Who Is a True Devotee

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WHO IS A TRUE DEVOTEE

Various paths

are prescribed for the progress of the soul to God or to the awareness of its

own eternal splendor and joy. Of these the simplest and easiest is the path of

devotion. The devotee looks upon God as his supreme ideal and keeps Him

ceaselessly in his thoughts to such an extent as to be filled with the

radiance, power and peace of the Beloved. It is now that the veil between the

devotee and the Beloved is removed and there is the consciousness of the

devotee's identity with Him.

 

In the

contemplation of the Beloved the devotee loses himself, and his individual

existence disappears. In its stead the inherent divine life manifests,

transforming him into the image of the Beloved. Devotion therefore leads to

complete self-surrender. When the heart is fired with the burning zeal to meet

and become one with the Beloved, the devotee's life undergoes a radical change.

His attachments to the ephemeral things fall off. His mind and all his senses

are athirst for feeling and sensing God's presence through them. The devotee's

heart cries and longs for Him, eyes to see Him ears to hear Him, hands to touch

Him, tongue to taste Him and nose to smell Him. When a devotee thus finds his

Beloved, his experience can better

be imagined than described-perhaps it is not even

possible to imagine it.

- Sri RADHAKRISHNA SWAMIJI

(Source Shri Sai Padananda April 1993)