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→The Power of Bhakti
=Why is Bhakti Important?=
==The Power of Bhakti==
It is rather the fact that in my writings on Yoga I have given Bhakti the highest place. ... the deeper the emotion, the more intense the Bhakti, the greater is the force for realisation and transformation. It is oftenest through intensity of emotion that the psychic being awakes and there is an opening of the inner doors to the Divine.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p31</ref>
<center>~</center>
You are no doubt right about asking for the bhakti, for I suppose it is the master-claim of your nature: for that matter, it is the strongest motive force that sadhana can have and the best means for all else that has to come. It is why I said that it is through the heart that spiritual experience must come to you.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-devotion-worship#p14</ref>
<center>~</center>
''Q. Sweet Mother, can one realise the Divine through love alone?''
''A:'' Oh! yes, my child, certainly.
It is even the most direct way. One can realise the Divine, that is to say, identify oneself with the Divine, become fully conscious of the Divine and be an instrument of the Divine. But naturally, one does not realise the integral yoga, for it is only along one line. But from the point of view of identification with the Divine it is even the most direct path.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p26</ref><center>~</center>
In the integrality and absoluteness of bhakti and surrender, we find the essential condition of perfect peace leading to uninterrupted bliss.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/surrender#p11</ref>
<center>~</center>
This love that is knowledge, this love that can be the deep heart of your action, will be your most effective force for an utter consecration and complete perfection.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/19/the-message-of-the-gita#p34</ref>
<center>~</center>
If one has bhakti and aspires in the heart’s silence, if there is the true love for the Divine, then the nature will open of itself, there will be the true experience and the Mother’s power working within you, and the necessary knowledge will come.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/combining-work-meditation-and-bhakti#p44</ref>
<center>~</center>
The desire for the Divine or bhakti for the Divine is the one desire which can free one from all the others—at the core it is not a desire, but an aspiration, a soul need, the breath of existence of the inmost being, and as such it cannot be counted among desires.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/desire#p21</ref>
<center>~</center>
Whatever difficulties still remain, be sure that they will be surmounted. There is no need for the outer being to be nervous—the Mother’s Force and the devotion within you will be sufficient to overcome all that stands in the way.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/difficulties-and-the-mothers-force#p29</ref>
<center>~</center>
''Q. All in me is proceeding towards the Mother’s love, devotion and purity. Why then am I not going up in my consciousness and getting higher experience?''
''A:'' The power of experience is not gone—but what is most important now is to develop the psychic condition of surrender, devotion, love and cheerful confidence in the Mother, an unshaken faith and a constant inner closeness, and also to bring down from above the peace, wideness, purity etc. of the higher Self which is that of the Mother’s consciousness. It is these things that are the basis of the siddhi in this Yoga—other experiences are only a help, not the basis. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/broad-lines-of-the-sadhana#p2</ref><center>~</center>But there is the more intimate Yoga which from the first consists in this love and attains only by the intensity of its longing without other process or method. All the rest comes, but it comes out of this, as leaf and flower out of the seed; other things are not the means of developing and fulfilling love, but the radiations of love already growing in the soul. This is the way that the soul follows when, while occupied perhaps with the normal human life, it has heard the flute of the Godhead behind the near screen of secret woodlands and no longer possesses itself, can have no satisfaction or rest till it has pursued and seized and possessed the divine fluteplayer. This is in essence the power of love itself in the heart and soul turning from earthly objects to the spiritual source of all beauty and delight. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-way-of-devotion#p6</ref><center>~</center>For love is the one emotion in us which can be entirely motiveless and self-existent; love need have no other motive than love. For all our emotions arise either from the seeking after delight and the possession of it, or from the baffling of the search, or from the failure of the delight we have possessed or had thought to grasp; but love is that by which we can enter directly into possession of the self-existent delight of the divine Being. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-motives-of-devotion#p11</ref> <center>~</center>'Q. 'People make all sorts of effort to have God’s darshan; some even weep and weep, yet they fail to obtain it. We in the Asram don’t seem to have done very much, and yet we are here with you. What has brought this about?''
==Love is the Crown of all Being==