Four Types of Devotees

Devotion can have different directions

- Shri Murarilal Dhanuka

परूषार्थशून्यानां गुणानां प्रतिप्रस्वः कैवल्यं स्वरूपप्रतिष्ठा वा चितिशक्तिरिति ॥४.३॥

Purusharthashunya nam Gunanam Pratiprasavah Kaivalyam Svarupapratistha Va Chittishakteriti (Yoga Sutra 4:34)

Liberation comes when the qualities being devoid of the object of the Purusha, become latent or when the power of consciousness becomes established in its own nature.

Since the Gunas no longer have any purpose to serve for the Atman, they resolve themselves into Prakrti. This is liberation. The Atman shines forth in its own pristine (not changed in any way) nature as pure consciousness. Swami Vivekananda says, "Nature's task is done, this unfinished task which our sweet nurse, nature has imposed on herself. She gently took the self-forgetting soul by the hand, as it were, and showed him all the experiences in the universe, all the manifestations bringing him higher and higher through various bodies till his lost glory come back and he remembered his own nature. Then the kind mother went back the same way she came, for others who also have lost their way in the trackless desert of life. And thus working without beginning and without end. And thus through pleasure and pain, through good and evil, the infinite river of souls is flowing into the ocean of perfection, of self-realisation."