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NATURALNESS OF BHAKTI-YOGA
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misery of soul in not attaining unto Him washed off all her sinful propensities; and then she became free." तचिन्ताविपुलाकादशीखपुण्यचया तथा। तदप्राप्तिमहादुःखविलीनाशेषपातका । for at f ara 1997 all In Bhakti-Yoga the central secret is, therefore, to know that the various passions and feelings, and emotions in the human heart are not wrong in themselves; only they have to be carefully controlled and given a higher and higher direction, until they attain the very highest condition of excellence. The highest direction is that which takes us to God; every other direction is lower. We find that pleasures and pains are very common and oft-recurring feelings in our lives. When a man feels pain, because he has not wealth or some such worldly thing, he is giving a wrong direction to the feeling. Still, pain has its uses. Let a man feel pain that he has not reached the Highest, that he has not reached God, and that pain will be to his salvation. When you become glad that you have a handful of coins, it is a wrong direction given to the faculty of joy; it should be given a higher direction, it must be made to serve the Highest Ideal. Pleasure in that kind of ideal must surely be our highest joy. This same thing is true of all our other feelings. The Bhakta says that not one of them is wrong, he gets hold of them all and points them unfailingly towards God.
