The Essence of Pure Bhakti

Sri Sri Kaivalyanathji

The very first qualification required to enter into the heart of our beloved Gurudev, Sri Sri Ram Thakur is absolute innocence.  He has always insisted on this aspect as to be innocent like a child. A child’s innocence can bring you very closer to God which is much more easier as compared to other known ways. Moreover, a devotee should always be innocent like a child! Knowing too many things is not a big deal (thanks to internet), I have seen people who are maintaining various religious blogs or writing on various social networks like facebook, twitter etc. where they are boasting about their knowledge on spiritualism without knowing anything about innocence which is the basic requirement in this field!!  Absence of pure innocence can subsequently bring proudness (ahankar) in a disciple which is very dangerous for any devotee to proceed in this field of devotion (bhakti) as proudness takes you far away from your beloved God or Guru. Somewhere once Gurudev had remarked that to get your Lord’s mercy one needs a child’s innocence and which is not possible through knowledge or various rituals given in the Vedas!!  The greatness of the valuable & priceless thing called innocence is such that even when one acquires knowledge of many things by his Lord’s unlimited mercy he is untouched by proudness (ahankar).  Another qualification which is required is pure truthfulness. Out of many names of our Lord, His one name is Sri Sri Satyanarayan & Sri Satya Pir and this aspect of truthfulness is very well expected from his devotees which is quite natural. But its very sad to say that many a times I have found this aspect is missing in the so-called devotees of our Gurudev.  Our Gurudev’s panchali also starts with Sotto Sotto Sotto Pir  or Doyarthi Sodai Sebe Sottero (Gurudev’s) Choron  or Satyam Param Dhimahi(Truth is the biggest religion). A renowned saint of Bengal had once remarked that if you want to believe somebody then find out whether there is a similarity between his words and deeds!!  Many people some of them may claim to be your true friend would take you into confidence by agreeing to your beliefs, ideas or thoughts & would do just the opposite in actual deeds which might appear to you quite shocking at the first instance but at the same time these are the signs through which you can identify a true person or friend!! Another renowned saint once had remarked about himself that he was always used to be very cautious about truthfulness so much so that if he had even by mistake had said that he is feeling an urge to go the toilet (may be there was no need for going to the toilet that very time) he would just go upto the door of the toilet and return back just to stick to his words thus glorifying the importance of truthfulness!! Another most important quality which comes automatically along with these two aforesaid qualities is pure devotion & faith at the holy lotus feet of your God.  Devotion should be unmoving like a solid rock which should stood always in all types of difficulties or problems of your life. If you read the life story of great personalities from our epics you will find that they all had strong faith in their God despite serious troubles in their life which gives us noble lessons. For example, the Pandavas from the epic Mahabharat who even had to live in exile for 13 years but Lord Sri Krishna was always with them in their difficult times because they had pure devotion & faith in His Holy Lotus Feet. Duryodhan who was an arch rival of the Pandavas had tried to put them in trouble by sending Rishi Durvasa along with his 60,000 disciples to be fed by the Pandavas who were in exile at that time. Pandavas had one Akshay Patra (Divine Bowl) which used to remain always full of food until Draupadi ate from it. That day when the Rishi along with his disciples arrived at their hut Draupadi had already taken her meal and so the Akshya Patra was empty!! Draupadi became worried out of fear from the Rishi who was famous for his angriness and giving curse and thus she immediately remembered Lord Sri Krishna and asked for His help as only He could save them!! The Lord arrived there immediately and smilingly asked Draupadi to bring the empty Akshay Patra near to Him. When they bought it He took out a tiny small piece of a rice grain which was stuck somewhere in the bowl and ate it & took out a large belch & immediately the Rishi alongwith his 60,000 disciples who were taking bath in a river felt as if their stomachs are overloaded with food. Everybody told each other that they cannot eat even a very small amount of food and they ran from there before the Pandavas came there to ask them to take food!! This is called Saranagati (total surrender) without which one cannot get the mercy of Lord!! Jai Sri Ram!!