​If we shouldn’t identify with feelings, why are we told to identify with devotional feelings?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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So, we are told don’t identify with your thoughts or feelings.
But then, in bhakti we are told to identify with our devotional thoughts and feelings. So, isn’t that also a kind of illusion or unnatural? See, when we are told to identify, there is, there are different ways of identification. Identification could mean, I think I am that or I think that I want to be connected with that.
So, for example, I may say that I am an Indian. So, I am identifying with being an Indian. But suppose, say, there is a war going on between Russia and Ukraine.
And we may say, okay, you know, Russia is trying to impose their territory on Ukraine and take away Ukraine. So, Ukraine is right and Russia is wrong. So, we may identify with in the sense of support Ukraine.
But we are not thinking I am a Ukrainian or I am Ukraine. So, like that, firstly, we have to distance ourselves from the material emotions and material thoughts and desires. And when it comes to spiritual, when we say we identify, that is not identifying in the sense of thinking that I am that.
It is more in thinking of this is what I want to be on the side of. These are the emotions that I want to cultivate. These are the thoughts that I want to develop.
So, that identification, if we see, we use the word merging or rather the word merging, we normally associate it with impersonalism. But scripture uses the word vilyate and merging quite common. And often use it in the devotional context also.
Devotees were merged in the ocean of ecstasy. Now, that is not, that merging is not ontological. It is not that there was an ocean of ecstasy in which the devotees their bodies dissolved.
Isn’t it? That merging is in the sense of consciousness. Consciousness got united with completely absorbed in that. So, when we talk about identifying with spiritual sense objects or spiritual stimuli, it is not in the sense of merging of physical oneness.
It is not that we give up our sense of identity, but rather we don’t focus on our sense of identity, we focus on serving Krishna or remembering Krishna or getting absorbed in what we are doing. So, absorption is also in one sense a very deep level of identification. Isn’t it? You see, somebody is absorbed in studying Shastra.
That is, a person is not aware that, okay, I am a person, I am sitting here, I am studying Shastra. He is completely lost in what one is doing. So, that getting lost is not in terms of one’s identity getting lost.
It’s it, it’s consciousness getting absorbed. So, when we say we should identify with spiritual emotions or spiritual thoughts, it is more of, in terms of, not in terms of merging, but in terms of absorbing our consciousness. That’s your question?