WHO IS DEVOTEE?

WHO IS DEVOTEE?

Baba said, "Renounce worldly honours. Try to get Lord’s grace and blessings and be honoured in His court. Do not be deluded by worldly honour" in Sri Sai Satcharitra Chapter VI.

He alone is a devotee whose heart having been freed from all sins and afflictions has become an eternal abode of his object of worship, the Paramatma.

When the heart of a devotee is free from all tinge of sin, how can there be any possibility of sin in the activities of his body? He who regards himself to be a devotee even though indulging in sin all the twenty four hours does so with a view to deceiving the world, or he is himself deluded by his intellect which is incapable of sound judgment.

One should actually become a devotee or a saint rather than be called as such. One who aspires to become a devotee for reputation alone is duped by sin. Such a person falls an easy prey to hypocrisy in the first instance.

Devotion is cultivated for the happiness of one’s own soul and not for demonstration before the world; where there is a sense of display, there is artificiality.

Sinful persons alone either to extenuate their sin, or as an apology for carrying on sinful activities, indulge in fanciful interpretations of the scriptures and exploit them.

The grace of God descends in the form of wrath on those who are given to artificially, and in the form of mercy on those who are free from artificiality. Grace in the form of anger purifies the soul by tormenting and subjecting it to suffering, while grace in its tender form descends only on the soul thus purified.

One who aspires to be a devotee of God should purify one’s heart in the first instance, and should daily offer this pitiful prayer to Him in seclusion; "Lord, be pleased so to ordain that seeing You constantly present within my heart, no sinful propensity may ever arise or stay there; let Yourself then be permanently enthroned in that purified heart, so that, beholding You every moment, I may continue to be thoroughly immersed in supreme ecstasy."

Courtesy: Sri Hanumanprasad Poddar in Wavelets of Bliss