What is the difference between spiritual, transcendental and devotional?

From Hari Parayana P

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Question from Hariparayan Prabhu. What is the difference between spiritual, transcendental and devotional? In your lectures on the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhakti Shastra course, you say that 3.30 refers to spiritual. But then you seem to say that spiritual has two components, transcendental has two components, spiritual and devotional.
But then you say devotional, we can practice devotion even when we are under the modes. So how exactly is this classification? Isn’t devotional higher than general spiritual? Answer, yes. Let’s understand this carefully.
There are three modes and anything above the three modes is transcendental. Now in the transcendental, there are two. There is generic spiritual, that means an awareness of Brahman, an awareness of Atma, that is all spiritual.
That is all transcendental and that is all spiritual. But higher than this generic spiritual awareness is devotional awareness, where one understands that Krishna is God, I am his part and I am meant to love and serve him. So that relationship of love where one sees personality also at the spiritual level, that is higher than the generic spiritual level where one just sees a oneness.
So now, so in the transcendental, we can say that there is spiritual and devotional. Devotional is also spiritual. So but devotional is like a higher level of spiritual.
So higher level of spirituality. So in that sense, we could roughly say that transcendental and spiritual are both equivalent, both being above the modes and devotional is transcendental and spiritual, but it is above generic transcendence and spirituality in the sense that there is, there is the perception of personality and reciprocity in devotion. Now, this is clear enough to understand, but there is some significant complication over here that devotion doesn’t just exist at the summit of spirituality.
It actually extends down to the modes and goes down to the lowest mode also. That means what? That means even the people who are in the mode of ignorance can practice bhakti, bhakti yoga, and experience some level of devotion. We have in the third canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, in the teachings of Kapiladeva, the concept of bhakti in the three modes.
Now, if bhakti is transcendental, then how can there be bhakti in ignorance, which is actually the opposite of transcendence, at the lowest end of the spectrum it is, whereas transcendence is at the opposite top end. The point is, this is the magnanimity of bhakti and this is the glory of its all-encompassing breadth. So here we need to differentiate between pure devotional and devotional, that is parabhakti and bhakti.
Parabhakti is also called by various names, ananyabhakti, kevalabhakti. So, Krishna talks about bhakti at both levels. Actually, the only place in the entire Bhagavad Gita where Krishna uses the word bhakti yoga, uses the word bhakti many times, uses the word yoga many, many times, but the compound word bhakti yoga Krishna uses in the Bhagavad Gita, the first time, rather, in the 14th chapter, So here he uses the word to refer to bhakti yoga as something which is practiced to transcend the modes.
That is, if it is used to transcend the mode, that means it is practiced by someone who is in the modes. So that means bhakti is accessible to those who are still under the influence of the modes. Not only is it accessible, it is a desirable way.
Krishna recommends it as the way by which one can transcend the modes. And then Krishna also talks about the bhakti being at the summit of spirituality in 18.54 when he states, This is after one has come to the Brahman platform, then one gets parabhakti. This is pure devotion.
So this is bhakti at the summit of spirituality. So if we consider it this way, this is ignorance, passion, goodness, three lower fingers, and there is a generic transcendence and above transcendence is pure devotion. So Krishna is saying that from generic transcendence one rises to parabhakti, that is a pure devotional level.
But he also says that bhakti can reach down and lift anyone and everyone. So in that sense, devotion is in its summit higher than generic spirituality, generic transcendence. But in its mercy, in its scope, it extends to way below the below transcendence to the lowest mode and can lift people from the lowest modes also.
And that is also talked in the Bhagavatam, And it is also talked about in 9.32 also Krishna talks about it. So this is the magnanity of bhakti that in its scope, it encompasses all the three modes going to the lowest level of material existence. And in its summit, it supersedes even impersonal liberation and comprises the acme of spiritual attainment.
Thank you.