Bhakti Yoga
There’s material yoga, and there’s spiritual yoga. In other words yoga for the body, and yoga for the soul. The material kind will make us feel more peaceful, limber, and healthy. The spiritual kind will teach us how to attain a state of ever-increasing transcendental pleasure.
Bhakti-yoga is the spiritual yoga for the soul, the yoga of pure love and devotion, the yoga of the highest pleasure.
The yoga of the body is the kind most people know about, the kind that is on the covers of the magazines. Everybody knows about that. But the yoga of the soul is something new for most people. You can only find it deep inside of you.
In the yoga of the body, you can stretch your body muscles, and feel good for some time. With the yoga of the soul, you stretch your soul muscles, and feel good forever. That’s the difference.
Spiritual Yoga
Now there’s nothing wrong with the yoga of the body, but when you are ready for the ultimate yoga, the spiritual yoga of the soul is waiting for you. And it’s been waiting for a long time. Way before the first teacher of body yoga came to the yoga studios of the West, the teachers of spiritual yoga were sitting in mountains and forests of ancient India teaching their favored students their secrets for attaining the highest pleasure.
For those who really know, that is the highest goal. But to get to it, you have to know the path. And you can find that out only from the knower of the path, the teacher of spiritual yoga.
Krishna taught the techniques of spiritual yoga to His students, and then this secret knowledge, the path to the highest pleasure, was passed down through the generations from one spiritual master to another. For many ages, this secret knowledge was never written down. It was kept hidden in memory, and revealed only to the proper candidates. As time passed, people’s power of memory began to decline.
Therefore, about five thousand years ago, a great spiritual personality named Vyasadeva put the teachings of Krishna in writing. Still, for a long time afterwards only a chosen few in India learned about these teachings.Then in the late twentieth century, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the greatest spiritual master of the modern age, following the orders of his own spiritual master , took written in Sanskrit an ancient Vedic texts of India about teachings on spiritual yoga, translated them into English and brought them to the Western world, giving us the chance to enter onto the path to the highest pleasure.
Missing Point
The basic principle of the living condition is that we have a general propensity to love someone. No one can live without loving someone else. This propensity is present in every living beings. The missing point, however, is where to repose our love so that everyone can become happy. At the present moment the human society teaches one to love his country or family or his personal self, but there is no information where to repose the loving propensity so that everyone can become happy. That missing point is Absolute, God, Krishna (Krishna - means "All-attractive One", Sanskrit name of God).
Real Self-Realization
Missing Absolute means missing one’s self also. Real self-realization and realization of Absolute go together simultaneously. For example, seeing oneself in the morning means seeing the sunrise also; without seeing the sunshine no one can see himself. Similarly, unless one has realized Absolute there is no question of self-realization. Such science of self-realization is discrabed in the Vedas as Bhakti Yoga process. Bhakti Yoga teaches how to stimulate our original love for Krishna and how to be situated in that position where we can enjoy our blissful life.
In the primary stage a child loves his parents, then his brothers and sisters, and as he daily grows up he begins to love his family, society, community, country, nation, or even the whole human society. But the loving propensity is not satisfied even by loving all human society; that loving propensity remains imperfectly fulfilled until we know who is the supreme beloved. Our love can be fully satisfied only when it is reposed in Krishna.
Our loving propensity expends just as a vibration of light or air expands, but we do not know where it ends. The Bhakti Yoga teaches us the science of loving everyone of the living entities perfectly by the easy method of loving Krishna. We have failed to create peace and harmony in human society, even by such great attempts as the United Nations, because we do not know the right method. The method is very simple, but one has to understand it with a cool head. The Bhakti Yoga teaches all men how to perform the simple and natural method of loving Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
If we learn how to love Krishna, then it is very easy to immediately and simultaneously love every living being. It is like pouring water on the root of a tree or supplying food to one's stomach. The method of pouring water on the root of a tree or supplying food to the stomach is universally scientific and practical, as every one of us has experienced. Everyone knows well that when we eat something, or in other words, when we put food into the stomach, the energy created by such action is immediately distributed throughout the whole body.
Similarly, when we pour water on the root, the energy thus created is immediately distributed throughout the entirety of even the largest tree. It is not possible to water the tree part by part, nor is it possible to feed the different parts of the body separately. Bhakti Yoga teaches how to turn the one switch that will immediately brighten everything, everywhere and make everyone happy. One who does not know this method is missing the point of life.
Eternal Love
So the spiritual love between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul is the most important kind of love. It is the only love that is truly eternal. Actually, every other kind of love we experience is just a reflection of the original loving exchange between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul.
This special love is called, in Sanskrit, BHAKTI. And the process for awakening that love is called BHAKTI YOGA, the art of eternal love.