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102
BHAKTI-YOGA.
shines, the moon herself becomes dim. The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti, is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes in as naturally as, in the presence of an increasingly stronger light, the less intense ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God. That love of God grows and assumes a form which is called Para-Bhakti, or supreme devotion. Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, and images, temples, churches, religions, sects, countries and nationalities, all these little limitations, and bondages fall off of themselves from him, who knows this love of God! Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom. A ship, all of a sudden, comes 'near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks