Subjective Solutions

////////////////////Small self love, sadhana and psychological work

An ordinary person who lives an unexamined life will not be impressed by our lofty psycho-spiritual explanations for his or her love problems.  Blame for suffering will be projected on oneself or on others and that is the end of it.  Depending on his or her nature he or she will respond to this projection with aggression or depression or some combination of the two…and relationships will always be problematic.  But at a certain point in one’s evolution the limitations of an object-oriented approach to love become obvious and a subjective solution comes into focus.  I wake up and see that I don’t ‘have’ love problems.  I discover that I am the problem! 

I realize that I have problems because I don’t love myself.   I observe that I always seem to be working against my own happiness.  I live in such a way that I make everything difficult, not only in my relationships with the world but in my relationship with myself.  And the crux of this awakening lies in the realization that there is something I don’t know about myself or the world. 

While the ultimate cause of suffering is Self ignorance, the cause of my day to day miseries is ignorance about the nature of the world.  First, I don’t appreciate the fact that the world is not interested in giving me what I want when I want it.  It nicely supplies what I need but seems to consider my wants gratuitous and may or may not satisfy them…as it sees fit.  It sometimes takes fifty or sixty years of existential frustration to accept this.  
Associated with this sad truth is a second equally unpleasant fact: nothing in this world lasts.  I want what I want because I want the happiness it brings…but object-delivered happiness does not last.  So on this account too I suffer.
 
The third reason I bring suffering on myself is:  I violate dharma because I don’t understand dharma.   If I want to gain self love/esteem I need to follow the dharmas that apply to human beings.  Dharmas are the rules of the game of life.  Because this is a non-dual reality all forms and forces in Maya ultimately depend on and refer to non-dual reality.  So it is wise to honor these laws.

If I eat too much not only am I guilty of taking more than my share, which inflicts suffering on the mind because it is a form of theft, but I unduly stress the physical body and eventually cause health problems.  If I loved myself would I do this?  If I smoke or drink excessively, which I do to please myself, I inflict suffering in the name of pleasure.  If I actually loved myself would I do this?  If I lie to obtain someone’s love…or for any other reason…I suffer guilt and anxiety, another indication that I do not love myself.  All self insulting actions, addictions and compulsions for example, are proof of a lack of self love.

Not only my doings but my non-doings indicate a lack of self love because they bring unwanted consequences.  If I don’t exercise I will certainly develop health problems.  Bad health is another form of self abuse.  If I don’t pay my taxes I incur punishment.  If I don’t pay attention in the here and now I will miss many opportunities that would make my life better… and I suffer on this account.  If I worry about things over which I have no control, various problems, including disease and accidents, will occur because I am not paying attention to what needs attention in the present.    
Fear is dharmic in certain practical situations but free-floating existential fear is adharmic and unjustified because reality is non-dual and benign; it is here to help, not harm.  If I rush about maniacally from dawn to dusk, day in and day out, year after year motivated by ambition or an inflated notion of duty or responsibility I am abusing myself, not taking care of myself as I believe.  Stress is self abuse caused by ignorance born fears and desires.  While the total mind is responsible for delivering certain unwanted experiences…like war and famine…most unwanted karma is directly or indirectly related to my lack of appreciation of way the world works. 
 
To solve the self love problem I need to remove the ideas that cause me to abuse myself and learn how to convert adharmic behaviour to dharmic behavior.  Dharmic behavior is motivated by the conscious or unconscious understanding that I am non-separate from anyone or anything.  This stage of devotion to inner work involves a gradual withdrawal from the world coupled with some kind of pyschological or spiritual work.  The ideas presented in Chapter 3 are meant to aid in the performance of sadhana or inner work.  To undertake this work along psychotherapeutic or spiritual lines means that I am devoted to the idea of loving myself.  Self love is self acceptance, changing what I can change and accepting what I can’t.  Self love destroys fear and gratuitous desire.  Self love comes from the knowledge that one is doing the best for one’s self by following dharma.
    
Dharma is built into the creation by the Self; it is the myriad of unwritten rules and laws that govern the interaction of things and beings.  But it is not always easy to follow.  Sometimes one is born into an adharmic family.  One’s parents lack spiritual values, pursue their desires aggressively and break the rules…teaching their children a disregard for dharma.  Sometimes, in spite of a moral upbringing one’s vasanas are so powerful that it is impossible to wait until they fructify naturally causing violations of dharma.  Violations of dharma bring both physical and psychological pain.  Desire can coexist with dharma but gratuitous desire is the enemy of dharma.  By following dharma desire is gradually transformed into devotion.  Desire is pain and devotion is pure bliss. 

Psychological work is not sadhana but sadhana is psychological work.  Western psychology is a coping strategy that can help a relatively dysfunctional personality attain a degree of emotional stability but it does not qualify as a means of liberation because it assumes that the self is limited and incomplete and therefore ignores the problem of desire.  Sadhana assumes a relatively stable healthy personality, introduces it to the idea of a Self beyond the self…which is conflated with freedom from dependence on gross and subtle objects, particularly desire.  Additionally, it provides ideas that, if skillfully applied, purify the mind to such an extent that it is capable of direct experience and understanding of the Self.  This experience and understanding amounts to unconditional love viewed through the prism of the heart.
     
////////////////////////////////////Devotion –  Big Self love

Devotion, bhakti, is defined as intense exclusive love of the Self with extreme attachment.  Devotion is either dual or non-dual, objective or objectless.  Ninety nine percent of all devotion is dualistic.  This is so because the Self is intangible and only known or ‘felt’ in an abstract way by subtle hearts.  Just as a distant fire is known by inference, not by direct perception, so the Self is known inferentially.  One sees Its sign…this amazing creation…and one infers a cause ‘beyond’.   Surveys have shown that eighty five percent of human beings ‘believe in’ God.  ‘God’ is just a religious word for the Self and is a human projection whose purpose is to give a name to the Self, formless Awareness or ‘spirit’ for the purpose of worship.    
  
Humans become devoted to anything, including God, because devotion is the nature of the Self.  There is a Sanskrit saying that nicely points to this fact, “The Self is the Devotee of the Devotee.”  It means that without the blessing of Awareness we would not even exist, much less be able to carry on our lives.  To express this truth in religious language, “God loves us.”
 
In reality the individual is non-separate from God but the non-dual basis of devotion is not consciously understood by individuals.  What is devotion? Devotion is just love.  And what is love?  Love is directed awareness or attention.  The things I pay attention to reveal what I love.  I willingly direct my awareness to objects that I know are non-separate from me or that I would like to make non-separate.  A mother is devoted to her children and not to a neighbor’s children because in her mind her children are non-separate from her.  A man pays attention to a woman because he would like to become one with her in some way.   The obsessive fascination with ‘connection’ in the psycho-spiritual world is nothing but an attempt to feel oneness with others.  It seems quite pointless from a non-dual perspective because we are already non-separate from everyone.  All that is required is an appreciation of this fact.  However, the desire to become one with someone else shows that non-duality is everyone’s desire… whether one knows it or not.
 
In any case the failure to find love in relationship may lead to the pursuit of self love through the purification of self-defeating beliefs and habits or by healing the wounded parts of the small self.  But is this the end of the spiritual journey?  

Most stop evolving, a least temporarily, when they are healed and return to normal.  But before long one realizes that ‘normal’ happiness, getting what one wants from one’s self and the world, is limited happiness.  One may no longer be limited by psychological pain but the absence of pain is not limitless freedom.  The potential of every human is limitless and the heart will not rest until it has actualized its potential.  So there is more work to do. 

For those who have evolved beyond object-oriented love and who are free of psychological problems the next stage involves the love of God.   For the few rare people who are blessed with a particularly subtle intelligence it is posssible to skip the God step and develop devotion for the Self directly.  However, most people do not have this kind of mind and need to cultivate love of God. 

//////////////////////////////////////////Who or what is God?

The idea of ever-present omnipresent Awareness as the innermost self of everything is too subjective and subtle for the average mind to grasp so a more user-friendly abstraction is needed.  So the mind turns the nameless formless Love that is our nature and the source of all goodness into a ‘something,’ usually some kind of amazing awe-inspiring super being.  And this being or ‘person’ needs a name.  The most common name is God.  The problem with personification is that it obscures the fact that God’s and man’s true natures are identical.  But with a little thought perhaps we can discover if this is true.

You say you are a person.  To say you are a person means that you are aware.  If you were not aware you would not know that you were a person; you would not even know that you exist.  What is the source of your existence?  It is Awareness.  You did not create your Awareness; it came from the Self.  True, each unique living organism is aware of different things…which causes the belief that Awareness is specific to each individual…but the Awareness by virtue of which individual things are known is the same in everyone and everything…from the lowest to the highest creatures.  So the individual’s being derives from God’s being, or to use religious terminology, we are ‘cast in the image of God.’  ‘To be ‘cast in the image of God’ simply means that the individual, the Subtle Body, is reflected Awareness or Being.  So personifying the Impersonal need not be a problem if we actually know what the Impersonal is.  On the other hand if you know what the Self is you do not need to personify It.  Nonetheless, because nearly everybody does not know what the Self is personification can be a useful stepping stone to Self knowledge and Self love.
 
To project, the mind needs a substrate, something whose nature is subtle enough to appear as something other than what it is when perceived under certain conditions.  If the mind isn’t completely clear when it perceives the substrate, in this case God/Awareness/Love, its fears, desires, opinions and prejudices condition the perception, just as clear water seen through a colored glass appears colored.  Projection is by definition unconscious, so the religious mind has unconsciously developed views of God not completely in harmony with God’s nature, the wrathful jealous Old Testament God, for instance.  But we should not throw the baby out with the bath and reject the idea of God because ignorant minds have woven a blanket of misunderstanding around it.    

The personification of the Self is helpful because it directs one’s feelings to the immortal Self and away from impermanent objects.  Only lasting love is fulfilling.  It is true that a personification too is an ‘object,’ albeit a subtle one, but it is a useful trick to help the mind contemplate on the Self.   When one sees a sign by the freeway that says, ‘San Francisco 22 miles’ one does not take the sign to be San Francisco but one proceeds in the direction indicated by the sign.  Similarly, a devotee does not take the word ‘God’ to be God but uses the concept to turn the mind inward and experience objectless undying Love.

Concepts (words) are necessary at this stage of the spiritual path.  The path of meditation, for example, refers to God as the forth ‘state of Consciousness,’ the object of meditation.  Is God, Love, a state?  If a state is subject to change then God is not a State.  Even the Old Testament agrees, calling God, ‘The Eternal.’  Because it carries the sense of something unconscious, the word ‘state’ probably isn't the best.  The dream state, for example, is not conscious but a condition created when God shines through the dream ego.  So if the forth state is not conscious, then it isn't God, because God is Consciousness/Awareness.  But if we define the forth state as Consciousness then it is the only conscious state, the only unchanging state.  Even calling God ‘conscious’ could be misleading because of the implication that It might become unconscious.
Different words appeal to different people.  God, Consciousness, is often called the ‘I.’  In a way it's a good symbol because the ‘I’ we know in everyday life, the ego, is a conscious being, but unlike the ego, God doesn't have a personality, suffer, die, sleep, eat, or breathe.  So its non-similarity to the ego is greater than its similarity.  ‘Self’ is a good word too because it conveys the idea of something essential.  You can get along in this world with just about everything except a self.  But it's not a good word because we tend to think of the ego when the word ‘self’ is used.  And the Self, for various reasons, especially with regard to love, isn't an ego.

With each of the many Self/God symbols something is appropriate, something is not so appropriate, something is stated and something is implied.  It doesn't matter what symbol is used as long as it points to the nature of the Self.  But, by definition, a symbol can only partially convey the symbolized.  Nonetheless, contemplating the literal and/or implied meaning of Self symbols, like words, should take us to the Self, not feed the mind with ideas. 

Though It is an impersonal all-pervasive unlimited field of Consciousness, the Self works through the symbol to provide the experiences and insights necessary to draw the devotee ever closer to It in understanding. Through prayer and devotional service it is possible to invoke the Self and purify one’s extroverting rajasic and dulling tamasic energies. 

When I love God, in effect, I love everyone and everything because God is everything that is.  Clay, for example, might be thought of as the ‘god’ of a pot in so far there is no pot without clay.  And just as every atom of the pot is clay, every atom of this world is God, congealed, grossified Love.  Until we understand that the whole universe is love we need to see everything as God or a symbol of God...because it is.  My spiritual brothers and sisters, are true symbols too, ‘cast in the image of God.’  And significantly, it should not escape my attention that if everyone else is God, I too am God and worthy of worship.

For those uncomfortable seeing humans as symbols of the Divine, any object that invokes love like trees, flowers, animals and religious and mythological symbols is acceptable.  While nature worship and energy worship are a beginning, at some point worship needs to include humans in so far as everything eventually needs to be seen as one’s own Self...if one’s goal is Self Realization.  One’s symbol should be endowed with spiritual qualities. The ‘God’ should be compassionate, conscious, peaceful, and beautiful.  Installing these qualities in the symbol is an indirect way of recognizing and developing them in oneself.

Religious symbols can be very useful but they need not enter into it.  Unfortunately so much misery has been inflicted in the name of religion that God has become a bad word for many.  If this it true one should adopt any sensible reason for treating everyone and everything with love and respect...because we are all conscious beings, for example.  The motto of the Salvation Army expresses this idea as well as any, “How can you love a God that you can’t see if you can’t love man that you can see.”  The practice of love simply means loving others for their sake, thinking of them first, helping them.  This view is a powerful antidote to the selfish view of love, because the devotee is saying, in effect, that Maya, the Separation is not real.  Eventually, this practice destroys Maya and may result in Self realization. 

//////////////////////////////////// Conditional love of God

Vedic spiritual science separates devotion into two categories: primary and secondary.  Primary devotion is non-dual; God and the devotee are not separate.  Secondary devotion is dualistic, a communication between the devotee and an object of devotion.  It is conditioned by the instrument of worship, the Subtle Body or ‘soul.’  As we have seen, the Subtle Body is always influenced by the gunas.  Therefore sattva, rajas and tamas color devotion. 

Because the gunas operate on the Causal Body level they unconsciously affect the Subtle Body.  The Subtle Body is reflected Awareness, the conscious individual.  To say that secondary devotion is conditional does not mean that the individual necessarily makes conscious choices about the way it loves, only that these three ‘conditioning energies’ have a major impact on the way one loves.     

When Tamas predominates a primitive style of devotion develops. Because sleepy waves envelop his or her intelligence, the devotee is neither self nor Self aware.  God, known indirectly through blind belief, is worshipped fearfully and slavishly.  Such devotees are prone to belief in magic, ghosts, evil spirits, poltergeists, demons and devils.  Tamas, a dark cloudy energy, inclines the devotee to love ritual and literal interpretation of scripture.  It also saddles the devotee with an unhelpful identity as a ‘sinner’ or a helpless ‘child’ of God.  Ignorance loves organization and swells the ranks of cults and religious institutions.  Because thinking for oneself is considered a form of disobedience, the tamasic devotee is easily manipulated by corrupt priests and will thoughtlessly ‘surrender’ to powerful spiritual personalities.  To question or attack this kind of faith is to gain an enemy for life.  Religious history is replete with examples of the many excesses, like the Inquisition, caused by this narrow state of mind.  On the other hand this type of faith tends to be rock solid and allows the devotee to withstand not only the small pinpricks of life but her major crises as well.  The conviction that an external God exists is steady, deep, and heartfelt.

Rajas, the projecting power, keeps the mind and emotions perpetually disturbed and acts like an opaque moving screen, effectively concealing the Self and blocking the flow of love from within.  When the rajasic devotee’s needs are satisfied he or she sees the world as a veritable Garden of Eden; when they are unfulfilled it appears as a veritable hell.  The rajasic devotee’s lust for life, ambition, and sense of dissatisfaction work against the development of a steady stream of love for the Divine.   This type of devotion is narcissistic and the devotee is not above bargaining with God for power, position and wealth. The perennial theory of ‘abundance’ currently making the rounds on the New Age spiritual circuit appeals to this type of devotee.  Rajasic devotion tends to be status and image conscious, views devotion as evidence of spiritual virtue and is not above using it to impress others.  Scratch the surface of this mentality and you will find a person more interested in presenting a devotional front to the world than a devotional heart to God.  Unlike the steady dependability of the dark type, the active devotee will change religions, beliefs, teachers, and practices at the drop of a hat.

Rajasic devotional style, unlike the sleepy innocence of Mother/Father worship, tends to be passionate.  For rajasic devotion to evolve into sattva the devotee must be convinced that God, not the goods of this world, are the goal of spiritual life.  The upside of this style of devotion is that once the devotee is committed to the highest view…union with God through love...he or she becomes a bundle of spiritual energy and makes rapid progress.

With roots in the Self sattva, the third strand in the psychic rope and the highest of the three lower stages of devotion, is the most secure foundation for a devotional life because the sattvic heart is a spotless mirror, capable of accurately reflecting God’s image.  Sattvic devotees are blessed with curiosity, intelligence, and discrimination and many powerful epiphanies.  To see God is to love God.  And sattva inclines the devotee to a pure and unselfish love.  But because the veil separating the sattvic devotee from God is so thin, the devotee may become spiritually conceited and suffer attachment to purity, goodness, beauty, and knowledge… golden chains difficult to break if devotion is to flower into primary devotion, the  fourth and highest stage.

Secondary devotion should lead to primary devotion.  Primary devotion will not develop when rajas and tamas dominate the unconscious.  Therefore, the devotee’s initial goal should be to purify rajasic and tamasic elements…which leads to an increase of sattva.  The purification of rajas and tamas comes through examination of the motivations behind one’s devotion.  Sattva is the springboard for primary non-dual devotion.  Tamas is the devotee’s most intractable enemy because its sleepy clouds cover the heart, veiling the Self.  Likewise rajas’ unremitting projections serve to obscure the Self, but its passionate pursuit of spiritual practice may generate epiphanies that build vasanas for more Self experience.  At this stage love of God is love of the experience of God.  Eventually, as the devotee experiences God more and more the desire for Self knowledge arises indicating that the mind/heart is becoming sattvic.  The more one experiences God the firmer one’s knowledge of God becomes.  Knowledge ‘of’ the Self as God is indirect Self Knowledge, but may eventually lead to direct Self knowledge, the hard and fast understanding that I am limitless Awareness or God.   

There is no unique path of love.  Conventional wisdom has it that devotion and knowledge are separate paths leading to the same goal.  It is based on notion that people with an emotional nature should follow the devotional path exclusively while intellectual types should only pursue the path of knowledge.  But every human is endowed with a heart and a mind, feelings and intellect, so for the sake of harmonizing the Subtle Body both love and knowledge should be cultivated.  Love of God without knowledge of God is not enough, nor is knowledge of God without unconditional love.  This is true because the head and the heart are not separate instruments; both are simply different functions of the Subtle Body.  One’s thought life affects one’s emotional life and conversely what one feels influences one’s thinking.  Therefore, as love of God grows the desire to know God increases.  And as knowledge of God, based on scripture and direct experience, grows, one’s love of God grows.

Self realization is not possible without devotion because the Self will only be realized when one’s attention is single-pointedly absorbed in the Self.  Self absorption is prevented by the extroverting power of binding vasanas.  People whose vasanas are mostly non-binding find that devotion comes easily.  This is so because one’s attention automatically turns from objects and flows back to its source, the Self.  Emotion is just attention under the influence of the likes and dislikes turned toward the world of objects.  An emotion is what ‘moves’ you toward certain objects (experiences) and away from others.  So the primary purpose of devotional practice, working with one’s emotions, is to transform emotion into devotion.  

The transformation of emotion into devotion requires sustained and persistent commitment to the practice of non-attachment.  Serious devotional progress is impossible unless the devotee is willing to sacrifice attachment to objects.  True renunciation, non-attachment, means that on the karmic level the devotee is willing to abandon craving for the fruits of action, on the intellectual level self limiting concepts, and on the emotional level, attachment to love objects.  It is important to note that love for objects can remain but that the attachment, which is the belief that the object is the source of one’s feeling of love, should be renounced.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, renunciation brings power, understanding and love. For example, people willingly sacrifice less attractive objects for more attractive ones.  When someone addicted to sensuous pleasure discovers the subtler pleasures of the mind, physical objects loose their luster.  And when a devotee finds the state of Love that is worship of the innermost Self, the small personal loves that captivate an unthinking heart, pale.  As the practice of letting go grows, love grows.

When we strip away the shallow cravings for romance and excitement we discover that our deepest need is the desire to love and be loved. Nothing is more attractive than love, realizing oneness with someone or something.  When the real object of our desire is unknown we chase small loves, but when we wake up to the Self we understand that we only ever loved the Self and that it is by the grace of the Self that we love.  When we wake up we see that our small daily loves are merely faint reflections of the Love is our nature, the Love that pervades every atom of the universe.  Devotional practice directs love back to the Self, the real object of our affections.

/////////////////////////////////////////The Practice of Love

Love is the nature of the Self and the Self is non-dual Awareness so the idea that love can be practiced seems pardoxical.  However, a devotee is a person who does not know that he or she is Love, believing instead that the Self is limited and incomplete and lacking in love.  This lack of understanding causes doership, which in devotional terms is the pursuit of love through spiritual objects and activities.  Because it produces spiritual vasanas and purifies worldliness, devotional practice, which is no longer necessary when primary non-dual devotion arises, is therefore required.  Devotional practice involves mental and/or physical activities.

And it should be noted that devotional practice puts God on notice that the devotee desires union.  Just as many people want to be President, many people want to be one with God.  However one doesn’t become President simply by wanting it.  Many difficult actions over a long time are required.  Similarly, permanent ‘union’ with God requires work.

Most devotees don’t realize that God does not see them as separate.  How can God help it if He or She doesn’t know that you think you are separate?  So it is necessary to get the attention of God.  When you worship God, God responds because God is Awareness, the innermost Self of the devotee.  Religion is perhaps the oldest and most powerful institution on the planet because it delivers experience of God.  The experience of God is the greatest pleasure known to man and immediately becomes a powerful vasana.  The more one invokes God though devotional practices the more one experiences God and the clearer it becomes what one is ultimately seeking.  

Physical images are easiest to worship:  stone, brass, gold, or wooden statuary, a picture of a saint or a natural event like the sunrise.  The world’s religious and spiritual traditions supply an endless smorgasbord of symbols worthy of worship.  Religious symbols derive their power by invoking the Self archetype in the Causal Body and awaken a sense of awe, majesty, reverence and love for God and the world.  Prolonged contemplation on a symbol introverts the mind by directing one’s thoughts and feelings to single point which produces an unbroken flow of devotion to the symbol and beyond to the Self.

Because it requires no ritual paraphernalia and can be practiced anywhere, the most simple and effective devotional ritual is wholehearted worship of the Divine Name wherein particular words that refer to God are repeated continuously, either aloud or silently, with deep feeling and understanding.  This practice, like action and knowledge yoga, purifies unhealthy samskaras and turns the mind inward.

Prayer, congregational worship, study of scripture and the lives of great saints, are equally effective practices.  Perhaps the most direct and effective form of worship is to strip every object of its secular projection and instill it with a divine aura.  One should see one’s body as God’s temple, one’s home as the house of God, one’s spouse and children as God’s own.  One should consider every spoken word the name of God and every activity, spiritual or otherwise, service to God.  Bending, lying, or kneeling should be seen as prostration to God, walking as circumambulation of the Deity, all lights, physical and pyschic, as symbols of Self.  One should see sleep as meditation and eating as God eating God. In this manner every object and activity gradually loses its worldly associations and becomes a living symbol of the divine. 

///////////////////////////////Devotional Conversion Identities

If parents are well-adjusted mature individuals who love themselves and each other it is likely that their children will be loving and respectful.  For someone from this kind to environment, it is only a short step to convert the love and respect one feels for one’s family into love of God.  

Everyone feels bound to certain things in this life.  Bondage to objects causes a feeling of helplessness.  Anyone can see that as long as the body lasts one will be bound to it in some way.  Who is not chained to physical passions, indentured to selfish feelings, painfully shackled to unforgiving thoughts?  The more we strive for freedom, rail against injustice and court empowerment, the more we acknowledge our bondage to the unreal.

To convert feelings of powerlessness into a positive devotional force the devotee should surrender his or her life to God and see his or herself as a faithful executor of God’s will.  In addition to loyalty and respect, this practice develops a quiet mind and keen discrimination, qualities necessary to distinguish God’s voice from the many self serving ego voices playing in the mind.  Practiced faithfully, this devotional mood reduces ego inflations and empowers the inner Self.  Vedic devotional literature refers to this conversion psychology as ‘dasya bhava,’ the servant mood. 

If thinking of yourself as a servant of God is not your cup of tea and you can love someone with deep feeling and commitment you might see God as your spouse.  The bond between the husband and wife is the model for this devotional identity because there is perhaps none stronger or sweeter, containing as it does all expressions of love including sexual intimacy…which is to be taken as a symbol of one’s ultimate spiritual goal, the ecstatic union with God.  If it is possible to love another human being in this way and one wants Self realization one could…without ceasing to love one’s spouse…simply direct another stream of this type of energy to God. 

Another form of worship is friendship, sakya, in which one thinks of god as a confidante, one with whom one’s innermost secrets can be shared.  This devotional stance involves cultivating a diffident sacrificial attitude toward God, one’s dearest friend.  It should be developed to the point where the devotee suffers moments of separation and continually craves God either in the form of a deep experience or through communion with other devotees. The tender, joyful, and playful relationship of nine and ten year old children serves to model this devotional mood which sees God as an equal playmate sporting with the devotee among His or Her creations.

Perhaps the most natural devotional identity is the Child because people easily identify with undeveloped parts of the psyche.  This identity is based on the universal experience of parental love.  Parents, our physical source, make a nice symbol of God, our spiritual source.  In it the devotee is enjoined to love God with the unsuspecting trust of a child, acknowledging and accepting his or her state of total helplessness, ignorance, dependence, and attachment. 

Similar to the Servant mentality, this identity is considered an imperfect vehicle for God realization because it does not encourage the pursuit of God knowledge and leaves the devotee vulnerable to exploitation and manipulation by primitive unconscious forces and religious figures.  Ultimately love begets knowledge because the intellect develops curiosity for what the heart loves, but this devotional stance is at best a preliminary step in the soul’s long march home.

Anyone who has felt the need to protect and nurture small helpless creatures will find the Parent of God identity appealing.  Children, because of their purity, innocence, and guileless bliss, make excellent symbols of God.  A devotee who cultivates a love of God as a child shines with maternal or paternal splendor.  Because it encourages identification with a mature part of the psyche, this attitude helps heal the negative views that one has towards one’s own parents and allows the devotee to abandon his or her ‘inner child’ and attain spiritual maturity.  Identifying oneself as the parent of God helps the devotee overcome ideas of power, fear and punishment that are often associated with God.  It calls into question the concept of mindless obedience which is an enemy of discrimination and roots out concepts of devotional unworthiness associated with God’s glory, majesty, and grandeur which are projections of a primitive religious consciousness.  Unlike children, parents are not generally moved to awe in the presence of the child.  Because they cannot beg from the child, this identity helps to negate the tendency to ask favors of the Lord and to complain about one’s lot.  

A selfless lover eager to gratify his or her beloved is the intriguing model for the Passionate Lover.  Passionate love of God is often considered the most advanced devotional psychology because passionate spiritual love is the hardest to develop and maintain.  This is so because of the difficulties involved in generating deep and consistent experiences of God.  It is also difficult to break owing to excessive attachment brought on by the experience of extreme joy in the presence of God.

A completely spiritual love, the devotee sees God, the innermost Self, as divinely beautiful and loves with affection verging on the erotic.  In this style of love, all conventions, reservations and personal views are cast aside and the devotee feels a gargantuan craving for the embrace of God…the experience of the Self.  Just as lovers locked in the throes of love making do not know which body is which, the devotee in union with the Self sees no distinctions between his or herself and God and experiences only the sweetest bliss.

Obstacles to ecstatic meditation...return to mental and emotional states of mind...serve to intensify this devotional mood because they develop love in absence, just as a lover’s desire for the beloved is increased by physical separation.  Based on the fact that true love only comes from within, the Passionate Lover is a sophisticated method for sublimating intense desire into a high meditative state of mind and can be successfully practiced only by virtuous celibate individuals or married souls in mature non-possessive relationships.  Unlike love born of rajas, passionate love of God derives from the sattvic element and aims to gratify God, the object of one’s affections, not the devotee.

The state of mind and the emotions produced by the direct immediate realization of the presence of God, the deity in the Heart, may include loss of consciousness and suspension of animation as if one were asleep, erratic breathing, perspiration, shaking of the limbs and other symptoms of intense emotion.  When the devotee is not ‘connected’ he or she may feel helpless, anxious and depressed and view God as a fickle, inconsiderate, and unfaithful lover prone to selfishness.
 
The Forbidden Lover operates on the assumption that the more love is obstructed the more it intensifies and converts feelings of secrecy and shame associated with love into a positive devotional force.  Love of God often awakens in the most unlikely and inconvenient circumstances.  When a declaration of love for God would invite ridicule, condemnation, and persecution, taking God as a forbidden lover is advised.  Devoid of outer signs, the Forbidden Lover is a ‘stealth’ psychology through which devotion grows by inner yearning, silent repetition of the Holy Name, and meditation.  This mood is tailor made for devotees who need to protect their spirituality from unspiritual spouses and a cynical world. 

Because ultimately it spells the end of the ego’s control, devotional practice often generates strong resistance.  In general, the more one develops a devotional relationship with God and the world the less negativity is experienced.  However, occasionally negative samskaras are so deep that they refuse to yield to spiritual tools.  Taking a negative attitude toward negativity, thinking of ourselves as worthless sinners, for example, is not wise because it reinforces it, destroys discrimination, clouds self awareness and derails spiritual practice.  Taking a negative attitude toward the world is a karmic disaster.  If the purpose of devotional practice is to produce an unbroken flow of thought and feeling toward God, allowing periods of negativity to break the flow is devotionally unwise. Therefore, though our offerings are ugly and inappropriate, we should place them squarely on the altar of our Deity.

Rather than abandon my practice when I am angry, I need to castigate God for denying me the courage to overcome my weaknesses.  Rather than turn my back, why not blame the Lord for turning His or Her back on me?  With a little imagination and a bit of help from one’s dysfunctional conditioning a devotee can dump any kind of negativity at the feet of the Beloved, a practice that protects oneself and the world.  When it is given to God it does not recycle, but dissolves like clouds in God’s vast inner Heaven, filling the heart with love.

A touching example of a negative relationship with God is provided by a commentary on a verse in the Narada Bhakti Sutra by H. Poddar. “When a child begins to toddle, it often stumbles and falls. Hearing the cry the mother runs to help, but the child becomes angry with the mother for assuming that it might need help, even though she was not at fault, and chides her to make her feel guilty.  “Why did you leave me alone?  See what happens when you leave me?” it says.  Then it decides to punish her.  “I’ll never talk to you,” it wails.  “I’ll never sit in your lap again!”  To appease its anger the mother tries to take it in her arms but it evades her and runs away weeping.  Why does it do so?  Because it recognizes its power over her and hers over it.  She is everything to the child and the child is totally dependent on her.  There is no discrimination.  The child can express anything without fear, including all its negativity.  The dependent devotee makes God the object of passion, anger, and pride.”

///////////////////////////////////////////Primary Devotion

Love of God is the last ‘stage’ of the evolution of the soul.  It is not liberation, however, because the devotee still takes God to be an object, someone or something other than his or herself.   Unconditional love of God has been achieved but something is missing…non-dual understanding.  

Since time immemorial an intense and often unfriendly debate has been going on in the spiritual world about the issue of the identity of God and man.   On one hand the dualists say that man is not God and can never ‘become’ God and should not even try.  They say that the best we can do is to learn to love God unconditionally and turn our lives over to God completely, accepting everything that happens as the will of God.  The argument goes like this: “Why would you want to become God?  If you become God you do not get to enjoy the experience of God.  It is much better to experience God than to become God.” 

The non-dual reply is:  “If you knew the nature of God you would not say such things.  Becoming God is not a problem because God includes Maya, the world of experience.  So when you ‘become’ God you don’t lose your experience of God, you gain a greater identity.  You do lose something but it is something that you will be happy to lose: the belief that you are separate.”

“It is the notion that you are separate that forces you to believe in God, to trust God and to maintain your faith…which is a lot of work.  When you see yourself as separate you are dependent on God for everything.  This does not free you from your desires and fears.  You have to rely on God to fulfill them…which can take a long time because God has to work through the law of karma to look after you.  And while you wait for God to make things right you suffer.  The very fact that you pray to God means that you are full of anxiety, that you are tormented by your desires, beliefs and opinions.   When you ‘become’ God you lose your sense of separateness, incompleteness, and inadequacy.  Your mind is perfectly calm and happy.  You don’t need to ‘accept’ anything because whatever you have at each and every moment is a gift from God.  You needn’t strive to make yourself better because you are fine as you are.  You don’t need to save the world for God because the world is already saved.” 

To which the dualists reply, “Where is the problem being completely dependent on God?  It means that we are like babies and have to do nothing at all because our Mother-Father God takes care of our every need.  We remain blissful all the time and our minds remain perfectly calm because we accept everything that happens and doesn’t happen as the Grace of God.  You say you are one with God but you did not create the universe.”

The non-dualists reply, “What universe?  We only see eternal unborn non-dual Awareness everywhere.  There is no creation.  It is a concept that you have unwittingly accepted because you take yourself to be the body.    Besides, we do not say that we are one with God.  We say that there is no duality so the notion that there is a ‘you’ and a God is just a fantasy.” 

Is there actually a difference between these two points of view?   Yes and no.  If one’s faith in God never wavers then the effect of dualistic devotion on the individual is the same as the effect of the non-dual realization that “I am God” and it becomes apparent that dualism and non-dualism are simply two different languages expressing the same truth.  The individual is that part of the Self that is sandwiched between a perfect God and an imperfect world.   This fundamental duality…God and the world…creates experience which brings joy and suffering.  Joy is never a problem for an individual but pain is always unwelcome from the individual’s point of view.  Therefore any understanding that removes suffering is as good as any other understanding.  Suffering in spiritual terms is just mental and emotional agitation arising from uncertainty concerning the meaning of what was, is, or will be.

If I see the world as God’s creation I can relax and let God take care of it.  Since I didn’t create myself I have to assume that God created me and because God is perfect I too am perfect.  Therefore I do not judge myself unworthy and try to change what I am.   Since there are only two sources of agitation, the world and me, and God is responsible for both I cannot be held accountable.  If I am not accountable my suffering is unwarranted.  Even if imperfection exists it could only exist with the blessing of God and since I love God I accept God’s will in all things.  Even suffering is therefore a blessing and for that reason I enjoy it. 

But there is a difference between the dualistic view and the non-dual view.  The idea of separation is a problem no matter what kind of religious or philosophical arguments we have for dealing with it.  It is a problem not only because it creates the need for religious and philosophical explanations but because it is not fundamentally in harmony with the highest truth…this is a non-dual reality and I am non-dual Awareness.  It so happens that even people whose love of God is perfect and who surrender to life as it is have one remaining doubt: who or what is God?  And for a sensitive pure mind even such a subtle doubt can be painful. Most resign themselves to it and rest in the belief that the creature cannot know the Creator, that the limited mind of man cannot know the unlimited mind of God.  And, with or without understanding, love of God is a great and satsifying love so on that account too it is quite possible not to pursue the path of love to the end.   

How can this doubt be resolved?  By inquiry born of experience.  When someone experiences God, the Creator, they are actually experiencing the Self but they almost invariably come to the experience of the Self with conscious and unconscious notions about the nature of God.  But as the love of God develops it generates more and more experience of God and the experience of God is the greatest of pleasures.  This causes extreme attachment to God to develop.  The more we love the more we desire to understand what we love.  So devotion for God leads to inquiry and inquiry, if it is pursued diligently, leads to understanding.  The understanding that removes the final doubt about the nature of God is born of the experience of non-duality and confirmed by scripture.  Or to put it in religious terms God is omnipresent; there is nowhere God isn’t.  If God is everywhere and I am somewhere I cannot but be God.  It is so strange that one of the world’s most dualistic religions worships a man who proclaimed the non-dual nature of reality, “I and my Father are one.” When one experiences God one ‘becomes’ God.  It is not that one becomes Awareness, one is already and always Awareness.  The ‘becoming’ is a simply recognition of this fact.  When one realizes that one is Awareness one sees that the essence of both the individual and God is Awareness.  Both are conscious beings.  God is just an abstraction, the sum total of all the small individual awarenesses or ‘souls,’ plant, animal and human.  I, Awareness, am not great because I am associated with everything that is, nor am I small because I am associated with the tiniest unicellular organism or the minutest material particle.  I am that in which everything ‘lives and moves and has its being.’  Without Me nothing exists, nor is anything separate from me.

This understanding/experience is known as Para Bhakti, Supreme Devotion, or Prema, unconditional love.  It is the recognition that the essence of every transaction in the world is love and that the subject and the object, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, are non-separate.   It is the understanding that allows Christ at the height of his torment at the hands of his enemies to say, ‘Father forgive them.  They know not what they do.”