Page 404 - Bodhayanti Parasparam Vol 1

BODHAYANTI PARASPARAM
basis of Bhakti that would be the third stage of progress. People think that everybody is a Bhakta. Everybody who goes to a temple thinks so. Everybody who bows before a photo thinks so and everybody who bows before a mahatma also thinks so. But bhakti is an awareness of the inseparable unity we have got with the Divine and a commitment to our own self, which is the Divine. Our smaller self looses its value. Viveka grants us this knowledge and that becomes perfected here when knowledge of self is revealed. We are not seeking Him any more but are seeking to serve him more and more. We seek to see that his greatness is expressed everywhere and wherever people are not able to see it. We take it as your responsibility to tell them. We do not expect rewards like a pujari or an archaka. We are not persons who are there trying to get some advantage of our alleged devotion to the Divine. People go to temples, take money. A pujari is more interested in the money that he gets rather than the God whom he decorates in the day not for whom he tells so many stotras. This is what happens from that imitation of Bhakti with which it started in the beginning, to the real stage of Bhakti. Bhakti tells you 400