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Akka Mahadevi: Bhakta's Bhakti to Aikya Bhakti
The Vedanta Kesari
|November 2020
Spiritual life is a graded journey towards realising the Truth. In Lingayatism, this graded path is referred to as Shatsthala, or the six stages of spiritual progression. This article attempts to understand this spiritual movement as revealed in Akka Mahadevi’s vacanas. The life and message of Akka Mahadevi were presented by the author in our July and August 2020 issues.
To study Akka Mahadevi’s vacanas, it is imperative to understand the tenets of Lingayatism since she was born in a Lingayat family. Her vacanas suggest that her formative years were deeply rooted in its ideologies.
The core doctrine of Lingayatism is delineated in its Shatsthala philosophy. It propounds that a soul’s spiritual journey is like the steps on a ladder. Each step is a step forward towards inner purification and the attainment of the supreme goal of life – God-realisation. These stages of a soul’s spiritual evolution are commonly termed as ‘sthala’. The Lingayats identify six (sat) such sthalas that the soul must climb to attain realisation.
The word sthala also has a broader and deeper connotation. In Sanskrit, the word means ‘place’ or ‘ground’, which is associated with foundation. In this sense sthala refers to Brahman, the source of all.
This story is from the November 2020 edition of The Vedanta Kesari.
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