It is often said that in the age in which we live—the Kali Yuga—the simplest and most accessible way to liberation, or mukti, is through bhakti: devotion to the Divine.
The reasoning is understandable. Not everyone has the time, temperament or discipline for prolonged austerity, complex ritual or rigorous philosophical inquiry. Bhakti asks for something apparently simpler: remember the Divine, sing the Divine Name and surrender the heart.
Why Bhakti Did Not Appeal to Me
For a long time, the bhakti marga did not appeal to me. I associated it with endless chanting, emotional worship and an outward dependence on a deity.
My temperament leaned toward direct inquiry. I was more drawn to the uncompromising questions associated with J. Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi: Who is the one seeking freedom? What is this “I” that claims to worship, suffer, choose and know?
The Ribhu Gita
Ramana Maharshi particularly valued the Ribhu Gita, one of the most direct and insistent texts of Advaita Vedanta. It forms the sixth part of the Shiva Rahasya and presents teachings centered on the identity of the individual Self and Brahman.
Its teaching returns to the same point again and again: reality is nondual; the Self alone is; separation is a construction of the mind.
Sri Ramanasramam records that Ramana encouraged devotees to read or recite the text even when they could not intellectually understand every verse. The recitation itself, he suggested, could turn the mind toward absorption in the Self.
This approach made sense to me. Instead of singing to a God outside myself, I could investigate the one who imagined that God to be outside. Instead of cultivating a relationship between devotee and deity, I could question whether that division was ever real.
When the Devotee Disappears
But over time, I began to see bhakti differently.
At its deepest, bhakti is not merely chanting, ritual or religious emotion. These may be its outer forms, but they are not necessarily its culmination. True devotion gradually consumes the devotee.
The “I” that begins by saying, “I love the Divine,” becomes less important as love deepens. Possessiveness weakens. Self-consciousness falls away. Eventually, only the Beloved remains.
In the beginning, there appear to be two: the worshipper and the worshipped. I am here, and the deity is there. I offer flowers, repeat a name, sing a song or surrender my difficulties.
Yet if surrender becomes complete,
what remains of the one who was surrendering?
The culmination of bhakti is therefore not the perfection of a relationship between two separate beings. It is the disappearance of separation itself.
The devotee does not merely stand before the deity. The devotee dissolves into the deity.
Becoming the Goddess
Perhaps there is a step further—or a more daring way of expressing the same realization. One does not merely merge with the deity; one discovers that one has never been separate from the deity.
In a Shakta vision, the seeker does not only worship the Goddess or disappear at Her feet. The seeker awakens as the Goddess Herself—not as the personal ego declaring itself divine, but because the personal ego has vanished and only Shakti remains.
This is where bhakti begins to sound remarkably like Vedanta.
Aham Brahmasmi
The great declaration Aham Brahmasmi—“I am Brahman”—is easily misunderstood. It does not mean that the ordinary personality, with its preferences, memories, fears and ambitions, has become almighty.
It means that when the constructed “I” is seen through, our essential nature is recognized as none other than limitless reality.
Bhakti approaches this truth through love. Jnana approaches it through knowledge and inquiry. One says, “Not I, but Thou.” The other asks, “Who am I?” Followed to their end, both dissolve the boundary between “I” and “Thou.”
The bhakta loses herself in the Beloved.
The jnani discovers that there was never a separate self to lose.
Kirtan as Meditation
Perhaps this is the secret meeting place of devotion and nonduality. Chanting is no longer an activity performed by an individual in order to reach God. It becomes the movement of the Divine toward Herself.
Worship is no longer directed across a distance. The worshipper, the act of worship and the One worshipped are revealed as a single reality.
The path may begin with a name and a form. It may begin with Krishna, Shiva, Devi or the Guru. But if devotion becomes total, the name opens into silence and the form opens into the formless.
Bhakti then reaches its highest expression—not simply loving the Divine, not merely merging with the Divine, but awakening to the truth that only the Divine has ever been.
Aham Brahmasmi.
Not the triumph of the “I,”
but its disappearance.
Further Reading
Read an introduction to the Ribhu Gita or Sri Ramanasramam’s account of Ramana Maharshi and its recitation.