The yoga of loving devotion to God is understood as bhakti yoga. Seeking refuge in God is bhakti. Intense love and attachment to God is bhakti. An unbroken flow of the emotions toward God is bhakti. Bhakti begins with loving admiration and worship to God, progresses with intense love and internal worship, and ends in supreme love or prem. Thus, bhakti is an end in itself.
All yogic techniques and teachings fail in their attempt to reach God if they lack devotion. Love and devotion constitute a force that leads us in the hazardous path of Truth. Intensity of love can accomplish Himalayan tasks and love gives courage, faith, and strength to man to know more, to serve more, and to reach the goal of perfection and perfect union with God.
Devotion without knowledge is crude; knowledge without love is rude. Devotion without knowledge is only emotion; knowledge without devotion is only arrogant trash. Strictly speaking, love is impossible without true knowledge, and knowledge is incomplete without true love. Even though bhakti and jnana (devotion and knowledge) differ in their approach to Truth, in the end they fuse into one. In the beginning, intellect is the instrument of knowledge and emotion and heart are the instruments of bhakti; in the end, devotion changes into supreme love and knowledge changes into supreme wisdom. Wisdom and love are two names of the one Truth. Wherever there is one, the other must be present, because they are one, inseparable.
Bhakti and karma yoga should also go hand in hand. Devotion without service is selfish. Service without devotion is a burden. Devotional service alone will lead toward knowledge. Knowledge again gives birth to the higher form of love which leads to karma yoga or the path of selfless action. Thus if jnana leads to illumined wisdom, karma leads to illumined action or selfless service. Both become possible only when there is devotion and love. Just as this love and supreme wisdom are inseparable, so also supreme love and selfless service are inseparable. Here the jnana, karma and bhakti (wisdom, selfless action, and divine love) fuse into one. Anyone who is a jnani (a man of wisdom) is a possessor of infinite love which expresses itself through compassion, which leads towards service to humanity and all the creatures of God. Therefore, according to the Bhagavad Gita , anyone who says one is better than the other knows not the absolute Truth. One who sees that ultimately all three are one is the knower of Truth. For integral perfection all three--intellect, will and emotion--should be divinized and sublimated.
Action releases the power of knowledge; knowledge leads towards supreme love; love brings union and bliss. If wisdom leads to liberation, love leads to liberated action. This means that after the highest realization, one descends out of compassion for other creatures of God and gives a helping hand to hasten their evolution. Thus, love or bhakti born of wisdom and service is the crown of all spiritual fulfillment; for love is God, and God is love.
FIVE FORMS OF BHAKTI
DASYA-BHAVA (SERVITUDE)
"Thou art my Master; I am Thy servant, 0 God."Let this be your meditation. Serve God through humanity. Serve the needy, the sick, and the poor, seeing God in them. Meditate on the Holy Name of God. Please God with your sincere service without expecting any selfish gain. Think every minute that God is watching every action that you do. Try your best to be a better servant of God. Pray for strength, and be thou a devotee.
SAKHYA-BHAVA (FRIENDSHIP)
Open thy mind and heart to God as a venerable friend. Feel God near you and talk to Him intimately. Feel that God is hearing your prayers and responding to them. Seeing God in everybody, cultivate this divine friendship. Turn to God again and again for help. Consult God for proper guidance. You will see the miracle of God's response to your prayer. You will be guided in a mysterious way. You will hear God talking to you in your meditation. What could be greater than having God as your venerable Friend? God will be the friend of His votary. Therefore, be thou a devotee.
VATSALYA-BHAVA (PARENTAL AFFECTION)
Feel that God is a transcendental child playing in your home or in your room. Feel Him as your own divine Child, as Yashoda felt of Krishna and Mary of Jesus. Call His Holy Name, feel that your heart is developing parental affection, and develop the feeling that you do not want to miss Him even for a moment. You shall certainly have the darshan or vision of God as the transcendental Child. Cultivate this devotion, and be thou a devotee.
SHANTA-BHAVA (PLACID LOVE)
Feel that your heart is filled to the brim with love for God as your own potential Self. Offer your mind, ego, desires, body, and everything to this Over-self or God in you. Enter into the sweet silence of this love. You will feel that there are no words to explain this love, and you will be face to face with that Reality which is your own Higher Self. You will experience the Peace that is beyond all expression. You will now radiate your peace through this love to the whole of the cosmos. What a blessing! Capture this transcendental treasure! Be thou a devotee.
MADHURA-BHAVA (BRIDE-BRIDEGROOM RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD)
Feel that your soul is the bride, and God is your bridegroom. Make your soul naked of all its veils of ignorance. Talk to God as your beloved, and commit yourself to Him as His consort. Promise God that you will be a pure and chaste soul to be wedded unto Him. Pray that you may deserve the embrace of the Supreme. Make yourself beautiful by eradicating desire for the world. Wait upon your Lord, expect your beloved God's presence and feel the pangs of separation. The gopis, or milkmaids of Brindavan, felt this love for Krishna and obtained His grace. Christian mystics, Sufis, and Jewish mystics entered into this love experience with God. This is the sweetest relationship with our beloved God. Develop this devotion, and be thou a devotee.
(Essence of Bhagavad Gita and Bible, p. 102.)