Among the three great paths described in the Bhagavad Gita — Karma Yoga, Gyaan Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga — it is perhaps Bhakti that is most easily misunderstood. To modern eyes, devotion can look like sentiment: emotional, irrational, perhaps even naive.
But the Bhakti tradition of India tells a very different story. The great saint-poets — Mirabai, Tukaram, Kabir, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu — were not naive. They were people of extraordinary depth who had discovered something that our rational, productivity-oriented culture has largely forgotten: that love, when it is genuine and transformative, is one of the most powerful forces in human experience.