Bhakti means emotions. Srila Vrindavan Das Thakur says that if just by remembering one name of Krisna you start crying, then you have bhakti. If you don’t start crying, then you don’t have bhakti. We all have some sort of bhakti, but bhakti in a full-fledged form is when just by remembering one name of Krisna you start crying. Spiritual emotions should not be imitated.

There are three basic material emotions: raga or attachment, bhaya or fear and krodha or anger. All material emotions appear from our false ego, as a result we experience death and birth again and again. Unless and until we are preoccupied with all these material emotions, we will not even be able to chant the Holy name properly.

Our material thoughts are the product of our material emotions. They are depriving us of the real spiritual experience. Spiritual experience can only come when we tune our mind in a different way. Even when we experience positive material emotions, nevertheless our consciousness has a chaotic wave pattern.

The heart controls the brain, and the brain controls the body. Therefore while meditating we should be concentrated on the lotus of the heart. This lotus has the capacity of expanding and shrinking. Negative emotions make our heart shrink.

The path of bhakti-yoga is that we go from the lowest modes of material nature through sattva to the pure sattva, which gives us the real spiritual experience. The most elevated sattvik emotion is the emotion of gratitude. If we want to go from the absorption in the material emotions, which destruct our consciousness from the Holy name to the complete absorption in the Holy name, which is in the realm of the spiritual emotions, the transition point is the emotion of gratitude. Emotion of gratitude is capable of negating all the negative material emotions. It purifies our heart from the absorption of these emotions and gives us genuine spiritual experience through the medium of the Holy name.