Bhakti Yoga is the path of love; one can commune with a God or Goddess by loving Him or Her. Nothing else is required – neither abstract intellectual thinking nor any exercise of the body and mind. It makes no difficult demands on the bhakta. Love is a basic and universal emotion and is potent factor of our life. Swami Vivekananda observes – bhakti yoga is a real genuine search after Bhagavan, a search beginning, continuing and ending in love. One single moment of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. Narada says in this Bhakti Sutras – Bhakti is intense love for God. When a man gets it, he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied forever.
Bhakti yoga suggests the best possible use of this emotion.
We may utilize it to reach the goal of life moksha (liberation). But here we
must qualify the devotee’s sense of moksha. Unlike the Advaita Vedanta’s sense
of moksha, wherein the atman becomes absolutely identical to Brahman, the
devotee seeks to maintain a separation from the God because only through separation
can a loving and adoring relationship be maintained. In this regard, all that
we have to do is to love God intensely. As the love of God develops, attachment
to other things gradually melts away. The love of God is accompanied by pure
joy. This is why Bhakti yoga, path of love, appeals to the majority of people.
The supreme single-minded love for God is called para bhakti.
Such love, attended by ecstatic bliss and vision of God, is the very goal of sadhana
(spiritual practice). Such devotees, after realizing God in this life, become
perfect.
Such a love for God is to be cultivated. One has to pass through a preparatory course of training. This is called gauni (secondary) bhakti. Through sadhana for a long time, gauni bhakti gradually matures in para (supreme) bhakti.