Wise Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness

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We all long for boundless love as we long for home. But how can we find our home - our meaning and purpose if we don't know our self? Wise-Love is an exploration of the self, or consciousness, through the eyes of saints, sages, seers, and mystics. As we embark on the journey to the self, we discover that the self's most charming characteristic - part of its eternal, unchanging nature - is that it is a lover, a lover who can be satisfied only when ordinary love evolves into wise-love.

Pranada illuminates bhakti's wisdom school of heartfulness and shows why mindfulness and meditation alone can never satisfy the self. "Joy comes from an awakened heart, not from a controlled or stilled mind."

"This life is not a dress rehearsal," Pranada concluded with quiet urgency. The deep emotion of her voice created a gravitas that even my distracted teenage mind could not ignore. She spoke at a ceremony honoring her guru, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. Most of the youngsters and I hung about in clusters at a distance from where she spoke. I was a junior in college interacting with the "real world" for the first time and actively distancing myself from the faith I'd grown up with. Perhaps, therefore, Pranada's solemn words made an impression. They alluded to Shakespeare's famous line: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." For that moment, the appeal of this sensual world was muted. This is not a rehearsal, I thought. The "play" of life is happening now. I-a reckless and confused teen-had seen Pranada as a person of poise and elegance who also faced life challenges. Giving voice to my own impression of her, one of Pranada's peers said to me, "There's nothing she can't do." Twenty years later, I was reminded of that prediction as I began reading Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness.

With grace and formidable insight, Pranada skillfully introduces the reader to the ancient and complex Vedas and bhakti yoga. In the first few pages of the prologue, the reader will at once notice and be drawn into Pranada's exceptional ability to deliver mystical truths in a modern and relevant voice. You will feel an awakening and resonance in your heart, the litmus test of any noteworthy text. Seemingly without effort, Pranada conveys, with clarity and conviction, the intriguing story of the Bhagavata as she masterfully homes in on the passages and truths that are most important. She writes that the author of this sacred text "knew that spiritual experience evolves in an illumined heart and that there the teaching remains relevant and viable." In other words, bhakti is a living tradition, not something archaic or inaccessible. "The mystic's powerful inner home," she writes, "is available to each of us when we decide to do more than philosophize. True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It's a life process that engages the whole self." At every step, Pranada seems keen on inspiring the reader to deeper thought and action, investing us with agency: "The self is situated in the heart and is the ultimate agent of choice."

Wise-love refers to the heart's development from ordinary love to a love so pure it has no scent of material influence. In its most mature stage, wise-love is a state of being, an existential, eternal state of self.

The love we know in this world is only a shadow of wise-love. Most of us don't yet love with wise-love, don't yet love every sentient being unconditionally, with no thought of our own gain. We don't yet swoon with rapture for our Divine Other or for other souls, and we're not engulfed in profoundly fulfilling love relationships with them. The ecstatic state of wise-love is, nonetheless, our fullest potential, our most complete joy, and our deepest calling. This ecstasy is within reach through the conscious culture of wise-love.

Since the rise of psychoanalysis at the dawn of the twentieth century, the Western world, in search of enduring happiness, has turned its attention toward mental health, studying control of the mind, meditation, and the psychic benefits of affirmations and positive visualizations, among other mental exercises. We have access to extensive information on self-help and a collection of well-developed protocols for achieving mental health.

We have long focused on the mind-body instead of the heart as the channel to spirit. In The HeartMath Solution, Doc Children shares his experience of counseling serious spiritual practitioners who have focused their spiritual attempt on the mind: "Even longtime meditators get only limited benefits unless the heart is deeply engaged, so they're often frustrated with their progress."

Why? Because we need to enrich mindfulness with heart- fulness; we must come to live our meditation minute to minute. In the yoga world, this practice is called bhakti. Bhakti's divine doctrine of love, grounded firmly in philosophy, shows how to practically culture the pure state of the self. The practice is backed by an elaborate textual tradition and sages, saints, seers, and mystics.

Bhakti teaches us that joy comes from the awakened heart, not from a controlled and stilled mind. Happiness lies in loving  not in knowing or mindfulness or any sort of mental peace that is the goal of most meditation and all of psychoanalysis. By the practice of bhakti, the heart expands with love and the mind with awareness of the self, and gradually we move from simple human love to an all-encompassing, otherworldly wise-love.