Bhakti Means Devotion?

Bhakti Means Devotion?

I propose that we reconsider the meaning of bhakti as being devotion. It is instead relation and not just any relation but high value premium relation. It is part of a social construct with the emotional relational energies being exchanged between a deity and someone who has a spiritual social relationship with that deity.

It does not occur in an emotional vacuum but the emotions must be spiritual so that they are spiritually transferred from one being to another or from the spiritual plane of one being to the spiritual plane of the other, with one being a deity, being positioned higher in the spiritual social origin.

I must carefully relate the word deity because in this case it does not mean every person in the relationship circle of a particular deity but this refers to everyone who is existentially connected to that deity, the way leaves on a branch are directly connected to that branch and to no other branch on the tree. A leaf which is near to another leaf of a different branch may surmise that it is related directly to that other leaf of the other branch but for the purposes of this premium relationship it is not. There may be feelings as if there is a direct relationship but these are misleading and the individual should gain emotional clarity to sort this.

Bhakti is given the meaning of service or of a service action of a subordinate to a superior who renders pleasantries or other fulfilling rewards to the devotee but for this article, the pivot is not the service rendered nor the reward expressed but only the premium relationship which is an ongoing existential fact.

In the physical world, there are similarities. For instance, in the case of a mother and her infant, the mother is compared to the deity. The infant is similar to the subordinate devotee. The infant is related to the mother in dependence regardless of if the mother is neglectful of the child. because the mother fostered the infant as an embryo and due to the fact that the infant was birthed from the mother’s womb, that infant is socially related as the infant of the woman.

Similarly, someone who was spiritually emitted from another person is already in premium relationship with that existential source. That is bhakti. Regardless of services render by the dependent or by the superior, that premium relationship remains.

Anyone who feels or who knows that the personality is an aberration, a blur in existence, something insubstantial, will not accept these statements. However, this is for those who feel that personality is perpetual. It does not verify the current personality of the physical social world as being perpetually valid. In fact, the current social person is an accumulated factor which will be demolished in time, which will be deleted from the physical history in the process of time. However, this philosophy presupposes that there is a coreSelf, a perpetual personality core around which the social identity is formed and from which that temporary identity will be deleted.