn tendencies, love and devotion for God does not come spontaneously. This is the mark of prema-bhakti. Jnana-bhakti is love of God based on reasoning.
• The gopis had intense love for Krishna. There are two aspects of ecstatic love: ‘I-ness’ and ‘my-ness.’ ‘If I don’t serve Krishna, he will become sick’ – this is I-ness. There is no feeling of God in this attitude. My-ness – that is feeling ‘my and mine.’ The gopis had such a feeling of my-ness for Sri Krishna that, lest his soles should get hurt, they laid their subtle bodies under his feet.

Pure Devotion

• Pure knowledge and pure devotion are the same. Pure devotion takes you to the same place that pure knowledge does. But the path of devotion is smooth and easy.
• When one has given up dharma and adharma, that which remains is pure love – unalloyed love, untainted by desires, love for God that wells up unbidden out of the depths of the immortal soul.
• Narada said, ‘Rama, if you must grant me a boon, please grant that I may have pure love and devotion for your lotus feet. And may your world-bewitching maya not enchant me.’
• He only wants to see God. He doesn’t want wealth, honour, and physical comforts. He wants nothing at all. This is called pure love and devotion.
• People who go around making disciples are of inferior calibre. And those who want occult powers are also of a lower class. For example, the power to walk across the Ganges on foot, or to be able to tell what a person is saying at some distant place – that is an occult power. It is very difficult for such a person to have pure love for God.
• I asked the Mother for pure love and devotion. I said to the Mother, ‘Here is Your righteousness, here is Your unrighteousness. Take them and grant me pure love and devotion. Here is Your purity and also Your impurity, only grant me pure love. Mother, here is Your vice and here is your virtue, only grant me pure love and devotion.’
• When I renounced everything by offering flowers at the lotus feet of the Divine Mother, I said to Her, ‘Here, Mother. Take your purity and take your impurity, take both your righteousness and unrighteousness. Here, Mother, take your sin and virtuous deeds. Here, take your good and take your evil. But pray grant me pure love and devotion for God.’ I could not say to Her, ‘Here, Mother, take your truthfulness and take your falsehood’ – I couldn’t do that.
• Ahalya said, ‘Rama, may I be born as the offspring of a pig, or any other being, but pray grant that I may fix my mind at Thy lotus feet and develop pure love and devotion for Thee.’
• Narada said, ‘Rama, I want no other boon from You. Only grant pure love and devotion. And may I never be enchanted by Your world-bewitching maya. Pray, bless me.’ When one sincerely prays to Him, one can fix one’s mind on Him – then one does develop pure love and devotion at His lotus feet.
• Love of God – that is the essence. Love and devotion for God. Narada said to Rama, ‘May I have pure love for Your lotus feet. And may I never be enchanted by Your world-bewitching maya.’
• There is no desire in pure love. You want nothing from here [me], you only like to hear my talk when you meet me. My mind is also drawn to you: How is he, why hasn’t he come? I have such anxiety about you. You want nothing, but still you love God. This is called motiveless love for God. This is pure love. Prahlada had it. He didn’t want the kingdom, he didn’t care for riches. He only wanted the Lord.

Raga Bhakti – Passionate Love

• Devotion alone does not enable you to realize God. Unless you have intense love for God, you cannot attain Him. Passionate devotion is another name for intense love.
• God cannot be realized as long as you don’t have this intense love for Him. You must have love for Him. When your worldly way of thinking disappears completely and your mind goes to Him one hundred percent, only then do you attain God.
• But some people acquire loving devotion naturally. They are born that way. Being perfect from childhood, they weep for God at an early age, as Prahlada wept for Vishnu.
• When you have love for God, you don’t feel the attraction of maya – for wife, children, or dear relatives. You only retain compassion for them.
• When raga bhakti, prema bhakti, or love for God as one’s near and dear one develops, one doesn’t have to practice rituals any more. It’s like crossing a rice field after the harvest. One doesn’t have to walk along the ridge of the field, but can go straight across.
• You cannot realize God without that kind of passionate love, intense devotion.

Ritualistic Devotion

• There is another kind of devotion known as ritualistic devotion. You have to repeat the name of God a fixed number of times. Along with this, you must fast, go on pilgrimage, worship in a prescribed manner, make so many sacrifices, and so on. These are all part of ritualistic devotion.
• Performing so much repetition of the name and so much meditation is worshiping in a prescribed manner, is ritualistic devotion. It’s like going around a rice field along the outside ridge to reach the other side.
• The scriptures instruct us to perform numerous rites, so I perform them. This is called ritualistic devotion. The other is loving devotion. It comes out of an especially deep love for God, such as Prahlada had. When one develops this love, there is no longer the need for rituals.
• What is ritualistic worship? It consists of repeating the Name so many times a day, meditating for a certain period of time, performing so many sacrifices and homa for a certain duration, worshipping with so many articles, and repeating a certain mantra during puja – it is as easy to lose as to get.
• The fundamental thing is to acquire passionate love for God. And along with this, you must develop discrimination and dispassion.
• Real love for God is passionate. Ritualistic devotion leaves the devotee as fast as it comes. Passionate love for God is like the self-created stone lingam rising out of the earth. It’s impossible to find its source. The root of the self-born lingam goes as far as Kashi. Only incarnations of God and their apostles experience such passionate love.

Selfless Devotion

• There is such a thing as selfless devotion. It is very good if one can attain it. Prahlada had this selfless devotion. Such a devotee says, ‘O Lord, I want neither wealth nor name nor bodily pleasures, and so forth. Only grant that I may have pure love for Thy lotus feet.’

Developing Bhakti

• When you have gained love for God, your worldly work decreases by itself. And then you don’t like it anymore. Who likes water sweetened with molasses after having tasted water sweetened with sugar candy?
• If you can cultivate love and devotion for God sitting here, what is the need to go on pilgrimage? When I went to Kashi, I saw that the trees were the same, the tamarind leaves were also the same.
• You can live in the world after acquiring love and devotion for God. It is like smearing your hands with oil before cutting open a jackfruit. Then its milky sap won’t stick to your hands.

Shudda Bhakti

• It is given to pure souls alone to attain pure love for the Lord, to have one aim and to have the mind fixed on the Lord.

Intense Devotion

• One attains God by developing an intense attachment, or by cultivating love for Him. Devotion acquired through ritualistic worship goes as easily as it comes.
• They who have intense devotion do not say, Brother, I have lived on food consisting of boiled rice with clarified butter [havishya] for so long, but what have I gained?’ They who take up farming for the first time, give up their land if they fail to get a crop. But a hereditary farmer will persist in farming, whether there is a crop or not. Their ancestors have practiced farming, so they know that farming will bring them food.
• They who have intense devotion have real and sincere love for God. He takes their burden on Himself. When you are admitted to a hospital, the physician does not discharge you until you are cured.

Single-minded Devotion

• You should pay respect to all religions. But there is something called single-minded devotion. You may salute everybody, but when you love someone with your heart and soul, it is known as single-minded devotion.
• How can you develop such love for God? Initially, you have to associate with the holy. By keeping their company, faith in God comes. With faith, single-minded devotion develops. Then you don’t want to hear anything but talk about God. And you’ll wish to work for Him alone. Single-minded devotion is followed by love for God. Then ecstasy, mahabhava, and prema – and then one attains the goal.
• There is also something called single-minded devotion. When the milkmaids went to Mathura and saw Krishna wearing a turban, they drew down their veils and said, ‘Who is this man? Where is our yellow-robed Krishna with a crest of peacock feathers?’
• Hanuman also had single-minded devotion. When he came to Dwaraka in the Davapar yuga, Krishna said to Rukmini, ‘Hanuman won’t be happy unless he sees Rama’s form.’ So he assumed the form of Rama.

Ahetuki Bhakti

• You may visit a rich man just because you like to see him. When you’re asked if you’d like a favour, you reply, ‘Sir, I want nothing at all. I come just to see you.’ This is called ahetuki bhakti. You ask God for nothing – only to love Him.
• Love for God that wells up spontaneously from the depths of the soul – it would be very good if you could practice that.
• I want none of these – liberation, name and fame, wealth, or recovery from disease. I only want You. This is selfless love. Many people go to visit a rich gentleman and ask for things. If there is one who doesn’t want anything from him but has only come out of love, that person gets any amount of love from him. Prahlada had unselfish love. His love for God was pure and motiveless.
• If you ask a favour of a rich man, he no longer respects you. He doesn’t allow you to ride in the same carriage with him. And even if he does, he doesn’t let you sit near him. So the best is selfless love for God that rises unbidden out of the depths of the soul.
• You must not entertain any desire. If you have a craving, your love for God is selfish. Devotion without desire is love for its own sake – whether or not you love me, I still love you. This is called love for its own sake.
• There is a kind of love for God that is completely unselfish. You can perfect it in your life – if you can practice it!

Passionate Love for God

• I think about these things sometimes, and then I don’t like all that. In the beginning you can talk about sin and how to be free from it. But, if by God’s grace, you begin to feel love for Him, you develop devotion, you forget all about sin and virtue. Then you go beyond injunctions and scriptures. You no longer feel you have to bother about penance and repentance.
• It’s like reaching your destination by a winding river, taking a long time and with great difficulty. But if the water rises in flood, you reach your destination by a straight path, without difficulty and in a short time. Then there is pole-deep water even on dry land.
• In the early stages you have to go around and about and face a lot of difficulties. But when you develop intense love for God, the path becomes straight. It’s like choosing any direction to cross a field after the paddy has been harvested. Before, you had to go around and along the ridge of the field, but now you can go any way you like. Even if there is stubble, you can put on shoes to walk across. If you have discrimination, non-attachment and faith in the words of the guru, you won’t have any trouble.