Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
30th October 2016
Devotion
“Gratitude”
Devotion means having faith in religious prayers, worship or religious observances, in which he or she believes. The devotion regarding religion is nevertheless only present during moments devoted to religion and not at other moments in daily life. This implies that the devotion to religion is temporary and intermittent and not constant.
Devotion also means love, loyalty or enthusiasm for a person and to his or her everyday activities. This devotion everyone claims to have, but the devotion is not evident in every moment of daily life. This implies that devotion to a person and to his or her activity is not only intermittent, but also is temporary and selective.
Devotion to religious practices and observances of every religion are however not present in every person. He or she may accept them, but is not devoted to them as he or she is to their own religion.
Truth is complete, which means that true devotion has to be to everyone and everything that is expressed in life for it to be complete. How could true devotion be possible for man or woman is the question one has to endeavour to understand?
If life is understood deeply, it will be possible for man to be devoted to everyone and to everything that is expressed in life in the moment. Life happens every moment with one moment following the next.
Man, however, can never make the moment which is in life. Life has manifested the moment along with matter, vegetation and the animal kingdom much before life manifested man.
This implies that life precisely manifests not only the moment, but has also initially manifested matter and later vegetation, followed by the animal kingdom and eventually man.
The precision of life evolves understanding happening to man that every atom of life is energy and that every form of energy is light. The moment this understanding happens, man begins to be grateful to energy.
When understanding happens to man that not only sunlight is required for life to exist and that light also signifies divinity in every religion that is known by man and that man does not make the moment in which he and everything is present and cannot be present in any other way than it is present, devotion and gratitude to everyone and everything that exists in life is then realised by man.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2016
Editor’s Note:
True devotion is expressed in this article to enable man to embrace everything that life manifests each and every moment and to understand that it cannot be other than the way it is. Exclusive devotion that selects and rejects is founded on the conditioning of mind where limits have been imposed and man lives on scraps. May the light of understanding illuminate the lives of men and women.
Julian Capper, U.K
German Translator’s Note:
Devotion is commonly regarded as an achievement a spiritual seeker has to develop. Therefore there is a special atmosphere in spiritual circles, where all appear very devoted to a special behavior, person or certain objects. But in their daily life, the devotion is gone quickly when life does not fulfill the expectations of the conditioned mind. A truly enlightened, as Dr. Shankar in this article once again, would not demand for any devotion. Instead he simply helps man or woman to understand life, that it flows only in one way. This understanding is devotion to everything and everyone in every moment, it is not directed to this or that but to life itself, to life’s indivisible flow.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.