That quest for the beatific vision or for union with God, is the highest and the most living part of present-day Hinduism, whether monotheistic or pantheistic.  Not the purohit brahman (the domestic celebrant), or the guru brahman (the professional spiritual director), conventionally spoken of as divine, but the jogi or religious seeker is the object of universal reverence.  And rightly so.  The reality of this aspect of Hinduism is manifest in the ease with which it overrides the idea of caste.  In theory brahmans are the twice-born caste, the nearest to the Deity and to union with Him.  A man of lower caste, in his upward transmigrations towards union with God or absorption into Deity, should pass through an existence as a brahman.  In the chapter on Transmigration we found that the upward steps of the ladder up to the brahman caste had been clearly stated in an authoritative Hindu text-book.  The word br[=a]hman, the name of the highest caste, is itself in fact a synonym for Deity.  But as a matter of fact, men of any caste, moved by the spirit, are found devoting themselves to the jogi life.  “He who attains to God is the true br[=a]hman,” is the current maxim, attributed to the great Buddha.

[Sidenote:  Saving Faith, or Bhakti.]

[Sidenote:  Bhakti implies a personal God.]

[Sidenote:  Bhakti a genuine feeling because it may override caste.]

[Sidenote:  Bhakti not fit to cope with caste.]

This brings us to the second of the three paths of salvation, the middle portion of the upward path to the mountain top of clear, unclouded vision of the All, the One Soul.  In Hindu theory, at this second stage man is still amid the clouds that cling to the mountain’s breast.  For easy reference I have named it Salvation by Faith, although the English term must not mislead.  The extract from the Mahanirv[=a]na Tantra, already quoted, describes this inferior stage as the method of “chanting of glories and recitation of names” of gods.  The Sanscrit name, Bhakti, is rendered devotion, or fervour, or faith, or fervent love; and in spite of alien ideas associated with bhakti, bhakti is much more akin to Faith than are many of the features of Hinduism to the Christian analogues with whose names they are ticketed.  For example, bhakti practically implies a personal god, not the impersonal pantheistic Brahma.  Intense devotion to some personal god, generally Vishnu the preserver, under the name Hari, or either of Vishnu’s chief incarnations, Ram or Krishna, is the usual manifestation of bhakti.  In actual practice it displays itself in ecstatic dancing or singing, or in exclaiming the name of the god or goddess, or in self-lacerations in his or her honour.  Lacerations and what we would call penances, be it remembered, are done to the honour of a Deity; they are not a discipline like the self-whipping of the Flagellants and the jumping of the Jumpers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  “Bhakti,”