Guiding Light: The four types of devotees

Among those who have put away the sin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine, the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas. There are those who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering in the world, arta. There are those who seek him as the giver of good in the world, artharthı. There are those who come to him in the desire for knowledge, jijnasu. And lastly there are those who adore him with knowledge, jnanı. All are approved by the Gita, but only on the last does it lay the seal of its complete sanction.

All these movements without exception are high and good, udarah sarva evaite, but the bhakti with knowledge excels them all, visisyate. We may say that these forms are successively the bhakti of the vital-emotional and affective nature, that of the practical and dynamic nature, that of the reasoning intellectual nature, and that of the highest intuitive being which takes up all the rest of the nature into unity with the Divine.

Practically, however, the others may be regarded as preparatory movements. The Gita says, these four categories of devotees are all large-hearted, none negligible, all are dear to God, but of them the devotee who has the knowledge ranks highest; for one who has the knowledge and God are the same in being. Therefore, according to their nature, as they approach him, he accepts their bhakti and answers to it with the reply of divine love and compassion.

These forms are after all a certain kind of manifestation through which the imperfect human intelligence can touch him, these desires are first means by which our souls turn towards him: nor is any devotion worthless or ineffective, whatever its limitations. It has the one grand necessity, faith. “Whatever form of me any devotee with faith desires to worship, I make that faith of his firm and undeviating.” By the force of that faith in his cult and worship he gets his desire and the spiritual realisation for which he is at the moment fitted. By seeking all his good from the Divine, he shall come in the end to seek in the Divine all his good