The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

chapter twelve
╭ The Way of Love
T his short chapter focuses upon
the supreme importance of devotion and faith in spiritual
development. Here love, or personal devotion, is the most
powerful motivation in spiritual life.
The world’s great religions agree on this point. All religions
allow for a way of devotion, and millions of men and women
have found spiritual fulfillment in devotion to Christ, the
Buddha, or Muhammad. Hinduism has allowed a place for
the path of knowledge as well as the path of devotion; here,
however, the Gita stresses the efficacy of devotion.
The Upanishads, the final word on mystic experience
uttered by the Vedas, stressed the ultimate reality, the eternal
truth behind the ephemeral things of this world. The teachers
of the Upanishads told their students to seek knowledge of the
Atman, their true Self. The consummation of this knowledge
was to know that the Self within was one with Brahman, the
ultimate reality pervading all things. This was encapsulated
in the statement Tat tvam asi, “You are that” – that imper-
203 ╯