Many of us practice bhakti by going to the local temple with a certain frequency, or attend a satsang regularly, or listen to the great saints, or read the religious texts, or perform prayer rituals at home. In light of this understanding, why would bhakti be called rare?

Bhakti is rare for two primary reasons. Firstly, it can only be attained by those souls that have received the human form. Secondly, of those that have been granted the human form, only those souls that truly live their life completely selflessly, devoid of any selfish desires whatsoever, are bestowed with this bhakti.

Let us attempt to understand these two criteria a little better.

According to the latest statistics, the world’s human population is in the range of 7-8 billion. Of the 8.4 million species of life on the earth planet, the human form is only one species. Note that 8.4 million species of life means that if there was only one life form of each species, there would be only 8.4 million souls on this earth planet. However, for each species, there are a multitude of souls in a given form. For example, most of us are familiar with two main living species of elephants – the Asian elephant and the African elephant. Within the two main species, there are an estimated 50,000 souls in the form of the Asian elephant and approximately 440,000 souls in the form of the African elephant for a total of nearly 500,000 souls. Similarly, the human form is one species of life and it has been granted to less than 10 billion souls.

Now extend this logic to all mammals (from the lions and tigers to domestic dogs, cats, guinea pigs, and all other land animals), sea life (penguins, sea lions, dolphins, whales, sharks, octopus, sea horse, crabs, fishes, etc.), reptiles (different species of snakes such as python, cobra, etc., lizards, alligators and so on), birds (peacocks, sparrows, parrots, crows, owl, hummingbird, etc.), insects (ants, mosquitoes, flies, butterflies, bees, spiders, cockroaches, etc.), trees (all fruit bearing trees such as mango, apple, lemon, orange, etc.; all evergreens, all deciduous trees, and all the other varieties), plants (all vines, creepers, cacti, fruits such as berries, vegetables, etc.), and you begin to comprehend the vastness of the forms of life on this planet. In other words, any form with consciousness belongs to a species and with 8.4 million species, the number of souls inhabiting this earth is truly countless!

Now take into account the souls living in the seven layers of heaven and hell. They can practice bhakti only once they achieve the human form. In his explanation of verse 21, Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita, Swamiji explains, “Just as a football gets kicked all over the field, Maya is kicking the soul around in forgetfulness of God. Sometimes it goes to the lower abodes, while sometimes to the higher abodes. Amongst these multitudes of forms it receives, across the lower and higher abodes, only the human form offers the facility for God-realization. Hence, the scriptures state that even the celestial gods pray to be given birth as a human being, so that they may rectify their previous mistake of going to heaven, and strive toward God-realization.”

Of so many countless souls then, less than 10 billion have been granted this human form. Given India’s population of nearly 1.2 billion, of these 10 billion souls, let’s say that 5 billion (including you and I) practice devotion to some extent. Of the countless souls in all these worlds, we are down to 5 billion which is starting to feel like a pretty small number.

The second criteria is complete and unconditional selflessness. It is pure selflessness i.e. love Shree Krishna for his happiness alone. This means that one has to sacrifice all personal desires – including the physical desires of the body and the emotional desires of the ego.

Physical bodily desires include the desire for sleep, hunger, thirst, etc. For instance, if we have a project deadline that impacts our grade in school or our bonus at work, we work extremely hard at it including, at times, sacrificing hunger and sleep. In such situations, we skip lunch because we don’t have time for it or reduce the number of hours we sleep because there are work related deadlines that cannot be missed. But when it comes to sacrificing sleep for a project related to Shree Krishna, how often are we willing to do the same? Instead, we tend to say, “O Shree Krishna! Please forgive me as I was unable to work on this today. I promise to make it up to you tomorrow.” For the most of us, that tomorrow rarely comes.

Emotional desires include the desire for respect, trust, love, security, status, belongingness, etc. We want to be popular or liked by others so that we can rise higher in terms of societal status, or we get easy access to latest high-profile people and events in the community, or we want to live a comfortable life. We want our family to love us because we believe we love them and make so many sacrifices for them. In short, implicitly or explicitly, we are constantly seeking something in return. “I did this for you so now it’s your turn to do this for me,” or quid pro quo is the thought process. Such a sentiment of quid pro quo is defined by Shree Maharajji as a business transaction. Then what is true love?

The scriptures explain that true love means to constantly ‘give, give, give.’ This means selflessness at all times – every second of every minute of every hour or every day of every year. It is 24×7, 365 days of the year.

Based on these two criteria we get a deeper understanding of why bhakti is so rare. Based on this understanding, let’s strive to be a member of this small community by growing our sense of sacrifice and love for Shree Krishna.