What is the easiest way to actually realize God in this age?

Chanting the holy names. In Kali Yuga our memory is short, our temper quick, our attention thin, so the simplest and surest path is to chant and to listen closely as we chant. The Lord's name and the Lord are not different, this is his omnipresence, and he is fully present in his name. So when we say Rama or Krishna we are associating with him directly, face to face, whether or not we can yet perceive it. The more we chant attentively, the better our chance of realizing him.

Why is inattentive chanting such a problem?

Because when we chant we are inviting the Lord to be with us for a one-to-one conversation. If we issue the invitation with our voice while the mind wanders elsewhere, we have called the most wonderful person and then ignored him. Scripture counts this among the ten offenses to the holy name, the last of them being to chant without faith or attention. Inattentive chanting is the root of most of our trouble. Get that one thing right, chant with attention, and whatever karma comes can come. We are with the Lord, and he will always protect the soul.

If I worship another form of God, or Lord Shiva, am I still worshiping the supreme?

Yes. Worshiping Rama, or Vishnu, or any avatar is worship of the same supreme Lord. There is a lovely example of this. A devotee once loved Rama's name so dearly that when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu asked him to chant Krishna instead, he could not sleep the whole night, and by morning he confessed that he simply could not give up his Rama. Chaitanya was not displeased. He told the devotee, you are Hanuman, your attachment to Rama is perfectly natural, and I was only testing you. Worshiping Shiva is also good, for he is a wonderful personality. If it is done only to extract money or favors, that is a poor way to approach him. Better to say, "My dear Lord Shiva, I love you, and I see you are always meditating. Who are you meditating on, and how can I come to know that person too?" Shiva meditates on the form of the supreme Lord, so in worshiping Shiva we are in one sense worshiping Krishna, and Shiva is so kind that if we ask him to guide us, he will. And if you feel drawn to no particular form, then in the beginning, the middle, and throughout, worship Krishna, who is the source of everyone and everything, including all the avatars.

Do animals have souls, and can they realize God?

Every living being has a soul. That is why a body is born, grows, remains a while, and dies. Some philosophies deny that animals have souls, which conveniently justifies eating them, but animals have souls just as we do. Can they realize God more easily than we can? No, because an animal's life runs on the same four functions, eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, with little room for more. There are exceptions in scripture. Gajendra the elephant, seized by a crocodile, remembered a prayer to the Lord from his past life and called out for protection, and Vishnu came at once and saved him. So an animal can be spiritual, but as a rule its body allows only those four activities.

Can a soul go straight back to God from an animal body?

Almost never, though there is a famous case. Bharata Maharaja, a great king, grew so attached to a baby deer that he remembered it at the moment of death and took birth as a deer himself. Because he had come so close to God consciousness, the Lord let him keep the memory of his past life. As a deer he understood how narrowly he had missed his goal, so he stayed near the sages, and when that deer body died he was born as Jada Bharata. From birth he remembered his two former lives, and he chose to act dull and slow so that no one would trouble him, while he kept his mind fixed on the Lord. As a deer he had not made it, but as Jada Bharata he reached the supreme. The lesson is plain: whatever we remember at death shapes where we go next.

Why does Maya create illusion?

Because that is her nature and her duty. Maya means illusion. She is a person, and her job is to test us constantly and to see how fixed we are. Think of her as the gatekeeper. She filters out those who do not yet belong in the spiritual world and keeps them here, which is exactly the service the Lord has given her.

Is it easier to remember God in heaven or in hell?

Neither is easy. In hell there is only suffering, and a soul in agony can no more think of God than a starving person on earth can. In heaven there is so much enjoyment that we forget him in our pleasure, the way few people stop to thank God when life is sweet. Even Indra, the king of heaven, tends to run to Brahma first and seldom turns his mind to Vishnu. The great exception is Narada Muni, who carries the Lord's name wherever he goes and reminds even the demigods of Krishna. Though he is counted among them, his body is spiritual, and he travels freely to the spiritual world.

How should we treat the demigods?

With great respect, and with the right place in our hearts. They are devotees of the Lord, carrying out the work of administering the universe on his behalf. Address them respectfully, "Lord Indra," for instance, a lord with a small "l," a god with a small "g." We worship only the supreme Lord, and we never neglect the demigods, because they are sweet and can guide us when we ask them how to remember and serve the Lord. Sometimes they show a little pride, because they enjoy the power the Lord gave them, the very power they once wanted. They are mixed devotees, not yet fully pure, and we treat them as devotees all the same.

Do we need a guru to learn this?

Yes. To truly connect with the Lord through yoga or bhakti, we come to him through a spiritual master, a guru, since we cannot forge that link alone. There is a promise hidden in it. If our wish to reach the Lord grows strong enough, he himself arranges the meeting and sends a guru to us.

Is God someone to be afraid of?

No. God is the most loving person there is. However much a good father and mother love their child, multiply that by a billion, a trillion times, and that is how much God loves you. The Lord creates us and one day withdraws the creation, but he never destroys us. What dissolves the body is his agent, time, which wears everything down. The soul he always protects. He promises in the Gita that for his devotees he personally carries what they lack and preserves what they have (Bhagavad Gita 9.22). He is never far from us either. Even when this world is finally wound up, ages upon ages from now, the souls still here are drawn into the body of Maha Vishnu and kept safe within him, then released again to take up their desires when the next creation begins.

Should we look after the body, if the goal is spiritual?

Yes, with balance. The body is the vehicle for service, so if we ruin it through neglect or overindulgence until we are too ill or too lethargic to serve, where will the seva happen? A truly fixed soul will serve the Lord no matter what the body does. Even a devotee who has undergone major surgery can throw himself back into service harder than before, because the determination is in the soul, not the flesh. The hidden danger of good health is the thought "I am healthy, I am wealthy, I can do as I please," and then we forget God. Sometimes a little difficulty is what brings our focus back. Sanatana Dharma is a holistic way of living, and the body, mind, and soul are all kept healthy so the soul can make spiritual progress. Ayurveda, a sensible routine, even the bowing and dancing and singing at a temple, all of it helps, so long as it serves the higher aim.

When did Kali Yuga actually begin, and what was Parikshit's mistake?

Kali Yuga set in when Krishna left this world, over five thousand years ago. Eighty thousand sages at Naimisharanya performed a thousand-year sacrifice that held back its full advance for a time, but its hour had come. Parikshit Maharaja, the first king after Yudhisthira, once caught Kali harming the cow and the bull and moved to punish him. Kali surrendered, calling himself the king's subject and asking for protection, so Parikshit allowed him to live only where there is sin: meat-eating, gambling, intoxication, and illicit sex. Kali asked for more, and the king added gold. Now the king's own crown was gold, so through it Kali found his opening and pushed him into a single mistake. Thirsty in the forest, ignored by the meditating sage Shamika Rishi, the king grew angry and hung a dead snake around the sage's neck. The sage's young son Shringi heard of it and cursed the king to die in seven days. Shamika Rishi rebuked his son for misusing brahminical power against a righteous king, but the king accepted the curse calmly, thanked them, and went to the Ganga to prepare. Even an apparent misfortune, taken in the right spirit, becomes spiritual fortune, and from that "mistake" came his seven days of hearing the Bhagavatam.

The Yoga Ladder: How the Soul Connects with God

Yoga means to connect with the supreme Lord. That is the whole of it. The word has become a fitness fad in much of the world, good for the body and good for the mind, and there is nothing wrong with that, except that the one thing which makes yoga yoga gets left out. The missing factor is spirituality, the actual connection with the supreme. Without that link a yoga class is a physical exercise or a mental one, and useful as far as it goes, but it is not yet yoga. This lesson climbs the whole yoga ladder, from the bottom rung up to the top, and then looks closely at the highest rung, bhakti, and its nine limbs.

What is the yoga ladder?

Picture a ladder. Each rung is a way of living, and each one carries the soul a little closer to the Lord. You can climb it step by step, or, as we will see, you can take a direct route straight to the top. Here is the whole ladder before we walk through it.

BHAKTI YOGA loving service to the Lord — destination: Krishna himself — diagram

The bottom rung: living like an animal

If all a person does is eat, sleep, mate, and defend, that life is on the level of an animal. An animal does exactly those four things, and when a human being does only those four, knowing better, it sinks toward the bottom of the pile. This is close to sinful life, and it leads downward, to lower species and lower planets, even to hellish conditions if a life is sinful enough. Sadly this probably accounts for most of the world. We do not want to be in this category, and the good news is that simply by asking these questions you have already left it.

Karma kanda: working for a reward

The next step up is karma kanda, fruitive ritual. This means performing the sacrifices prescribed in the Vedas to please the demigods, so that they grant something in return. The mood is "I do something in order to get something back." It is regulated sense enjoyment, kept within the bounds of scripture. The scriptures permit a householder to enjoy family life and the senses, as long as it is done according to their rules. Pious public works of the same kind, building a hospital or a school, count here too. They are good acts, yet they are not connected to the supreme Lord, so they stay within this world.

Where does a karma-kanda life lead? Either back to earth, or up to the heavenly planets for a short stay, long enough to enjoy the good karma earned, after which the soul returns to earth once the credit runs out. For this reason karma kanda is barely on the yoga ladder at all. It is pious, it is not sinful, but it does not connect us with God.

Karma yoga and nishkama karma yoga

Now the word yoga enters. Karma yoga means doing your prescribed duties without being attached to their fruits. You do what you are meant to do, and if it succeeds, good, and if it fails, also good, because you have let go of the results. This is a strong place to stand. Such a person stays peaceful, never too anxious over success and never too crushed by failure, always steady.

Nishkama karma yoga takes one more step. Here the fruits are not merely renounced, they are attached to the Lord. You act for the Lord's pleasure and hand the benefit to him. The difference sounds small and is large. Karma yoga need not include any idea of God at all, since a person can be detached from results without ever thinking of him. The moment God is brought into the equation, and the fruits are offered to the supreme Lord, it becomes nishkama karma. This earns a good birth in the next life, or the heavenly planets, or the planets of the forefathers, the Prajapatis, and it gives the soul a platform from which to rise toward the spiritual world. A good place to begin, though not the summit.

Gyana yoga: the path of knowledge

Higher than karma is gyana yoga, the path of knowledge, and it sits very close to bhakti. Here a person has renounced the fruits of work, lives austerely, and gathers knowledge about Brahman, the formless aspect of God we met in the last lesson. The gyani reads, reflects, and discriminates between what is real and what is not, what is supreme and what is not, and arrives at a fine realization: that we are not this body. That alone is a high understanding.

The destination of the gyani is usually the Brahman conception of God. These seekers tend to be captivated by the Lord's effulgence and to look no further than the light, so they can become stuck there. It is still better than karma yoga, because they act in a renounced spirit and gain real knowledge of God. Reading the Bhagavad Gita, by contrast, takes a person straight to the Lord rather than leaving them in the glow around him.

Dhyana yoga and the eight limbs of ashtanga

Higher again is dhyana yoga, also called ashtanga yoga, the eightfold path. Now a person controls the mind, which the earlier rungs did not strictly require, and meditates on the Lord within, usually on the Paramatma. Done at a serious level this can carry the soul to the spiritual world, though often without a direct relationship with God. Such a soul may exist there like grass, watching and enjoying the Lord's pastimes from the side without taking part.

A yogi seated in deep meditation in lotus posture by a Himalayan river, a japa mala resting beside him

This is the path Krishna lays out in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna had wanted to retire to the forest instead of fighting, so Krishna told him what the forest path would actually require. After hearing the full method Arjuna replied that it was impossible, that for him it was easier to control the wind than to control the mind in the way Krishna had described. Krishna agreed that it is difficult, and said it can still be done, through steady practice and detachment. In this age that difficulty is very real. Try to chant for even five minutes and notice how many times the mind slips away to something material.

The authorized framework for this path is Patanjali's system, climbed in eight stages.

Limb	What it involves
Yama	restraint, not lying, stealing, or harming any being
Niyama	observance, purity, contentment, austerity, study of scripture, surrender
Asana	postures that steady the body so the mind can settle
Pranayama	breath control, regulating the vital force to calm the mind
Pratyahara	drawing the senses back from smell, sound, touch, and sight
Dharana	concentration, fixing the mind on one point
Dhyana	meditation, an unbroken flow of focus on the Lord
Samadhi	full absorption, nothing left between the soul and the supreme

Notice where the world's popular yoga stops. It works on asana and pranayama, the postures and the breathing, and goes no further. Those two limbs are healthy, and they do steady the body and the mind, but on their own they are bodily and mental exercise. The remaining limbs, and above all the spiritual connection, are what turn the practice into yoga.

Bhakti yoga: the top of the ladder

The final rung is bhakti yoga, loving devotional service to the supreme Lord. This is the one we recommend, and there are good reasons why.

Bhakti connects the soul to the Lord directly. Every lower rung is in some way indirect. The gyani must decipher a mountain of knowledge before even approaching who God is. The ashtanga yogi must master the mind and senses through stage after stage before any realization comes. Karma yoga may carry no thought of God at all. Bhakti skips the detours and joins the soul to the supreme straight away. It also contains the others within it, so nothing of value on the lower rungs is lost.

There is a further mercy here. The ladder can be climbed one rung at a time, the way you take a staircase, or it can be taken like an elevator, straight to the top. Wherever you stand on the ladder right now, nothing stops you from going directly to bhakti. In an age of short lives, that speed is a gift.

Bhakti is not tied to one form of the Lord. Krishna, Vishnu, Ramachandra, any of the avatars, the same loving service applies. And here is what Krishna himself says about the whole ladder, at the close of the sixth chapter, the very chapter that taught Arjuna the hard ashtanga path:

"Of all yogis, the one with great faith who always abides in me, thinks of me within himself, and renders transcendental loving service to me, he is the most intimately united with me in yoga, and is the highest of all. That is my opinion." (Bhagavad Gita 6.47)

The Lord ends a chapter on meditation by naming the devotee, not the meditator, as the highest yogi.

What are the nine limbs of bhakti?

If bhakti is the goal, what does it actually look like in practice? The answer was given long ago by Prahlada Maharaja, in a verse of the Srimad Bhagavatam:

"sravanam kirtanam visnoh smaranam pada-sevanam / arcanam vandanam dasyam sakhyam atma-nivedanam" (Srimad Bhagavatam 7.5.23)

These are the nine processes of pure devotional service. Connect with any one of them, or a combination, or all nine, and you are properly situated in bhakti. Scripture even hands us a devotee who perfected each single process, so we can see what one limb, taken to its depth, can do.

#	Process	Meaning	Perfected by
1	Shravanam	hearing about the Lord	Parikshit Maharaja
2	Kirtanam	chanting and singing his names	Sukadeva Goswami
3	Smaranam	remembering him	Prahlada Maharaja
4	Pada-sevanam	serving his lotus feet	Lakshmi Devi
5	Archanam	deity worship	Prithu Maharaja
6	Vandanam	offering prayers	Akrura
7	Dasyam	serving as his servant	Hanuman
8	Sakhyam	befriending him	Arjuna
9	Atma-nivedanam	full surrender	Bali Maharaja

Hearing. Hearing is the easiest way to connect, and the beginning of bhakti. A message heard with attention enters the heart and can remake a life. Parikshit Maharaja, grandson of Arjuna, perfected himself through this one process. Cursed to die in seven days, this righteous king did not fight the curse. He went to the bank of the Ganga and waited for wise people to instruct him. The Bhagavad Gita teaches what to do while we are living, and the Bhagavatam what to do at the end, which was the question he now faced. When Sukadeva Goswami spoke the Bhagavatam to him over seven days and nights, simply by hearing it he realized God and reached the spiritual world. Hearing is also the first sense to awaken in the womb and the last to leave at death.

Chanting. Singing the Lord's names, and hearing yourself sing them, purifies very fast. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's words cheto-darpana-marjanam describe it: chanting cleanses the mirror of the heart of all its dust. The reciter himself, Sukadeva Goswami, the sixteen-year-old son of Vyasadeva, was so renounced and so perfected that all those great sages gave way to him and let him sit and answer the king's questions. He is counted among the great authorities on the Bhagavatam.

Remembering. To remember the Lord constantly, in good times, bad times, and ordinary times, is the third process, and Prahlada Maharaja embodied it. Tortured again and again by his own father Hiranyakashipu, the boy never once asked the Lord to protect him. He simply kept remembering, Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya, asking nothing for himself, and the Lord came to shield him in every danger. So absorbed was he that he took his father's cruelty as a kind of play and never thought ill of anyone, and the Srimad Bhagavatam devotes two whole chapters to his character. To protect him the Lord at last appeared as the half-man, half-lion Nrisimhadeva, and devotees still sing the Nrisimha prayers each day, asking to be protected only so they can keep serving the Lord, never for their own comfort. When his aunt Holika, granted immunity from fire, sat in the flames holding him, it was she who burned while Prahlada sat undisturbed, absorbed in the Lord.

Serving the lotus feet. Lakshmi Devi, the goddess of fortune, is forever engaged in serving the Lord's lotus feet and never leaves his side. Many people worship Lakshmi for wealth without understanding that Lakshmi is only ever where Narayana is. Worship Narayana, and Lakshmi comes of her own accord.

Deity worship. The deity is an authorized extension of the Lord, like a genuine postbox: drop in a letter and it reaches its destination, because the box is authorized. Whatever worship is offered to a bona fide deity reaches the supreme Lord, for the deity and the Lord are not different. Prithu Maharaja, described in the fourth canto of the Bhagavatam, perfected this process by offering all the wealth of his kingdom to the Lord, so pleasing him that one of Vishnu's own servants, and even Lord Shiva, came to honour the king.

Offering prayers. Akrura perfected his life through prayer while traveling to Vrindavan to bring Krishna to Mathura on Kamsa's orders. Though sent by the tyrant, Akrura was the Lord's devotee, and on the road he saw Krishna's footprints in the dust and was overwhelmed, offering prayer after prayer. From him we learn how to approach a holy place. A temple is Vrindavan, no different from the spiritual world, so we go with a heart of devotion, feeling fortunate and even unqualified to be allowed in. We thank those who made the visit possible, glorify the Lord's feet, meditate on his form and pastimes, and keep to talk of Krishna alone, with no gossip and no politics.

Serving as a servant. Hanuman is the supreme example of dasyam. As the intimate servant of Lord Ramachandra he carried out every order through every difficulty, and would know the Lord's wish even before it was spoken. In this world "servant" sounds low, yet in the spiritual world the servant is the real master, winning over the Lord by love. Becoming the Lord's servant is no inferior position, because the reciprocation he gives is extraordinary.

Lord Hanuman kneeling in loving service before Lord Rama, with Sita and Lakshmana

Befriending him. Arjuna perfected friendship with the Lord. He grew so close to Krishna that the Lord agreed to become his chariot driver. Directing the chariot, Arjuna would even signal Krishna with a nudge of his foot to turn the horses one way or the other. It is a humble position, and the Lord accepted it gladly to serve his friend. If we carry that mood, the relationship of friendship with the supreme Lord is open to us too.

Full surrender. Bali Maharaja perfected atma-nivedanam, giving everything. When the dwarf-brahmana Vamanadev came to his sacrifice and asked for three steps of land, Bali offered far more. His own spiritual master Sukracharya warned him that the boy was Vishnu and would take everything, and Bali answered that if Vishnu himself had come to beg, he would give him all he had. He disobeyed his guru and surrendered completely. The Lord covered the earth with one step and all of creation with the second, then asked where to place the third, and Bali offered his own head. Pleased, the Lord gave him the realm of Sutala and became his gatekeeper, the master made servant by a devotee's surrender.

One devotee who perfected all nine

Scripture also gives one king who practiced all nine processes at once, Ambarisha Maharaja. The Bhagavatam describes how he fixed his mind on the Lord's lotus feet, his words on describing the Lord's glories, his hands on cleansing the temple, his ears on hearing about Krishna, his eyes on seeing the deity and the holy places of Mathura and Vrindavan, his sense of touch on the bodies of devotees, his sense of smell on the tulasi offered to the Lord, his tongue on the Lord's prasad, his legs on walking to holy temples, his head on bowing before the Lord, and his every desire on serving the Lord around the clock. He never once wanted anything for his own enjoyment. This is the way to grow attached to the Lord and free of all material craving, and we can follow these devotees in our own small measure, especially as we grow older and see that little else really matters.

How do we protect our bhakti once it begins?

When devotion takes root it is like planting a seed, the bhakti-lata-bija, the seed of the devotional creeper. Any gardener knows what comes next. The seed sprouts, and the little plant has to be watered, tended, and guarded, because weeds spring up alongside it and will choke it if left alone. Bad association and the many temptations of this world are those weeds. To keep the creeper of bhakti growing toward its fruit, which is prema, pure love of God, we water it through these nine processes and we learn to spot the weeds and pull them out. The full method of tending the creeper is a study in itself, for another day.

Key terms from this lesson

Term	Meaning
Yoga	to connect with the supreme Lord
Karma kanda	Vedic ritual for material reward, barely on the ladder
Karma yoga	doing one's duty without attachment to the fruits
Nishkama karma yoga	offering the fruits of work to the Lord
Gyana yoga	the path of knowledge, ending in Brahman realization
Ashtanga yoga	the eightfold path of Patanjali, mind control and meditation
Bhakti yoga	loving devotional service, the top of the ladder
Navadha bhakti	the nine processes of devotional service
Bhakti-lata-bija	the seed of the devotional creeper that must be tended
Prema	pure, unconditional love of God, the fruit of bhakti

What to carry forward

Yoga means connection with God. Without that, it is only exercise.
The ladder rises from animal life through karma, knowledge, and meditation up to bhakti.
Each lower rung is partial or indirect. Bhakti connects the soul to the Lord directly and contains the rest.
You can climb rung by rung or go straight to bhakti from wherever you are.
Krishna names the loving devotee, not the meditator, as the highest yogi (Gita 6.47).
Bhakti has nine limbs, and one devotee perfected each, while Ambarisha perfected all nine.
In this age, attentive chanting of the holy name is the simplest and surest connection.

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