Bhakti
The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all science… To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the lightest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. The deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, form my idea of God.
– Albert Einstein
Bhakti is the profound feeling or sensation of the transcendental that comes with devotion or a deep and serious desire or pining for the Truth or higher understanding. It is accompanied by a feeling of sublime or transcendental love. The feeling may last only a few seconds, like the inspiration one might get from reading a piece of elevating poetry, or listening to particular raga/music, or a profound inside into the workings of nature (like the awe that scientists, yogis, and siddhars felt that inspired their bhakti – enough to make them write scores of inspirational poetry).
It can be cultivated. To give a personal example: I had zero bhakti as late as when I was 34 years old. Even the most beautiful rendering of bhakti poetry would have fallen on my deaf ears back then. It’s all about pursuing Truth seriously, and deeply, which means like any science requires one to hypothesize, experiment, assess, and reformulate. The feeling of bhakti will take root. Once you have that, the tricky part is yet to come: to apply it to life, as in cultivating a heart-centered approach to life.
True bhakti doesn’t make you a zealot of your faith, but transcends and crosses beyond the borders of faith and religion. A genuine bhakti saint of one faith will feel equally exhilarated by the bhakti poetry/literature from other faiths. Like the language of music, bhakti represents a very transcendent religion – a religion of the heart and of self-expression and self-actualization (as opposed to suppressive doctrinal religions). Bhakti has inspired and motivated tremendous levels of contribution to Hindu culture (poetry, classical music, classical dance forms, temples, puranas, etc.).
Like all yoga, I believe bhakti should also be integrative into life, as opposed to something you do only in your puja or temple. The love that one feels for the divine has to be distilled and transformed to love, compassion, sensitivity for all living things around you – from loved ones, to friends, acquaintances, strangers, and to the environment. That’s when bhakti really takes root as a yoga, i.e. a tool for evolution, spiritual growth.
Some time ago I was having a conversation with a white non-Hindu American about art films. I ended up telling him about genre of films that he (and probably most of the West) never new even existed – that of bhaki films (which are quite common in India). That bhakti films took art films altogether to a different height. I used to wonder, why is it that the West finds it so easy that “Pure Evil” can manifest itself in the world (in all sort of horrific forms – as shown in loads of horror flicks), but finds it so revolting that God in all its beauty can manifest itself in the world (as in numerous bhakti films in India, like Murugan, Krishna, Durga, numerus saints, sages, etc). In fact, of the supernatural, bhakti films are the thing in India. You used to see theaters (before DVDs!) with house-full for bhakti films, but not horror films in India.
A good art film runs like a haiku, like poetry, and elevates your heart and mind to something transcendental. If you take that a magnitude higher, the feeling you get is bhakti. While art films elevate your heart and mind, bhakti films make it soar, completely uninhibited, into a different realm/dimension of conscious experience.