07/07/2026
Devotion for Whom? / Dec 2025
The greatest problem for me was devotion for whom. I can’t have devotion for a god whom I don’t even know. Fortunately or unfortunately, from the beginning of my life as soon as I could think I began to have disbelief in all religion. I don’t believe that there is a person who is religious because I think, “No, what do they know about God? They tailor the qualities of God to suit their religious structure.” The Greeks started thinking about some personal gods somewhere in the atmosphere, stratosphere, maybe on some other planet, in another solar system. The Hindus began to think that God was somewhere inside and some thought that God was in that mountain and that mountain.
One day I just stopped reading all these stories. I said it is better not to think about God. Now whether I believe in God or not, one thing was certain, I needed someone to whom I should have devotion. That remained my problem for many, many years. I had been to many great saints during my childhood also, but I did not know how to express my devotion or how to feel the devotion for them. I tried music, dance, painting, everything. The problem was simply that I did not find the right person. Perhaps the people whom I met at that time did not fit into my idiotic frame, and I also did not know what I was expecting of them. Did I expect some sort of good intellectual education from them or did I expect some sort of magic and miracles from them, siddhis? I myself was not clear and therefore my search for bhakti did not yield any result at all.
God was out of the question. I thought, “If the God is in me I don’t have to love him because he is the lover. If he controls my mind, my emotion and my body then let him control my devotion also and then I am not responsible.” If I commit a crime, I am not responsible. If I get kaivalya samadhi, I am not responsible, because they say, He does everything. If he does everything then where is my role and where is my place? If He decides everything, let Him decide. Then why am I blamed and why should I do sadhana at all? All these confusing intellectual cobwebs were in my mind.
Finally, when I came to my guru, Swami Sivananda, everything finished. I did not love him as you understand love. I did not look in his eyes all the time, like a Romeo. I did not even meet him every day, but I did have devotion for him, which I realzed only years later. Therefore, one’s total dedication of one’s total emotion to someone without any intellectual intervention is bhakti.
Paramhansa Satyananda Saraswati
