According to Osho, bhakti-bhava is love ripened to its pure essence—stainless, guileless, and causeless. Begin with any authentic love, however ordinary; refine it until all possessiveness, bargaining, and ego burn away. Love is the sole bridge to the Divine; condemning worldly love severs that bridge. Root devotion in lived relationships, deepen and purify it, and it flowers into union with the Beloved.
Let the love you already feel become cleaner and selfless until it turns into love for the Divine—start where you truly care and polish it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the real meaning of bhakti-bhava—the spirit of devotion?
Good sir! Ever fallen in love and such? Bhakti is simply the culmination of love. If you’ve never loved, I won’t be able to make you understand. If you have, the point can begin to land. These things are of experience; some taste in that direction is needed. A man once came to Nagarjuna and said, “Take me too on the journey to That.” He was a poor man. Nagarjuna asked, “Have you ever loved anyone?” He said, “Love? Well, why hide it from you—there’s a buffalo I own; it’s her that I love. I’m a poor man, I have nothing else, but I’m very attached to her. If she ever goes missing in the forest, it feels like my life is in danger. If she falls ill, I can’t find peace.” He must have been a simple, straightforward man—otherwise how could he have spoken so truly? People usually talk…
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
Bhakti is life’s supreme acceptance. So it is auspicious that Shandilya begins this incomparable garland of sutras with Om. Rightly so, because bhakti is the method of birthing music in life. The day you become musical, the day not a single note remains within you that creates discord, the day you are no longer off-key—that day the meeting with the Beloved happens. The Beloved is not elsewhere—He is in harmony, in rhythm. The day the dance becomes total, the song finds its voice, the inner meter unfurls in freedom, in that very instant union with the Divine is. That is why the Vedas say those who have known Om have nothing left to know. This is not the Om written in scriptures, but the cadence experienced in life, lived and felt. Gayatri is hidden within you, as is the Bhagavad Gita.
Osho, bhakti is both practice and attainment. Kindly explain its different forms to us.
No, devotion has no forms. Do loves have different forms anywhere? Love is simply one. Its taste is one. Differences arise from the intellect; in the heart there are no distinctions. The Hindu’s intellectual notion is different, the Muslim’s intellectual notion is different, the Christian’s philosophy is different—those are matters of the mind. But when a Hindu is filled with devotion, when a Muslim is filled with devotion, when a Christian is filled with devotion, there is no difference in those devotions—they are one. Devotion is of the heart. It relates to your inmost core, not to the external workings of your intellect. What you have learned is irrelevant; what your nature is, that is what matters. Yet it is true that devotion is both practice and attainment. There the first step is also the last step. The means are themselves the goal. Devotion means: supreme love. What is to…
Bhakti means: do not stand away. Do not be the seer; be the enjoyer. Bhakti is to become the experiencer—immerse; let nothing in you remain untouched. Every hair should be drenched, absorbed. The act is complete only when your consciousness is completely dissolved in it. When you are not a seer but an enjoyer—so completely that you do not remain separate at all; only the enjoyment remains—that ultimate enjoyment is called bhakti. When you vanish in the act—when singing remains, but no singer; when dancing remains, but no dancer; when in the hymn only the hymn remains, and not the devotee—when the bhakta bows at the Lord’s feet and there is only bowing, not a watcher standing behind saying, “See, I am bowing!” If you are watching yourself bow, you have not bowed. Your ego remained; the body bent, you did not.