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Bhakti Yoga

Swami Vivekananda

Language:
English
Status:
Complete work
Authorship:
Written by the author
Condition of the text:
No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
Extent:
~31,600 words · 150 passages
Cite this work
  • APASwami Vivekananda. (n.d.). Bhakti Yoga. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/bhakti-yoga
  • MLASwami Vivekananda. Bhakti Yoga. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/bhakti-yoga.
  • ChicagoSwami Vivekananda. Bhakti Yoga. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/swami-vivekananda/bhakti-yoga.

Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.

What it is about

Bhakti Yoga: the path of devotion.

Context and history

The most accessible of the four yogas, since it asks neither learning nor physical discipline but love. Vivekananda insists that all forms of devotion lead to the same place — which at the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago was news.

Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.

How it begins
We will now try to understand what the great representative of the Adwaiia School has got to say on the point. We shall see how the Adwaita system maintains all the hopes and aspirations of the dualist intact, and at the same time propounds its own solution of the problem, in consonance with the high destiny of divine humanity. Those, who aspire to retain their individual mind even after liberation, and to remain distinct will have ample opportunity of realising their aspiration and enjoy the blessing of the qualified Brahman, These are they who have been spoken of in the Bhdgavata Purfina thus “ 0 king, such are the glorious qualities of the Lord that the sages whose only pleasure is in the Self, and from whom all bondages have fallen off, even they love the Omni-Present with the love that is for love’s sake.’* These are they who are spoken of by the Sdnkkyas as getting merged in nature in this cycle so that, after attaining perfection, they may come out in the next as lords of worldsystems. But none of these ever becomes equal to God (Ihara). Those who attain to that state where there is neither creation, nfl(r created, nor creator, wheare there is neither knower, nor il il knowable, nor knowledge, where there is neither J, nor thou^ nor he^ where there is neither subject, nor object, nor relation, “there, who is seen by whom such persons have gone beyond everything, beyond “ where words cannot go nor mind,’* gone to that which the ^mtk declare as Net this, Not this” ; but for those who cannot, or will not reach this state, there will inevitably remain the tri-une vision of the one undifferentiated Brahman as nature, soul, and the interpenetrating sustainer of both — Ihara.…

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