Chapter II, Hinduism, The Way to God through Love, Summary and Analysis

The yoga of knowledge is the shortest, but also steepest, path to divine realization and limited to only those highly spiritual few. Bhakti yoga is the most popular form and has the most followers. It is centered on love of all kinds—fraternal, conjugal, and ethereal—seeking God not as an internal part of the self but as an infinite Being. Bhakti believe that there is separation between the human self and the infinite Me, a division expressed in the saying "I want to taste sugar, not be sugar" (p. 33). The idea is that healthy love is outgoing and devoid of love for oneself. The bhakti goal is to adore God in all aspects of life. The three features of a bhakta's (practitioner...