Bakti yoga

Bakti Yoga / Explaining

Bhakti means devotion towards God. Devotion is love directed towards a higher principle. Reverential love can be defined as devotion. bhakti is love towards a higher principle, especially love towards God.

Three direction of Love
1  The first one is love of goal, end love
2 the second direction of our love is, love of the means. I will call it "Meanslove".
3 The third object of love is oneself. Everyone loves himself or herself. I will call it "Selflove".
 Therefore all forms of love are only of three categories: "Means love", "Endlove" and "Selflove". This is love in general. Why study? I want to be graduated ( goal) . I love book, university, professor ( mean) I want to be happy ( myself).

There is intensity of love
3> 1>2
 The Upanisad says: "Nobody loves the husband for husband's sake, everybody loves the husband for one's own sake."  Therefore no end is loved for the end's sake. Everything is loved for one's own sake only. Therefore, if you have to grade "Meanslove" is manda, "Endlove" is madhyama, and "Selflove" is uttama. This is the general principle regarding human love.

Three grades of devotion
1  As long as you look upon God as a means, that love is called mandabhakti (inferior devotion).I go to temple in order to get something back. If the condition is fulfilled, I love. World bakti
2 . Men know God represents security. God represents peace. God represents happiness. They know that everyone is seeking security, peace and happiness alone. Naturally their love of God is as the end and therefore it is more intense than the previous one. World bakti
3  It is a love in which I look upon God neither as the means nor even as the end. The Lord and the Self being identical, Godlove is equal to Selflove. Since Selflove is the most intense love, that form of love is called uttamabhakti. Real bakti.
Story , the king allow three women to choose the gift from him. The one love him, the king himself, get the total kingdom.

Now, we will come to the second meaning of the word bhakti. Bhakti is the course of discipline meant to accomplish the highest goal of life namely 'moksa' or freedom.

 It is one consisting of all these three. So karmayoga + raja yoga + jnanayoga equals bhaktiyoga.
All the three path should need help from Bakti yoga. Karma for Lord, study to know Lord, Meditation for discovery of lord.

What is God ?  So, I cannot talk of love of God without understanding and that's why knowledge of God becomes necessary
1 God is the creator of the universe. God has quality  Sat+ Chit+Ananda. Existence consciousness bliss. Intelligence is behind all the creation of this universe.
2  God is the cause of the world.  Any creator can create something only with a raw 41 material. Carpenter requires wood as raw material; builder requires iron, wood, bricks etc. as raw material.
 God Himself happens to be the very material also out of which the world is shaped. Bigbang cannot answer all the questions. Since God is the raw material, God alone has become the universe. Therefore, the universe is nothing but God alone. So where is God? The whole universe is God. Ex of a spider.
3  I say God created the world. Then I say God became the world. question ? why bad things happen ?
 God does not become the world. God appears as the world with different forms. He is not affected by any form in which he appears. To put it in another way, God is the very substratum of all the forms. He transcends the entire creation. God is the ultimate substratum behind the creation. But not affected by them. He is Jagadadhisthanam. Since God transcends all these forms of the creation, no particular form belongs to God. Therefore, God as adhisthanaisvara is arupaisvara, i.e. formless God.

 God creates the world first stage of understanding; God becomes the world second stage of understanding;God appears as the world third stage of understanding.