Ananya-Bhakti 3: Ananya-bhāva
Channel: Consciousness Research Centre
Date: 24/06/2017

This series is classified Viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda | Bhakti-yoga | Svapna | Anāhata-cakra
The individual ego or mind arises by fabrication, imagining itself to be the physical body. It sustains its imaginary existence by constantly attending to thoughts or objects other than itself, experienced as ’mine’. We imagine ourselves to be the ego by attending to objects: otherness. 

When we turn our attention away from all otherness towards our essential Self, the mind subsides, losing its existence as a seemingly separate, individual entity. This is ātmā-vichāra, Self-realization. 

Our true nature is not thinking, doing, having or knowing anything other than the nondual Self, as pure Self-conscious absolute Being. 

Therefore, we can realize our true nature only as much as we give up identification with our constantly thinking, doing, object-knowing, acquisitive mind, and willingly surrender to the Self. 

The reason we think and know objects other than our Self is because of desire: we love to do so. And we love it because we wrongly imagine that we can obtain happiness by owning and enjoying them. 

The struggle to obtain the objects we desire to enjoy, and their inevitable loss, are sources of suffering. Indeed, individual existence is temporary and miserable, because we split off from and deny our real nature, the Self. 

Nevertheless we cling to individual existence and do not want to give it up, because we mistakenly imagine it is a source of happiness.

Therefore we will not surrender our thinking mind and abide as our true Self-conscious Being until we thoroughly understand that happiness does not exist in anything other than our real Self. 

By such surrender, our love just to be our real Self will become greater than our desire to think of, know or possess anything else. Cultivating this surrender, and the unconditional happiness it brings, is the purpose of Bhakti.

To succeed in our efforts for Self-realization, to surrender our false individual ego and be our real Self, we must be consumed by overwhelming love for our true Self-conscious Being. 

The highest bhakti or devotion is therefore perfectly nondual love for our real Self or essential being.

“By the strength of such ananya-bhāva—the attitude or conviction that God is not other than our Self—being, abiding or remaining in sat-bhava, our natural state of Being, which transcends all bhāvana—becoming, imagination, thinking or meditation—is alone parā-bhakti-tattva: the truth of supreme devotion.” — Upadeṣa-Undiyar 9

==========
Dharmasār Video Series Index:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EZFqp9G893-LMYSm-ucUt3CylMTbfLV2/view?usp=drivesdk

Four States of Consciousness Diagram: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OWr_2V857yq7AjS59yhF4ub2q9k8Kl9/view?usp=sharing

Dharmasār Complete Archive Library:
https://archive.org/details/dharmasar-essence-of-dharma