Divine experience

March 30, 2015 05:07 am | Updated 05:07 am IST

True bhakti is a rare and divine experience, when a devotee enters into a one-to-one relationship with God. Bhakti Bhava is an ineffable feeling that cannot be described in words and at best can only be understood when experienced and savoured in one’s inner being. Knowing that sweetness inheres in sugar or honey is not the same as tasting the sweetness. The accounts of the lives of the Nayanmars which Sundaramurthy Nayanar in his Tiruthondar Thogai and Sekkizhar in Periyapuranam have recorded convey the strong bond that is engendered and strengthened when one lives a life devoted to the Lord, pointed out Sri Ganesa Sarma in a lecture. If each of these devotees loves the Lord in his own way, he also remains dear to Him. The Lord’s ‘Bhakta Vatsalya’ is such that He reaches out to each one of them in unique and astonishing ways. This provides inspiration and hope for every devotee who knows he can become dear to Him through upright living, sincere devotion and true love to Him.

Saint Gnanasambandar speaks of this devotion as overwhelming love for God. Manikkavachagar is equally overwhelmed to be a recipient of Siva’s irresistible grace and acknowledges with utmost humility that only through His grace and Sankalpa can one become a true devotee.

Kannappan Nayanar’s experience of God is manifest as unconventional worship that defies all normal standards and logic. Yet, it is clear that God looks only for the intense love behind the devotee’s acts of worship. Karaikal Ammaiyar’s devotion is simple but strong. She gives up her physical body to gain an apparitional form and undertakes the arduous pilgrimage to Mount Kailasa. She ascends the mountain walking on her head. Such devotion moves the Lord and He addresses her as ‘Ammaiye’. She prays to the Lord for undying blissful love; and relief from further births. She adds that if she is destined to be born again, she should be granted the boon of never forgetting Him.

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