Saguna Bhakti
Before you can recognize God in everything in the universe, you must first realize His existence within yourself. As a gold ornament will not search for gold elsewhere, one need not search for God beyond oneself. Association with the saintly, or godly persons is an easy means for realizing what one is in reality. It is unnecessary to resort to a forest to realize the Cosmic Spirit, for it inhabits and animates all living things. Give up proprietorship to realize the true 'self'.
Where we err is, we only say verbally that God pervades everything but deny it in practice. We conveniently forget that the same God that lives in me resides in everything else too. Just as a lamp fills a whole room with light, so too does God pervade all creation. Thus, to say that God is the doer, not I, is the fundamental concept, and it corrects all further thought and action. A man is basically the same person though he may wear different apparel on different occasions; so, too, one's action may be different according to occasion but always guided by the basic concept that God pervades everything. Sannyas does not consist only in wearing saffron-coloured clothes; but in maintaining an equable mind in pleasant and unpleasant happenings.
Entertain devotion for the concrete form of God. Chant nama with devotion and faith, and the conviction that God resides in nama; this is the easiest and surest way to realize God. The saints have painstakingly, and with personal experience established the efficacy of this approach. It is a common truth that we easily attune ourselves to one having similarity of form and nature. So we find it convenient to imagine God being like ourselves, only idealized. We love things which, like ourselves, are tangible; and so we find it easy to have devotion for God in a concrete form, rather than as an absolute entity. This devotion will positively culminate in realization of the Absolute, Ultimate Reality. We should be insistent in keeping God for the goal. There may be other ideals, but they should have only subordinate importance, without that degree of importunity. Such complete submergence in God is termed natural, permanent samadhi.
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