Devotion means taking your emotion to its highest pitch. Devotion, in fact, is held as the highest form of emotion because it is the least entangling; it is liberating. But if you have agendas, don’t waste your time on devotion because then you can’t be a devotee.
Devotees are very beautiful people within themselves, but as far as the world is concerned they are usually insane and unreasonable. Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi — these were insane people; you could not live with them. Once they were gone, you could worship them, but when they were here, nobody could understand them. For example, Mirabai believed she was Sri Krishna’s wife. She always felt that Krishna was with her — she danced with him, she loved and kissed him — she was so deeply involved. If you were her husband, are you going to appreciate her devotion? No. You will go insane with your own problems. Devotees are like that. They don’t belong to the logical dimension of life.
I am not saying devotion is completely absent in you. You have emotions, so naturally there is a certain amount of devotion in you. But if you want to fit into family and social situations and still pursue spirituality, you cannot choose devotion as a path because you want life to happen the way you want it. You must explore other ways. You can attain the ultimate through your intelligence, through your physical action, or by transforming your inner energies. But you are not just any one of them, you are a combination of all of these. So it is best if there is a combination of these things so that you can evolve without disturbing external realities. But then, naturally, there are compromises — you go slowly.
If you are not bothered about what happens to the people you love or your corporate world, if you just want to grow, only then is devotion a way to attain. It is one of the quickest ways.
Devotion and family life, devotion and corporate world, devotion and anything else won’t go. Devotion means everything else has to dissolve. That is why if you talk devotion, it is just deception. At some moments when your experience rises to a certain pitch, a moment of devotion may happen to you. Just wait for that moment. It is wonderful. But don’t try to pursue devotion as your policy because there is very deep deception in it.
Links:
[1] http://103.241.136.51/sadhguru-jaggi-vasudev-622