True bhakti sets you free

In human society, the nearer the man is to the animal, the stronger is his pleasure in the senses; and the higher and the more cultured the man is, the greater is his pleasure in intellectual and such other finer pursuits. So, when a man gets even higher than the plane of the intellect, higher than that of mere thought, when he gets to the plane of spirituality and of divine inspiration, he finds there a state of bliss, compared with which all the pleasures of the senses, or even of the intellect, are nothing.

When the moon shines brightly, all the stars become dim; and when the sun shines, the moon herself becomes dim.... So, this love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim and thrown aside... by the love of God Himself. That love of God grows and assumes a form that is called Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities - all these little limitations, and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God.

Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A Divine grace, thus, loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free.... The Bhakta has not to suppress any single one of his emotions; he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.


January 12 is Swami Vivekananda Jayanti.