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→What is Bhakti?
It is an adoration and aspiration towards that which is greater than imperishable self or changing Nature. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/19/the-secret-of-secrets#p8</ref>
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The nature of bhakti is adoration, worship, self-offering to what is greater than oneself... <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p26</ref>
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...Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion...
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/19/the-core-of-the-teaching#p17</ref>
<center>~</center>... absolute adoration, submission, ecstasy, love, tenderness which is the Indian idea of bhakti.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/01/south-indian-bronzes#p11</ref><center>~</center>Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p12</ref><center>~</center>
Bhakti in itself is as wide as the heart-yearning of the soul for the Divine and as simple and straightforward as love and desire going straight towards their object.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p1</ref>
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What you are experiencing is the true foundation of the spiritual life and realisation. It has three elements—first, the love which is the heart of Bhakti...
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p8</ref>
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Bhakti and the heart’s call for the Divine have a truth—it is the truth of the divine Love and Ananda. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-adwaita-of-shankaracharya#p24</ref>
==True Bhakti==
A ''bhakti'' which claims everything from the Divine and does not give itself is not real bhakti.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-and-the-vital-difficulties-of-the-sadhaks#p59</ref><center>~</center>Selflessness, self-giving, entire faith and confidence, absence of demand and desire, surrender to the Divine Will, love concentrated on the Divine—are some of the main signs [''of true love and bhakti''].<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p29</ref><center>~</center>There can be no such thing as a mechanical and artificial devotion— there is either devotion or there is not. Devotion may be intense or not intense, complete or incomplete, sometimes manifest and sometimes veiled, but mechanical or artificial devotion is a contradiction in terms.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p21</ref><center>~</center>
Bhakti and love are not quite the same thing, but love is one of the elements of bhakti. There are different kinds of bhakti and that which is of the nature of love is the strongest and is considered the highest, most intense and ecstatic of all. Also in love itself that form of it which is made of self-giving; surrender, absolute adoration, urge towards a selfless union is the true kind of bhakti that is love.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p27</ref>
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A devotion that keeps concentrated and silent in the depths of the heart but manifests in acts of service and obedience, is more powerful, more true, more divine, than any shouting and weeping devotion. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/devotion#p3</ref>
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In silence lies the greatest devotion. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-april-1972#p1</ref>
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Sincere devotion is much more effective than the Ganges water.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/devotion#p4</ref>
===Mental Bhakti===
In the mind one may have a strong admiration or appreciation for the intellectual or spiritual greatness of the Guru,— follow him and mentally accept his dictates. But if it is merely mental, that does not carry you very far. Of course, there is no harm in having that also. But by itself it does not open the whole of the inner being; it only establishes a mental contact.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p14</ref><center>~</center>The unillumined mind also surrenders to the Truth, but makes its own conditions. It says to the Truth, ‘Satisfy my judgment, and my opinion’; it demands the Truth to cast itself in the mind’s own forms. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p14p16</ref>
===Vital Bhakti===
The vital Bhakti demands and demands. It imposes its own conditions. It surrenders itself to God, but conditionally. It says to God, ‘You are so great,’ ‘I worship you,’—‘and now you must satisfy this desire of mine or that ambition’; ‘make me great; make me a great sadhaka, a great yogin’ etc.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p15</ref>
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The vital being also insists on the Truth throwing itself into its own vital movement of force. The vital being pulls at the Higher Power and pulls and pulls at the vital being of the Guru. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p17</ref>
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Both of them (the mental and the vital) have got an ''arrière pensée'' (mental reservation) in their surrender. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p18</ref>
===Psychic Bhakti===
Psychic Bhakti is not like that. Because it is in communication with the Divinity behind, it is capable of true Bhakti. Psychic Bhakti does not make any demand, it makes no reservations. It is satisfied with its own existence. The psychic being knows how to obey the Truth in the right way. It gives itself up truly to God or the Guru, and because it can give itself up truly, therefore it can also receive truly.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/draft-letters-to-and-about-kumud-bandhu-bagchi#p19</ref>
<center>~</center>If you refuse to do what I tell you, you cannot have the fulfilment you hope for. You can if you like remain as a Bhakta all your life, but even then you must renounce the vital form of Bhakti. You must bring back the psychic Bhakti, the Bhakti which is calm, quiet, deep, the Bhakti which is not noisy, not making demands, the Bhakti which finds its greatest pleasure in obedience. This is the only Bhakti in which I can take delight; I accept no other.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/36/to-and-about-v-tirupati#p99</ref><center>~</center>
The later bhakti of ecstatic love is at its roots psychic in nature; it is vital-emotional only in its inferior forms or in some of its more outward manifestations.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/19/the-synthesis-of-devotion-and-knowledge#p14</ref>
==Bhakti and the Psychic Opening==
The growth of Bhakti which you feel is the first sign of the psychic development.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p12</ref>
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Bhakti ... is a state which comes when the psychic being is awake and prominent.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/faith#p39</ref>
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... it is only the psychic that gives faith and devotion.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-other-kinds-of-experience#p3</ref>
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Bhakti and love are part of the psychic movement, a large part of it; in aspiring for the psychic change, you are aspiring for bhakti and love.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-emergence-or-coming-forward-of-the-psychic#p32</ref>
<center>~</center>The tears probably come from the inner psychic being (behind the heart) which is touched in this state of quietness and peace. It is the sign of an aspiration and devotion in the soul which is trying to come to the surface. If the psychic being can come to the surface and a harmony be established in the nature, all of it being turned towards the Divine, this kind of expression will cease.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-associated-with-the-psychic#p49</ref><center>~</center>
The direct opening of the psychic centre is easy only when the ego-centricity is greatly diminished and also if there is a strong bhakti for the Mother. A spiritual humility and sense of submission and dependence is necessary.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-opening#p19</ref>
<center>~</center>Devotion and a more and more complete inner consecration are the best way to open the psychic.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-transformations#p17</ref><center>~</center>The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana—accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/descent-of-the-mothers-force#p17</ref> <center>~</center>
The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection of the insistences of the separating and self asserting mental, vital and physical ego.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-emergence-or-coming-forward-of-the-psychic#p20</ref>
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The psychic opening through the heart puts us primarily into connection with the individual Divine, the Divine in his inner relations with us; it is especially the source of love and bhakti. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p22</ref>
==The Passion and Intensity of Bhakti Yoga==
There live in this seeking all the sentiment and passion, all the moods and experiences of love concentrated on a supreme object of desire and intensified a hundredfold beyond the highest acme of intensity possible to a human love. There is the disturbance of the whole life, the illumination by an unseized vision, the unsatisfied yearning for a single object of the heart’s desire, the intense impatience of all that distracts from the one preoccupation, the intense pain of the obstacles that stand in the way of possession, the perfect vision of all beauty and delight in a single form.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p6</ref>
<center>~</center>And there are all the many moods of love, the joy of musing and absorption, the delight of the meeting and fulfilment and embrace, the pain of separation, the wrath of love, the tears of longing, the increased delight of reunion. The heart is the scene of this supreme idyll of the inner consciousness, but a heart which undergoes increasingly an intense spiritual change and becomes the radiantly unfolding lotus of the spirit. And as the intensity of its seeking is beyond the highest power of the normal human emotions, so also the delight and the final ecstasy are beyond the reach of the imagination and beyond expression by speech. For this is the delight of the Godhead that passes human understanding.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p6</ref><center>~</center>
… it is not possible for the tongue of human speech to tell all the utter unity and all the eternal variety of the ananda of divine love. Our higher and our lower members are both flooded with it, the mind and life no less than the soul: even the physical body takes its share of the joy, feels the touch, is filled in all its limbs, veins, nerves with the flowing of the wine of the ecstasy, ''amṛta''. Love and Ananda are the last word of being, the secret of secrets, the mystery of mysteries.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-mystery-of-love#p10</ref>
==Symbols of Bhakti==
Indian bhakti has given to this divine love powerful forms, poetic symbols which are not in reality so much symbols as intimate expressions of truth which can find no other expression.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p7</ref><center>~</center>Hanuman = complete bhakti.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/gods-goddesses-and-semi-divine-beings#p17</ref><center>~</center>
The Gopis are not ordinary people in the proper sense of the word—they are extraordinary by their extremeness of love, passionate devotion, unreserved self-giving. Whoever has that, however humble his position in other respects, learning, external sanctity etc. etc., can easily follow after Krishna and reach him; that seems to me the sense of the symbol of the Gopis. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-yoga-and-vaishnavism#p60</ref>
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''Q. The day before yesterday I saw in a dream: The Mother is standing in a high place; before her there is a pillar with the Tulsi plant on it. What does it signify?''
''A:'' That she has brought down and planted Bhakti, I suppose.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/seeing-the-mother-in-visions-and-dreams#p4</ref><center>~</center>
In some countries (particularly here) certain plants are used as the media for worship, offering, devotion. Certain plants are given on special occasions. And I have often seen that this identification was quite in keeping with the nature of the plant, because spontaneously, without knowing anything, I happened to give the same meaning as that given in religious ceremonies. The vibration was really there in the flower itself...
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p36</ref>
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There is the whitish moonlight blue of Krishna’s light— lavender blue of devotion, deep blue of the physical mind, sapphire blue of the higher mind and many others.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/colours#p38</ref>
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=Why is Bhakti Important?=
==The Power of Bhakti==