The Company of the Good

The yoga of the inner Self, he said, is the highest good, in which pain and pleasure both come to rest. Long ago I taught it to the sages who wished to hear it, and now I will teach it to you.

The mind is what binds the self, and the mind is what frees it: caught in the three strands of nature, goodness, passion and darkness, it binds, and given to the Lord it frees. When the mind is clean of I and mine, of desire and greed, the person sees the Self alone, beyond nature, unbroken and shining by its own light. For those who seek Brahman, there is no road as safe as devotion to the Lord, the Self of all.

The wise know that clinging is a noose on the self that never wears out. But clinging to the good is the open door of release. The good are patient and kind, friends to every creature, enemies to none, at peace. For my sake they have laid down their work and left their families. They hear my stories and tell them, and the many sorrows of the world do not burn them, for their minds are in me. Ask for their company, good woman, for they take the harm out of clinging. In their company come stories of me that heal the ear and the heart, and from delight in them come faith and love and devotion, one after another.

What devotion should I have? Devahūti asked. What kind of devotion can I reach, so that I may come at once to your state of peace? And what is that yoga like? Explain it to me, Hari, so that I, a woman of little understanding, may grasp easily what is hard to grasp.

Kapila spoke to her first of devotion. There are some, he said, who do not even wish to be one with me. They delight in serving my feet and in telling what I have done. They see my lovely forms and speak with them, and devotion carries them to my state though they never asked for it. They do not want even the powers of yoga, and yet they enjoy them in my world. Those for whom I am the beloved, the Self, the son, the friend, the teacher, the well-wisher and the chosen god are never lost, and my wheel of time does not touch them. It is from fear of me that the wind blows and the sun burns, that Indra, king of the gods, rains and fire burns and death goes about. Only in me does the sharp fear end.