Begin With Devotion – In Gita Verse 8.28 A person who accepts the path of devotional service is not bereft of the results derived from studying the Vedas, performing sacrifices, undergoing austerities, giving charity or pursuing philosophical and fruitive activities. Simply by performing devotional service, he attains all these, and at the end he reaches the supreme eternal abode.
Krishna says that – if you are practicing Devotions means you have seen the universe in everything. Even if you have no knowledge of vedas, not even practiced anything still you will reach the supreme eternal abode.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 3.28, blog I wrote Devotion means that you are beginning to experience the divine in matter, that you are beginning to perceive the unmanifest in the manifest, that the formless has begun to be glimpsed shimmering in form.
The sage of this Upanishad has put meditation after devotion. If there is devotion in your heart, then you cannot imagine how easy it is to lead your mind into meditation. If there is trust, then devotion follows it like a shadow. If there is trust, and devotion follows it like a shadow, then meditation will follow like a fragrance. Meditation becomes difficult because you know neither trust nor devotion, and you try to meditate directly. But to try for meditation directly will create difficulty because then you have to put great effort into meditation, and still the results will not be so striking because the two basic ingredients are missing.
A man who is filled with love for the whole of existence – who sits and stands and who even blinks his eyelids with devotion, whose each and every gesture is full of devotion toward the world – will have no problems moving into meditation. He will simply remember meditation, and he will be in meditation because there is no conflict, no tension in him. Tension enters when you think that the world is an enemy. Tension comes when you feel existence is your opponent: where there is a fight going on, where life is a battlefield, a war. With no tension, the devotee moves into meditation – just like that.
This is why devotees have even gone so far as to say, “What meditation, what spiritual practice?” There is a reason for this. Devotees say, “What meditation, what practice?” because devotion is enough. And they speak rightly. They are right: not because meditation is meaningless, but because meditation happens to them spontaneously. Meera dances and she enters meditation; she has never learned any techniques of meditation. Chaitanya does his kirtan, devotional singing and dancing, and he just slips into meditation. He has no notion of meditation: “What? Meditation?”
A very interesting incident once happened in Chaitanya’s life. He heard that a great yogi was camping near the village, and that people were going to him to learn meditation. Chaitanya thought: “I too should go to this yogi to learn meditation.” But he was really amazed because when he arrived there the yogi fell down at Chaitanya’s feet! Chaitanya said, “What are you doing? I have come to learn meditation from you! I have heard that many people come to learn meditation from you so I thought that I should also come to learn.”
The yogi answered, “If you wanted to learn meditation, then you should have come before devotion happened to you. You are already in meditation, but you are not even aware of it!”
The devotee does not know that he is in meditation because, to him, meditation is a by-product; it follows him. It is there as a spontaneous outcome of his trust and devotion.
And the very last thing is Yoga. When one has mastered meditation, Yoga will follow on its own. But everyone does just the opposite: people start with Yoga and then they practice meditation. Then they think they can, in some way, bring devotion in by manipulating things this way and that, and they expect to somehow find trust in the end. But when a person’s mind slips into meditation, then his body will move into Yoga. Yoga is happening in the body, and meditation is happening in the mind.
Understand it in this way: trust is cosmic, it is a sense of the whole; devotion is something of the soul, a sense of the individual. Meditation relates to the mind, Yoga relates to the body. What we do is, we start with the body, then we move on to the mind, then to the soul and then to the whole. But the sage says: “First, trust toward the whole, then devotion in the soul, then meditation in the mind, and then Yoga in the body.” If one continues in this order then each next step becomes easier and more natural. If one moves in the reverse of this, each subsequent step will go on becoming more difficult. For one who begins with Yoga, meditation will be more difficult for him.
This is the reason why those who begin with Yoga often stop at Yoga. They just stop at body postures and all the rest, and they never touch meditation. If you begin with meditation, devotion will be difficult. Hence meditators usually stop at meditation and they never reach devotion. And the one who begins with devotion will often stop at devotion: he will not be able to reach the ultimate trust. This journey begins from the inner center, and that center is called trust. The second circle is devotion, the third circle is meditation and the fourth is Yoga.
If the mind has entered meditation, the body will enter Yoga on its own. Many people come to me and report: “When we meditate, all kinds of body postures start happening on their own, and we have no idea what is happening.” Yes, they will happen. When the mind changes through the inner state of meditation, the body will have to change its state immediately and adjust itself according to the mind.
These four keys are very precious, their sequence is most precious.
Krishna says – Begin with trust, Begin with Devotion.
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