The second Path: Bhakthi-yoga. This is congenial for those who are emotionally oriented. It is the path for those capable of filling their hearts with Love. The urge is to have God as the Beloved. His activities will be different, for they relate to incense-burning, gathering flowers for worship, building shrines and temples where he could install and adore symbols of Beauty, Wisdom and Power.

Are you inclined to remark that this is not the right means of achieving union with Divinity? Remember that saints and sages, great spiritual leaders and guides throughout the world have emerged just from this devotional and dedicatory stage of spiritual endeavour. Some faiths tried to imagine God as formless, and described worship of God through various such acts as blasphemy, tried to suppress the Bhakthi cults and in the process, they slighted the Reality and Its Power and Majesty. The belief that God cannot be symbolised in a Form is evidence of blindness; the charge that such worship is barren is a hollow charge. The history of the world is the witness to the efficacy of Bhakthi. It is not proper to ridicule these activities, ceremonials and rituals and the descriptions of the lives of sadhakas who adhered to them in order to earn Union with Divinity. Let those who yearn after the joy of worshipping the Form do so; certainly, it will be a sin to shatter their faith and treat it as infructuous.

The glory of the great heroes of the spirit, those who have scaled the highest peaks of Realisation, and those who attained spiritual fulfilment is exercising immense influence on the mind of mankind. It is as a result of a long line of such seers that the spiritual Message of India has attracted the attention of all nations. If India has been able to earn the reverence of the world, the reason has to be sought in the precious treasure that they have earned and preserved. Here, love of God and fear of Sin have been the chief pillars of life and the everlasting guides for living. Bharatha has won a name for being a holy land, a land steeped in renunciation and in spiritual sadhanas aimed at union with the Absolute, renowned for thyaga and yoga. The urges that this culture encouraged were all directed to the conquest of the vagaries of the mind.