The Yoga of Spiritual Devotion

YOGA / EASTERN PHILOSOPHY "Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion and love, is little known and little appreciated in the West. Yet it is one of India's great spiritual legacies. Prem Prakash's book offers a sensitive introduction to the devotional path by a Western practitioner. He makes the ancient Bhakti Sutras of Narada come alive for all of us who wish to cultivate the beauty and power of the heart. Narada's aphorisms should be studied with the same earnestness as the Yoga Sutra and the Bhagavad Gita. I highly recommend the present book and hope it will widely influence the Western yoga movement." --Georg Feuerstein, author of Lucid Waking, The Philosophy of Classical Yoga, and The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, is considered one of the primary paths for spiritual realization in yogic tradition. Its representative, Narada, is the embodiment of the enlightened sage who travels the universe spreading his sacred teachings and participating in kirtans--ecstatic songs and dances. Unlike acolytes of more world-negating types of yoga, the bhakti yogi does not discriminate against material phenomena, instead experiencing all phenomena as aspects of God. Within the context of ananda, blissful love, the temporal is realized as the reflection of the eternal, and the soul is realized as the expression of God. Prem Prakash's sensitive translation and insightful commentary, aimed at making the path of love immediately accessible to Westerners, at last allows students of yoga to understand why many consider devotional yoga to be the most promising means by which one can transcend the limits and boundaries of the contemporary world and achieve direct experience of the divine. PREM PRAKASH has been a practicing yogi since 1979 and in 1990 received permission from Baba Hari Dass to teach traditional ashtanga yoga. He is the director of the Green Mountain School of Yoga in Vermont.