Is devotion a feeling to be developed or does it come naturally?

From: Kalpit Jain

In many of the BG lectures it had been discussed that every religion teaches us how to develop love towards GOD.

So the basic question is this whether LOVE is an feeling which is to developed or it happens naturally?

Transcript

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Question from Kalpet Jain in many of the Bhagwanita lectures it has been discussed that every religion teaches us how to develop love towards God so the basic question is whether love is a feeling which is to be developed or does it happen naturally answer it is both at the spiritual level when we are pure love for Krishna is natural for us at the conditioned level we may depending on our present cultural circumstances or our past practice of some aspects of spiritual culture find certain aspects of devotional service naturally attractive if we have musical inclination we may find devotional music naturally attractive but that may not apply to other aspects of devotional service we may not necessarily like to hear the philosophy so eagerly may not have natural attraction to Krishna the person although we may like to sing about him so at our conditioned level we shouldn’t assume that devotion is a feeling that will just happen naturally we need to do the actions that will be favorable for the appearance of that feeling this means that we need to recognize that the pure feeling of the heart of the Atma for Krishna has been currently distorted by our conditionings by the three modes and removing that distortion requires a sustained and systematic process of purification so that process of purification involves doing certain activities which help the devotional feeling that is natural to the soul to become manifest so for example we chant the holy names of Krishna we take darshan all the devotional activities that we do navidha bhakti the nine levels of devotional service all these are meant to help us awaken that natural feeling for Krishna so the example of amnesia is appropriate for a person who has lost the past lost the memory of the past say remembrance of the father or the past family members may be natural is natural when the memory was there and affection for them is also natural but in the present forgetful stage it is not so there has to be systematic process to be followed the treatment for amnesia by which the person will get cured and the former natural affection will get awakened so similarly we are in forgetfulness now we need to not just wait for devotion to appear naturally but rather we need to expose ourselves to devotional stimuli as much as possible according to the process given by the guru sadhu shastra and this will cure our spiritual amnesia and the more spiritual amnesia gets cured the more love will happen naturally but till then we have to cultivate shilanam in the definition of bhakti given by Rupa Goswami Rupa Goswami says that it is cultivation Srila Prabhupada writes in the purport of nectar of instruction that devotional service is not sentimental speculation or imaginative ecstasy, its substance is practical activity so by rendering service in a practical way we can take the treatment to cure the spiritual amnesia and then love will emerge naturally