Path to God Realisation (An Old and Rare Book)

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The writer of this treatise is not ambitious that his writings should be such a high name as “Path to God-Realisation.’ Who is competent to show another a path ? He must have used the path itself to his benefit and it is proper or him show it to other as leading to the goal. Now, where God-realisation is the good, the path is known only to the devotees of God who know it, use it for their own benefit and evidently ask other to follow it to the goal which is the summum bonum of every life. A knower of this path is very rare. The Singular number has been used, for this path is the only one. There may be paths and paths, but they lead elsewhere; for example, the karma-yoga is meant or karmis (Bh. XI, 20.7) and God has praised the bhakti-yoga as the best one, for it gives the practicant love of God through God-realisation, to which no fruit can be equal, not to speak of being superior (vide Bh, XI. 29.37). So he who show the path is the acharya of Guru in the true sense of the terms as used in the Sruti (Mundaka I. 2.12; Chandogya VI. 14.2), and the other scriptures following it. The present writer has no such competence.

When that is the case, the writer owes his readers an explanation for using the name. Though he is not a steady pilgrim along the Path without devotion, he has found a clue to it from his Divine Master, Sri Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Goswami Prabhupad, the saintly exponent in the present age of the Path of devotion in the line of Sriman Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and has, off and on, taken to the Path with a view to acquiring the highest well-being available to man. He has been commanded by this master of his to shout to other pilgrims, who are on the look out for the definite Path to the one Goal, with a clarion call to show it to them and follow it in their company.

From the instructions of the said master and from the instructions left by the master’s predecessors in the line as shown by His Divine Grace, the present writer has gathered their very kind directions as becon-lights illuminating the Path and he is partaking of this privilege with his dear readers. He has learnt there from that self-surrender to God, through that to His true devotees leading saintly lives, is the only way to self-realisation which is the key to the gate of the Path of Devotion which is the same as that of God-realisation.

A self-surrenderer may belong to any state of life and need not adopt any particular one like that third one of the anchorite or the forth one of the sanyas i.e., monk. This is clearly stated in the panegyrics of Sri Brahma to Lord Krishna (Bh, X. 14.3), “Those who abandoning the struggle for acquiring wisdom depending on their own empiric knowledge, bow down or surrender themselves to Your Feet and live on the accounts of Your Glory given out from the mouths of true saints receive whole-heartedly into the ears even from their own place (i.e., stage of life), -win over You, though Your are invincible” We have learnt about many house-holders too as great devotees of God with complete self-surrender to Him.

So the present writer invites his readers of all stages in life to go through the pages of this book with a degree of attention, with the hope that they will agree to his view that Path of Devotion, as recommended by God in the Gita to Arjuna and to Uddhava in the Srimad Bhagavatam and by His great devotees following His instructions, will lead to the goal of the highest blessedness.

There are some people who are led away by the psychic influence of the yogis or the suppressed riddles of the mystics, in the hope that it is in their company that they will secure the highest blessedness very easily, the witer thinks that they should be warned that the sattvata scriptures like the Valmiki Ramayana, the Mahabharata including the Bhagavata Gita, the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Vishnu. Purana etc., do not vouchasafe the propriety of their following, but they all unanimously points out the Path of Devotion as the only way to the Goal, Viz., the Love of God, which and which aline, is the highest good for jivas.

In the preface, the writer will ;be lacking in his duty if he does not mention, with expression of deep gratitude, the revered Editor, His holiness Tridandigoswami Sri Srimat Bhakti Vilas Tirtha Goswami Maharaj, the present President-Achaaya of Sri Chaitanya Math and Gaudiya Maths for the kind inspiration give group of articles on Self-surrender in ‘The Gaudiya’ (English) from the very beginning of its publication, and now for giving it a book form, he, must be thinking also the publisher, viz., Sri Nandadulal Brahmachari, Bhaktivaibhava with his collegues originating the ideas of publishing the treatise in its present name and undertaking the task of publishing it with great pleasure and in right earnest.

He now finishes the preface with prostrated obeisances at the Feet of Lord Hari, Guru and Vaishnavas, with a prayer that this humble work of his may give a (true light to the readers to follow the right course of spiritual progress, viz, loving devotion to God Krishna.