WHAT IS BHAKTI YOG ?(SADHANA FOR BEGINNERS---24)

WHAT IS BHAKTI YOG?---

1-These are the only four realities in your life.Whatever we wish to do with ourself, it must be on these four levels:

1-BODY

2-MIND/INTELLIGENCE

3-EMOTION

4-ENERGY

2-KARMA YOGA;-If we use your body, or physical action to reach the ultimate, we call this karma yoga, the path of action.

3-BHAKTI YOGA;-If you use our emotions and try to reach the ultimate, we call this bhakti yoga, the path of devotion.

4-JNANA YOGA;-If we use our intelligence and try to reach the ultimate, we call this gnana yoga, the path of intelligence.

5-ASHTANGA YOG /KRIYA YOGA;--If we transform our energies and try to reach the ultimate, we call this kriya yoga, that means internal action. These are the only four ways you can work with yourself.

MEANING OF BHAKTI YOGA;-----

`1-The word yoga means "to connect." Though yogas are commonly used for health and fitness, the Vedic texts explain that yoga is meant to connect with God.

2-Bhakti means "devotion," or "devotional service," or "pure love." So Bhakti-yoga means to practice connecting with God, and reestablishing our relationship with Him, through acts of love and service, or devotional service.

3-The Nectar of Devotion teaches us the science of loving every one of the living entities perfectly by the easy method of loving Mahadev /Sri Krishna & so on.

4-"Bhakti means 'devotional service.' "Bhakti connotes devotion, or love, and love implies service. Service refers to that activity which is intended to please the beloved. Thus "devotional service" is an eloquent definition of Bhakti.

5-Love is the most fundamental drive of every living entity. We cannot be happy without satisfying this desire to love, and we will not be able to perfectly fulfill this desire without permitting its expansion to the most inclusive extent.

6-"In the primary stage a child loves his parents, then his brothers and sisters, and as he daily grows up he begins to love his family, society, community, country, nation, or even the whole human society. But the loving propensity remains imperfectly fulfilled until we know who is the supreme beloved."

7-Love can become all-embracing only when we understand that Mahadev /Sri Krishna is the supreme beloved, the root of all creation. By embracing Him we successfully embrace everyone, just as pouring water on the root of a tree successfully nourishes every leaf and branch.

IS BHAKTI YOGA A TRANSFORMATION OF EMOTIONS ?1-There was a time when the most dominant factor in a human being was his emotion. Today, emotion is not the most dominant part in you but it is still the most intense part in you.

2-In energy, people are generally not at all intense. They know only certain moments of intensity, not a steady state of intensity. But emotion can get very intense. If not love, at least in anger you are intense.

3-In some emotion you are capable of being intense. If one cannot make you get intense with love or joy, if one abuse you, you will become intense with anger.So emotion has always been the dominant factor in human beings.

4-WHAT IS DEVOTION?--

4-1-Devotion is a way of transforming your emotion from negativity to pleasantness. Just see, people who have fallen in love do not care about what is happening in the world. The way they are, you think they are unrealistic. It is just that they have made their emotions pleasant, so their life is beautiful. That is the state of a devotee. Devotion is a multiplied and enhanced version of a love affair.

4-2-A devotee is in an unfailing kind of love affair because if you fall in love with a man or a woman, they do not go the way you expect them to, and it eventually gets into some trouble. That is why people choose God. It is simply a love affair, and you are not expecting any response. Your life becomes utterly beautiful because your emotion has become so sweet. Through that sweetness, one grows. That is devotion.

4-3-Devotion is another dimension of intelligence. Intellect wants to conquer the truth. Devotion just embraces the truth. Devotion cannot decipher but devotion can experience. Intellect can decipher but can never experience. This is the choice one has to make.

4-4-When you are overwhelmed by something or someone, you naturally become devout. But if you try to practice devotion, it creates problems because the line between devotion and deception is very thin – it will lead you into so many kinds of hallucinations. So you cannot practice devotion, but you can do certain things so that you arrive at devotion.

CAN WE DEVELOP OUR DEVOTION?;--

1-If you just recognize one thing, you will naturally become a devotee: the cosmos is very large. You do not know where it begins or where it ends. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies.

2- In this vast cosmos, this solar system is a tiny speck. If the solar system disappears tomorrow, it will not even be noticed in the cosmos. In this tiny speck of a solar system, planet earth is a micro speck. In this micro speck of a planet, the city we live in is a super-micro speck. In that, are you a RICH man? This is a serious problem of perspective. It is only because of this that there is no devotion in you.

3-We cannot imagine the vastness, see how endless it is. Go out at night, switch off the lights and look at the sky. You don’t know where it begins or where it ends, and here you are a micro-super-micro speck of dust, spinning on a planet, not knowing where you come from or where you will go.

4-It will be very natural for you to be devout. You will bow down to everything you see. If you just look at yourself with reference to the rest of the creation, there is no other way to go. It is only because people have lost perspective of who they are and what their place in this existence is, that they have become arrogant fools.

5-With all our science, we have not figured even a single atom in its entirety. We know things in bits and pieces, we know how to use them but we do not know what it is. If we realize this, if we observe everything, a leaf, a flower, an atom, a bird, an animal, an ant, you cannot understand one thing in its entirety. Then we will bow down to everything. Even an atom is beyond our grasp. That is the nature of creation. If you pay attention to the nature of creation, how can you not be a devotee?

6-One simple thing we can do is consider everything in this existence as higher than ourself. The stars are definitely higher, but try seeing the little pebble on the street as higher than yourself. Anyway, it is more permanent, more stable than us. It can sit still forever.

7- If you learn to look at everything around you with attention and care, you will realize that you can not even figure the nature of an atom in its entirety. Everything is above our intelligence. Everything is higher than ourself, then we will naturally become devout.

8-A devotee knows things that you cannot even imagine. He can grasp things that you have to struggle with because there is not much of him within himself. When you are too full of self, there is no room for anything higher to happen.9-Devotion does not mean you have to be a temple-going, pooja-doing, coconut-breaking person. A devotee has understood what his place in the existence is. If you have understood this and are conscious of it, you will walk as a devout person. There is no other way to be. It is a very intelligent way to exist.

THE KEY POINT;--IF WE ARE FAIL TO DEVELOP OUR DEVOTION;WE CAN'T GO AHEAD FOR THIS SPIRITUAL AWAKENING.NEXT IS ;--JNANA YOGA....SHIVOHAM....