No Difference Between God and His Devotees
Through grace, the distinction between the Lord and His true devotees dissolves, for they share one love and one life.
In Sutra 41, Narada declares: 'Tasmims tat-jane bhedabhavat' — 'Because there is no difference between God and His devotees.' The saint becomes so saturated with the Divine that serving the saint is serving God, and the grace of the saint is the grace of God. The boundary between the Beloved and the one who loves perfectly grows thin and finally vanishes. This intimate identity is the fruit of love's transforming power — the lover takes on the qualities of the Beloved. The teaching anticipates the deep Vaishnava reverence for the devotee, sometimes esteemed even above God himself, and it expresses the mystical law that perfect love makes two into one.
Because there is no difference between God and His true devotees.
The dissolving of difference between God and devotee parallels the Sufi station of fana, where the lover is so absorbed in the Beloved that only the Beloved remains.
Narada Bhakti Sutras
Written about in
- What the Narada Bhakti Sutras say about friendship
Sutra 41 gives the reason such service counts: there is no difference between God and His devotee. Taken seriously, that makes a friend not a route to the Divine but a place where the Divine already is.