The everlasting friendship

Out of nine steps or nine forms of devotion (navavidha bhakti) eighth step is sakhya i.e. friendship – establishing friendship with God.

Friendship is the most important state of any relationship. If a relationship does not culminate into friendship then there is no fun in that relationship. Same is true with relationship with god.

How to establish friendship with God?

Establishing and maintaining friendship is a difficult task. To be able to become a friend one has to keep away one’s own likes and dislikes. The outcome of friendship is joy, which is a collective experience. Friendship cannot exist without joy and joy cannot exist without friendship. It’s a give and take relationship. One has to give up something to achieve something. That’s the usual nature of even worldly friendships. And friendship with God is not different. To be able to establish friendship with God it is important to find what god likes and dislikes and then do what God likes and avoid what He dislikes.

There is a difference between worldly friendship and friendship with God. In general there is a fine line between friendship with same age people versus friendship with elders. As a general guideline in Indian culture they say that one should bow down in front of the person who is more than 10 years elder than us. And so when establishing friendship with elder people it is important to maintain the line of respect. God is eldest of eldest and so obviously it is important to pay respect to his wishes.

All worldly friendships come to an end at one point. However friendship with God never ends. Though eldest of eldest God stays forever. Everything will come to an end but not God.

Friendship is the eighth step in the devotion to God. To reach that step one has to first go through seven steps and those are – shravan (listening to glory of God e.g. listening to Vishnusahasranama), kirtan (singing the glory of God e.g. chanting Vishnusahasranama), vishnusmaran (remembering god all the time, results from repeatedly listening and chanting Vishnusahasranama), archan (making offering to God e.g. performing puja), vandan (saluting god and godly people e.g. saluting Guru and elders), padasevan (worshiping lotus feet of God), dasya (serving God e.g. performing service in temple)

Eighth step is sakhya (friendship with God, results from serving God without any expectation) and final step is atmanivedan (complete surrender to God i.e. uniting with God).

Through these steps one becomes eligible to receive blessings of God that help to achieve never ending happiness.