On any spiritual path, including bhakti, there are three factors involved: the practitioner, the practice, and the goal to be achieved. To be successful in one’s spiritual practice, one must have a clear understanding of all three of these factors.
This book primarily focuses on providing authoritative knowledge about the practitioner, the jīva. Knowledge about the jīva is gained from śāstra. However, if one does not know how to interpret it properly, śāstra can be misunderstood. It is for this reason that there are differences of opinion about the nature of the jīva in different groups of spiritualists. In this book, some basic principles are discussed that govern how śāstra is meant to be understood at different levels and how its true intentions are realized.
Most of the time what people call love is just attachment, because they are doing it for their own pleasure. You can only see this when you become free from attachment. When there is attachment, our perception becomes disturbed and we don’t see things clearly. That is why they say love is blind – you can’t see because of your attachment.
