The Blossoming Of Devotion
For those in kriyā, darshan is not only the physical sight of the stone image in the temple. It is also an inner communion, a receiving of the blessings and the messages and the rays of Second and Third World beings, who are actual conscious entities and whose consciousness is canalized through the sacred image by esoteric temple practices. This is a deeper perception of the darshan of the Deity. Other forms of religious expression naturally come forth for the devotee in this stage of unfoldment, such as attending pūjās regularly, chanting, undertaking pilgrimages to temples and holy places and studying the scriptures.
Midpoint in this stage of development of the soul, the devotee may psychically experience an aspect of God that he has been worshiping in the temple. He may see the Deity in a dream or have a vision of Him during a quiet period when he is sitting with his eyes closed after a pūjā. After this experience, he centers his life fully around God and learns to psychically attune himself to His darshan, His will. Once he fully understands his religion, if he has sufficient means he may express his eagerness to serve through building a temple, or participation in such a project. Indeed, this is the great culmination of kriyā. It is through the devotees in the kriyā, or bhakti yoga, stage of the unfoldment of the soul that we have all over the world today magnificent Hindu temples, built by people who have performed well, who have controlled their thoughts and actions, who have understood the laws of karma and the penalties of wrong action. They have avoided wrong action not out of fear, but because they have evolved into performing right action. Having released themselves from the dense fog of the instinctive mind, they can now build temples of great beauty which reflect the beauties they have discovered within themselves in their personal communion with God, who to them is not an awesome master who might punish and discipline, but a loving father.
As he matures in kriyā, the devotee unfolds a more and more intense love of God, to the point that he may well shed joyful tears during intense moments of worship. When that love is constant from day to day, when it is strong enough that he is capable of surrendering his individual will to God’s Cosmic Will, then kriyā or bhakti yoga has reached its zenith. This giving up of his own will is a slow process as he unwinds the last remaining strands of his external will from the instinctive mind. His will was born of intellectual concepts, and these concepts, too, he releases unto God, feeling within his inmost being that he knows little of the grand mysteries of existence, an admission he could not make earlier. He realizes that he receives his inspiration, his energy, his very life, from God.
At this stage of kriyā the devotee learns patience. He learns to wait for the proper timing of things in his life. He is in no hurry. He is willing to wait for another life, or for many more lives. There is no urgency. He trusts God and trusts the path he is on. He settles down, and his life comes into a balance. He observes that he is in an evolutionary process along with thousands and millions of others. He embraces other devotees with renewed love and appreciation. He patterns his life in such a way that the temple is the hub of his culture, his religious activity and observance, his very thinking. From the temple or his home shrine, he goes forth to spend his days in the world, and to the temple or shrine he returns from the world. His life comes and goes from that sacred place.
In the stages of charyā and kriyā, the deep-seated impurities of the mind are cleansed as past karmas are resolved and a foundation laid for the third stage on the divine path, that of yoga. Yoga is a very advanced science. It cannot be sustained except by the soul that has unfolded into the fullness of charyā and kriyā and maintains the qualities of service and devotion as meditation is pursued. The devotee who has served God well now embarks upon finding union with God in his sanctum within. He remains enveloped in the darshan of the personal Lord he carefully cultivated during charyā and kriyā, and on the power of that darshan he is drawn within by the Primal Soul Himself to rarefied states of consciousness and the stillness of meditation.