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| The masculine Trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in a subtle image... |
In my own experience I like to call Him-Her a Divine Face, an avatarization, or descent of the Divine, as the different Gods and Goddesses of the different times, religions and traditions are different faces or personas of the same Primordial Divine, so the God-Goddess or the Divine manifests himself to everyone according to their love, creed, vision, wish, merits.
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| Maha Kali, in a lovely, or prema bhaktic, form.. |
And VII-21: - «Whatever celestial form a devotee wishes to worship with great faith, I bestow a steady (or satisfied) faith on that.»
Beyond the Bhagavad Gita giving suport for the Ishta devata revelation, and a bit the Upanishads, mostly indirectly by the relation or identity of inner self or spirit (atman) with the Divine Brahman, also many gurus and mystics have extolled the relation to an inner or personnal manifestation of God, the Ishta Devata, or to the Divine Being who manifests himself through some Face or Devata, done through the chosen name of God (and sometimes image) and attained or realized through devotional love, japa, worship (mentally or externally in front of a consecrated and nurtured image, as in the puja), meditation and dedication of actions, which are considered the main methods, specially in our days where the deeper silence and inwardness are more difficult to be attained and lived. In some other religions and traditions, or in some western masters, we find also the same inner realization, notably in Bô Yin Râ, with his teaching of the birth of the living God deep within us, in the spiritual heart.
Lovers of meditation have found also that invoking the Ishta devata, even if they have not found their own true one, and so don't know it and use just general devotional prayers or mantras, can make them feel and see the inner Light shinning, just in thinking or meditating in the Ishta Deva.
Also pilgrims and spiritual seekers know by their own experiences that sometimes the Divine Being manifests to them in some form and other times in another form, according to their station of soul's love and aspiration, so bounded with time, space, land, history, religions, families, moods and affinities.
Guru Ranade (1886-1957) was a deep and luminous guru and professor of philosophy, who united the devotion to the Divine and the rational study of philosophy and even mysticism, having written very good books, some of them, with his life, already approached in this blogg. His emphasis on the path of devotion to the Divine Being was constant and profound and attracted many disciples to strive to attain that communion, and he initiated them giving a mantra with the name of God that would be their Ishta devata. He may say that he was a Dvaita Vedanta, a Vaishnava, a devote of Vishnu Narayana, indeed in India one of the most beloved faces of God, who had also Rama and Krisna as his faces or avatars, or his Being manifested in some way in human form in Earth.
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| Vishnu Narayana on Shesha the serpent, in the primordial waters or energies... |
But let us join one more contribution to doctrine of the Ishta devata, taking it from a book I bought in 1995 in Calcuta and brought to Portugal, where is now in my hands, The Yoga higher and lower, by Narayanaswami Aiyar, published in 1916, in Adyar, Theosophical Society, where he give us some hints to choose the Ishta Devata (although the traditional way is to receive it, directly or indirectly, from a guru) according to our constitution being more of water or fire, related also to the predominant nadi, either Ida (feminine) either Pingala (masculine). So Shiva would be more for fiery people and Vishnu for the watery ones, and he admits, believing in reincarnations, that some vasanas or attractions resulting from those past lifes impel us to some Isha Devata or Deity alrealy worshiped. But the interesting and pratical part of his writing is when he says that according to the Bhagavata Purana (and in reality also in the Bhagavad Gita as we have seen in the beginning) we can worship the Ishta Devata in two ways, one in the form of the Universal Being, the other in the inner spirit or in the inner face of God, the Ishta Deva:
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| Krishna manifests to Arjuna in a swarupa, of his form universal, virat. Bhagavad Gita, XI-9. |
«In Bhagavat Purana two ways are given for such worship. One is the Virat Swarupa, where the form is described as extending everywhere, his two eyes are described as the Sun an the Moon and the other organs of the bodys are correlated to other parts of the solar system. The other is the worship of the Atman (the spirit) in the heart. This will be referred to under the higher Yoga.» P. 88.
We hope one of these days transcribe or translate and comment some parts of the Bhagavata Purana, indeed the scripture who developed more the realization and the conceptualization of Ishta Deva, as it is a Vaishnava scripture, and so devotional, based on a relation of love to the Divine Being with form, that is distinct from us.
If we go to the pages consecrated to the heart, in the chapter Higher Yoga, we can read there some descriptions given in Chandogyaha Upanishad about the heart as the center in the causal body, in Section III, 13, and their gates and correspondance with the five tatwas or elements, the 8 petals of heart chakra, and then he tell us some of his personal experiences, because he reached a certain purification, on seeing forms within, hearing messages and receiving thoughts on the heart, remembering that are the desires who obstruct the relation of the spirit or Atman with our consciousness, and so we need a purification of the heart in order to "receive the Atman influence through meditation in the heart".
In fact the principle of the Ishta devata is not expounded there, but the possibility to see or to connect to the spirit or Atman through the entrance into the spiritual heart. I would rather extoll the chapter III, Section 13, verses 7, as they have some nice and strong hints to the inner conscious sensibilization, so needful: «Now the Light which shines above this heaven, above all, above everything, in the highest worlds beyond which there are no higher, verily, that is the same as this Light which is here within the person.» 8: «There is the seeing of it, as when, in this body, one perceives the warmth by touch. There is the hearing of it, as when, on closing the ears, one hears as it were a sound, as it were a noise, as of a fire blazing. One should meditate on this that has been seen and heard. One who knows this becomes one beautiful to see and heard of in renown, yea, one who known this.» (Version of S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads, 1994.)
About receiving thoughts in the heart (p. 164), Narayanaswamy Aier writes: «Messages can be received from the heart from two sources. The first is from the guru who is said to rise beyond thoughts or the mental plane, and who sends the message. The guru can understand the thoughts of all humanity [a bit mystification] - his disciples in particular through the link made. The second is that the message may come from the Ishta Deva or from the Atman in the heart. According to the Tejobindu Upanishad quoted before the Ishta Deva's function is above all thoughts, reaching up to the highest Vak, or power of vibration. Hence when the atman within wants to send thoughts, it will have to descend to the lower or mental plane to communicate the thoughts. In such a case it will be easier for men to have these messages sent through a guru who is already at his post in this lower state to do it.»
Arguable, because this last explanation makes people less capable of self-realization and expression, and more dependent of the gurus or teachers, even for receiveing from their own spirit some inspirations. It is possible that some influences of the mystifications of Theosophical Society about the Masters can be read here, as the author, born in South of India, in 1856, was very much devoted and active as a Theosophist, translating sanskrit books, lecturing all over India, and revitalizing the sleepy local branches of the Theosophical Society He died in 1918, two year after the publication of book, that is quite a sober condensate of Indian spirituality.
Let us just say that the Tejobindu Upanishad, tejas bindu meaning an (atomic) point of fire-light, indeed a good way to describe the atman or spirit, doesn't speak on the Ishta Devata, as it is mostly and strongly an advaitic or a non dualist Upanishad, extolling the opposite: that the Brahman or the Absolute is on us as the Atman, indeed felt in the heart, and so it is more the Tat Twam Asi, You are that, or I am Brahman, Aham Brahmasmi, the good mantras or afirmations to be realized or meditated. There is not a devotion to an inner or personal manifestation of the Divine Being, the Ishta Devata.
Let us turn now another time to guru Ranade, and his lineage of gurus and teachings, for conclusion of this first approach to the great mistery of the inner devotion and communion with a personal face of God, the Ishta Devata, and to the purity of the heart and soul required. I will quote from a good book published in 1982, Bombay, by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, R. D. Ranade and his Spiritual Lineage, by Vinayak Hari Date, or V. H. Date.
«One time, when he was questioned who is a man of purity, he replied: - I would like to answer that he is pure who sees the presence of God in some form or other before his very eyes. One who does his meditation daily, without being tired and one who repents for having wasted his life without any devotional attitude to
God, can also be said to be pure of heart.»
And about this daily meditation let us rememebr how he valued smarana, the repetion of the Name of God and bhava, or feeling love-devotion for God, being in fact the base of the sadhana, or spiritual pratice. So, let us be more persistent in our prayers, mantras and meditations, surely giving some time inside them for the observation of the thoughts and preocupations, to clear them then with the light of understanding (viveka and budhi) and detachment (vairagya), and then returning to the invocation, or communion, with the Atman or the Divine Face.
May the Divine Being bless us, may each one find his Atman and her-his Ishta Devata.
Aum Atman, Aum Ishta Devata!
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