Place of Bhakti in Advaita
Here is a question posed to me by a teacher of Advaita in California, USA. He is an American and arrived at the Non-dual understanding through Self-inquiry.
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The Question:
“I have a question and I would like an answer from an Indian perspective.
How do people manage to understand non-duality/enlightenment and still worship or venerate a personal deity?
The reason I ask is that from my own religious perspective when I fully understood non-duality especially “tat tvam asi” I could no longer pray to a deity that was separate, out there someplace. If “I am that” then to whom am I praying?
In the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads there are clearly parts that illustrate devotion to a personal deity… Krishna, Shiva for example. Non-duality seems to circumvent this devotional aspect and I find it very hard to reconcile. My Christian conditioning feels kinship with the reverence shown in the Indian scriptures for their deities but it seems so dualistic to do so. Maybe a simpler way to put it is Where does bhakti fit in?”
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I will appreciate receiving your comprehensive replies/comments so that we can put them all together here along with what I wrote to him.
