bhāva [mood, sentiment, spiritual emotion, way of being]
Attention to bhāva is the miracle of Bhakti Yoga. It is both mystery and perfect clarity.
From the ego point of view it is nothing: trivial, superficial, meaningless: a passing mood, a fickle feeling. But from the soul point of view it means a way of being, a way of living, an attitude, an understanding of, well, everything.
For the soul-being bhāva is the calm of the heart, the sigh of the soul, the feelingless feeling that brings us, without effort, without strife, without pain, closer to ourselves, which is to say, closer to the divine.
Bhāva is not a specific sensation, nor a particular emotion, neither tenderness, nor anger. It is not a specific feeling, but a way of feeling, a way of feeling what feeling is, sensing what sensing is, knowing what knowledge is.
We find both peace and desire in bhāva. To find ourselves in our bhāva is an experience that grounds us, stabilises us, calm us, quiets us. And in this quiet it opens the place to let the greatest and deepest emotions flow. Realising bhāva makes a safe place for us to be what we are : spiritual forms (svarūpa) already deep in the service of the higher bhāva, Rādhā’s, bhāva — mahabhāva — the most refined form of love-giving, where the love of the divine flows effortless toward the divine in the form of the pastimes of RādhāMohan.
Bhāva gives us a reminder that ‘beyond’ also means beyond these words, beyond these thoughts, beyond these ideas. Bhāva is the mood that reaffirms that love is not just an idea, not just a thought, but a way of being, as natural to us as breathing itself. It is the mood it which the most natural sentiment unfolds itself completely. It reassures us that the most authentic thing we can do in our lives is serve the living love between Rādhā and Mohan.
Surely, bhāva is experienced as a transcendental mood by fully realised beings. But for simple sadakas like us it is space we can sink into to softly but firmly and feel the pastimes of the spiritual plane unfold before us, a window for observing the transcendental love affair of Rādhā and Mohan unfold before our eyes, also in our worldly consciousness opening a door through which our ordinary feelings can become spiritual feelings. Bhāva is the name of the experience that makes divine sense of our everyday experience.
Like all experiences of the material senses, in our sincere practice of Bhakti, bhāva does not remain material. The splendid enigma of material sensation is that the moment it comes into being it becomes transcendental. This is because a material sensation, in order to be a sensation, communicates more than just lifeless, technical information to the brain. It sends emotional energy to the soul, which is part and parce of the divine. Any material sensation, by virtue of being a sensation, is therefore already divine.
If we feel it in our bodies, it is already touching our hearts. If it is felt in our hearts, it is already flowing to our souls. There is no emotion that is not already spiritual.
Where bhāva is a unique mood, it is also a feeling that flows in the heart, envelops the soul advances and recedes. It swells over our heart, letting our emotions rise and fall, soften and intensify. It is restless and always changing, always expanding. It fills our hearts then overflows, then recedes and fills are hearts again. It is the force of loving emotion, that pulls on our hearts to grow and expand. It increases our heart’s capacity for love, then overflows it again, and over again.