The experience of this aspect is the fruit of bhakti yoga or the path of devotion.
On the speculative side, Ramanuja also met Sankara's strictly monistic theory by another recognizing Vishnu as identical with Brahma as the Supreme Spirit animating the material world as well as the individual souls which have become estranged from God through unbelief, and can only attain again conscious union with him through devotion or love (bhakti).
Having married in due time, and a second time after the death of his first wife, he lived as a "householder" (grihastha) till the age of 24, when he renounced his family ties and set out as a religious mendicant (vairagin), visiting during the next six years the principal places of pilgrimage in northern India, and preaching with remarkable success his doctrine of Bhakti, or passionate devotion to Krishna, as the Supreme Deity.
But the practical end of all his writings is to inculcate bhakti addressed to Rama as the great means of salvation - emancipation from the chain of births and deaths - a salvation which is as free and open to men of the lowest caste as to Brahmans.
Back to Top The bhakti path... The bhakti path... The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.