Jnana and Bhakti in Christianity

By Sagittarius

I have been asked to write about jnana and bhakti in Christianity. The enemy is the ego or self-will; about that all agree. The really sensible thing, therefore, would be to stop writing articles and comparing religions and get down to the practical work of killing it, no matter by what marga or through what religion.

Whatever method may be used, in whatever religion, it is fundamentally a method of conquering the ego. That is what should be borne in mind always.

Basically there are two ways of doing this: either to break the ego in so completely that it will run to harness and never again dare to kick its heels up or to take the bit between its teeth and bolt, or to destroy it altogether. The former way is called bhakti marga in Hinduism, the latter jnana marga. Christ taught both.

He taught bhakti marga when he told us to say "Thy will be done." There is still a 'me' and it still has a will, but its will is to be subordinate always and in all things to God's will. This is the way most Christians follow - most Christians who are Christians. In Hinduism it is the way of Ramakrishna, who said: "I don't want to be the honey but to taste the honey" — that is to remain apart from Divine Being in order to enjoy It; of Tukaram, who said "I shall ever desire dual consciousness. Thou shalt ever remain my Lord and I Thy worshipper."

Christ taught jnana marga when he said: "The man who wants to save his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life for my sake will find it." There is no question this time of keeping a 'my will' which has to be subordinated to 'Thy will'. If the life which has the will is to be given up, how can any will remain?

It doesn't really matter which path you follow. Both lead to the same goal. Only arguing which of them is better leads to no goal at all. The path of bhakti may lead to the 'mystic union', the uniting of two who still are two, like human lovers; but that doesn't matter, because from there the process will take its own course through its own continued momentum, with no further need for discipline and theory, until he can say with the Christian mystic Jacob Boehme: "God has become that which I am and has made me that which He is."

You can look at it from another angle too and say that bhakti marga is the Path of Love and jnana marga the Path of Knowledge. The lover remains separate from the Beloved for the joy of loving. That is the attitude of Ramakrishna, of all the great bhaktas. Knowledge means the realization that there is no one to remain separate: there just IS.

Christ taught bhakti marga when he said that the greatest of the laws of Moses is to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength.

He taught jnana marga when he said: "You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall liberate you."¹ But the Jews he said it to couldn't take it — 'What truth? What can you liberate us from? Aren't we free already? Don't we follow the orthodox rules of our religion and scripture?' Christians say pretty much the same thing today too. There are not many who can take it.
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1 - St. John, VIII, 32