BHAKTI YOGA

The Yoga of Divine Love

Long ago, I was wandering the world starving for an experience of truth and beauty. The one truth I found which penetrated to the core of my heart was, that beyond the differences that divide us—nationality, religion, gender, race, appearance, health, or illness—lies the common essential quality we all share: the soul’s inherent ability to love.

RADHANATH SWAMI

WHAT IS BHAKTI?

The word bhakti refers to divine love; bhakti is the love that is dormant within the heart of every living being, it is the pleasure that everyone is seeking, and it is the highest potential in all beings.

The true self, the atma, or soul, is seeing through the eyes, tasting through the tongue, touching through the body and so, things of this world can give some amount of satisfaction to the mind and senses, but they cannot reach the true self, it is only love that gives fulfilment to the heart.

Bhakti is the purest form of that love which connects our true self to its source, and as a result connects us to every other living being in the most meaningful way.

THE HISTORY OF BHAKTI YOGA IN INDIA

Bhakti has been central to India’s spiritual culture for thousands of years, but over the course of time, it became lost in rituals and prejudiced customs.

Beginning around the sixth century C.E., a bhakti revivalist movement developed around the writings of mystics who were extracting the essence of the ancient scriptures. These mystics were mostly in South India, and they expressed their intimate love and longing for God through philosophy, song, and poetry.

Their devotional revelations were gradually expanded on by their disciples and organized into schools of devotional yoga by scholars and saints like Ramanuja (1017–1137), Madhva (1238–1317), Nimbarka (circa eleventh century), Vallabha (1479–1531), and Chaitanya (1486–1533). Focusing on sincerity of intent and development of character, these revered teachers ushered in a movement that is still growing.

In the 1960s, the bhakti movement finally left India in the hands of Radhanath Swami’s teacher, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and arrived on the shores of countries all over the world.

Still, while history provides an interesting context for the development of the bhakti movement, bhakti itself is timeless. Love for the Supreme is the eternal nature of all souls, and all religions or philosophies that strive to help their adherents awaken that love are essentially practicing bhakti.

Becoming self-aware allows you to feel compassion for others because you come to understand that they, too, are souls struggling to recall their nature.

RADHANATH SWAMI

THE PROCESS OF BHAKTI YOGA

The true meaning of yoga is to reconnect, and so bhakti-yoga is the process of reconnecting to God through the process of love.

THE FOUR PILLARS OF BHAKTI

DISCOVER

The Top 5 Books on Bhakti Yoga

Dive deeper into bhakti-yoga with this excellent selection of books authored by or inspired by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Available at all good online and physical book stores.