Devotion: Being in the Lap of the Divine

Sadhguru: This land, this nation, this ancient civilization has been a source of tremendous talent and genius in the past. This talent and genius were essentially born not of study but of devotion. The greatest scientists, doctors, and mathematicians were all devotees par excellence, because in devotion, you become inclusive. In inclusion, nothing is beyond you. To be a devotee means to arrive at a different dimension of perception and intelligence, to drop the petty and to invite the possibility of the Divine. A devotee does not sit on a diamond-studded throne, nor aspire for one. The only aspiration is to be in the lap of the Divine. This aspiration is not a desire to go somewhere. Only by changing one’s fundamental perception of all creation will one arrive upon the lap of the Divine.

A Tool to Break Limitations

Devotion is a tremendous tool to break all limitations within oneself. Whether it is psychological, emotional, or karmic restrictions – if there is a flood of devotion, it will carry one across all these boundaries effortlessly. With regular sadhana, it would need an enormous amount of work to remove these boundaries. But with sadhana that is done in a state of enormous devotion, you can ride the flood over all the boundaries that you have created within yourself. This includes the prisons of perception that have come up over a period of time.

Let us say you see nicely arranged flowers, it is common for human curiosity and intelligence to want to know who did this. If you see a work of art, you would like to know who did it. But incredibly, very few people, as they are engaged in life, with a masterpiece of creation right here in the form of the human system, ask the question, “Who is the Creator?” And of course, people have readymade answers. Devotion is not a readymade answer. Devotion is a device to get there. Devotion is not a deduction that one makes. Devotion is a way to rise beyond all deductions. Devotion is a way to create a flood that will carry you beyond all limitations and restrictions in experience. If you have given yourself in these twenty-one days, you have not only purified yourself but all spaces around you. The nation and the world will immensely benefit from this. And devotion is not a twenty-one day chore. You must continue to overflow with it on a daily basis. It is not something that you do, it is something that you live. It is like your breath. If the Grace of Bhairavi, if her footprint is established in your heart, you never have to worry about victory or failure, prosperity or poverty, life or death. For one who manages to land in the lap of the Divine, all these things are trivial and of no consequence.

Re-establishing Devotion

May this process that you have started truly overwhelm you, because if the phenomenon of creation and the source of creation do not overwhelm you, you are not even fit to be a rock. If this does not overwhelm you, what does? The government symbol of Tamil Nadu is a temple. They chose this symbol because this land has been so steeped in devotion that wherever you went, it always felt like a temple. Devotion was the main piece of people’s lives here. It is once again time to re-establish this. Otherwise, devoid of devotion, we will become like any other creature. Then we will wonder why we are here. Because if you just eat, sleep, reproduce, and die one day, somewhere along the way, if you have a working brain, the question will come, “Why the hell am I here? What is the nature of my existence?”

Becoming Naturally Blissful

Devotion is a powerful tool. It is a bulldozer that crushes all resistance within you. With devotion, everything gets unified. The idea of the twenty-one day sadhana is to make devotion a part of your life, every moment of your life. If in one place, you act devotional, and in the rest of the places, you are not, it simply means that you are pretentious. If it is real, if you are like that every moment of your life, with everything in the world – that is devotion. A heart that is devoid of devotion is a barren heart. It needs too much work and stimulation to make it blissful. A heart that is filled with devotion is fertile. It will naturally be blissful. We need a wave of devotion. If you are soaked in devotion, blissfulness will simply happen. Please make it happen for yourself and to as many people around you as possible.

Editor's Note: Read more of Sadhguru's insights on the path of devotion as a means to reach the ultimate and stories on many such devotees.

Sadhguru on Devotion