Helping those of you who have decided that your purpose in life is to serve others

Bhakti

Well, this web site is called Bhakti Yoga, and you may be wondering what is Bhakti Yoga and what is its relevance to you in the world today.

Bhakti yoga is a state of mind where love envelops your heart and you are totally in love with God or with your husband. This state is rare in the modern world and it comes to you as a gift from God if you have served others and helped to make them happy (if you are a man) or if you have served your husband and helped to make him happy (if you are a woman). This gift comes only when you have given your body, mind and self in your service to others (represented by the three flowers above).

Why is Bhakti Yoga relevant to you?

In the Yoga Sutras of Lord Patanjali, the yogic step of Ishvara Pranidhana is stated to be the step that is required to achieves all the goals of yoga. Yoga has many goals, but specifically three:

• Complete knowledge of all that is important
• Complete knowledge of what is not important
• Complete knowledge of what is neither important nor not important.

Now, you exist and therefore, in the context of someone who believes in God, there is a reason for your existence. Since this reason is assigned to you by God, this reason is important. You have an important purpose in life.

Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender of your entire being to God or to your husband) is the only means for you to achieve this purpose. It should be noted here that yoga is about gaining knowledge, not about physical exercise or peace of mind. The type of knowledge gained is of course not theoretical knowledge but hands on practical knowledge about the purpose of your life: the knowledge that is important to you, the self or soul.

For someone who believes in God, he or she will appreciate that there is only one source of valid knowledge in this world: God. Your mother cannot teach you important knowledge, only not important or neither important nor not important knowledge. Similarly, you cannot receive this important knowledge at University or by reading books or going to a yoga ashram.

God also only teaches you important knowledge, not unimportant or indifferent knowledge. And, He teaches you such knowledge as and when you are qualified (also capable) to learn. Having finished your path of Bhakti Yoga, you become ready.

So, let us now proceed to find out about Bhakti Yoga (you can search on the internet if you prefer) and then proceed to understand what to do in practice to achieve the goal that God has set you in this life.

What is Bhakti Yoga?

Bhakti Yoga is a path towards union (that is marriage) with God (your husband, if you are a woman). It consists of nine progressive steps:

• hearing His name, and listening (this includes reading, which is a form of listening) to works that describe His appearance and qualities and activities
• chanting His name
• thinking (including day dreaming) about Him
• serving His devotees
• offering Him respectful worship
• offering prayers to Him
• becoming His servant
• making Him one’s one and only friend, and
•  surrendering everything to Him (Ishvara Pranidhana, I to thee give my all).

Since I have said that Bhakti Yoga for a woman consists of hearing the name of your husband (and the other 8 stages), it is clear that not everyone is qualified to do this. This stage of desiring to hear the name of the man you have selected (or of God) comes only after some other preliminary matters have been accomplished. These other matters are following the path of yoga (yama and niyama) with special attention and care and making this path entirely focussed on your chosen One (God or your husband or future husband).

Having gone through these sequential steps, you will desire and then receive the complete knowledge that is your goal in life.

You will not receive this knowledge without going through these steps. This knowledge is of course not brain-knowledge. It is knowledge required by your soul in its evolution towards or away from God. Your soul is different from your thinking machine. Consequently, when you are thinking, you know what your brain knows, but you do not know what your soul does or does not know. Your soul, for example has detailed information about the 7 energy fields that make up man, what is happening to them at every step. You will therefore not know when or whether you have achieved your goal in life, only God knows this.

The knowledge requirement for each person’s soul is different. One soul might require a specific emotion-sensation caused by drinking 170 pints of milk at specific times during one’s life. This is the knowledge that God has set as a goal for this particular person’s life.

This goal will not be achieved without fully meeting the strict requirements of yama (the ethical principles of yoga practice) and in addition following the overall path of yoga (called ‘niyama’) which includes the 9 steps of Bhakti Yoga set out above.

Much advice and if I may say unusual input into life's affairs are contained in my various books most of which have been translated into various languages. To access this information please click here: "Books".

Many of the books are available, in a variety of languages, for free download by visiting the web page 'Books'.

My email address is also shown below.

Shyam Mehta