Saturday, April 21, 2018

Narada Bhakti Sutra - Post 75



Sutra 70. Tanmayaah: (For) They are full of / withHim.

Tanmayaah: full of that; filled with the presence of God, merged or absorbed in Him.

In and around them, they realised the presence of God everywhere and at all times.

Every one of those, mentioned in the last Sutra is filled with the spirit of saints and through that with the spirit of the Lord Himself.

They have emptied themselves so completely that they entirely live in God. 

The lives of God-intoxicated devotees like Prahlad bear witness to this.

Such saints are walking Gods upon the earth, their body has become the true temple of God. 

They know not, but it is their presence which sanctifies the places, glorifies cartoon and lends authority to scriptures, which we read in an earlier Sutra.

People go to Gaya to prostrate at the Bodhi tree, not because the tree is great but because Buddha sat there. Yaya is sanctified because Gautama discovered his immortality at that place.


Actions of Bhaktas like Dhruva, Prahlad, Bharata, Hanuman etc have become standard good and righteous conduct in the society. Similarly the experience of the devotees have imparted moral authority to the scriptures. 

Vedas were sung by Rishis filled with devotion. Gita is a discourse of the Lord himself to guide his devotee Arjuna. Voices of Kabir and Nanak gave authenticity to the scriptures.

When Sanätana Gosvämi met Lord Chaitanya, the Lord told him, "Lord Krishna has saved you from life's deepest hell." Sanätana replied, "I do not know who Krishna is. As far as I am concerned, I have been released from prison only by Your mercy". 

Just as a river falling into the ocean becomes one with the ocean, even so the devotee having offered his body, mind, intellect, egoism and all at the feet of his beloved Lord becomes one with Him.

If such a devotee who is explained as full of Lord in this Sutra is like the river in the example given above and the ocean is Lord,  the devotee, after merging with lord is then the river which has merged with the Ocean. 

The devotee may still appear to be a person, a human being, to the naked eyes of others. All others may still see him as a human being but very few would realize that what they are seeing apparently about such a devotee is not true. Internally, he has become one with the God. Can any river, once it goes and merges with the Ocean, can be ear marked in the ocean and clearly pointed out that this is the river which has merged with the ocean???

It is true that whether it is a Bhakta who has merged with Bhagwan with his love for Bhagwan and exists as LOVE or it is a mumukshu who has expanded and merged with Brahman and exists as BLISS, the transformation is all within. People are often deluded by the fact that such human beings also walk, talk, eat and sleep like other human beings and hence, people fail to realize that such a Bhakta or such a Mumukshu, have actually transcended this world even while living in this world and have merged with God / Brahman and exist as FULL OF GOD / SELF, FULL WITH GOD / SELF, FULL AS GOD / SELF!!!

This is why the place where great devotees reside is a tirtha and why Närada says that they purify established holy places and give authority to the scriptures—because they are tanmayah, "filled with Him". 

Love.