One of our main problems in the vaisnava society is that the idea and results of pure devotional service in terms of bhava and prema in the course of time become little elusive. We talk about it, but we don’t see it around us that much. Therefore we try to use the devotional service for some other purposes. As a result we lose faith in pure devotional service as the process. It is very important to come back to this topic and to analyse oneself first and foremost.
Difference between aropa-siddha-bhakti and sanga-siddha-bhakti: 1) in case of aropa-siddha-bhakti the activity itself may have nothing to do with devotional service, whereas sanga-siddha-bhakti is somewhat connected with devotional service in one way or another; 2) when I execute aropa-siddha-bhakti I don’t remember about the Lord, but at the end or at the beginning of it I remember about the Lord.
We don’t do pure devotional service because we have a separate desire, and because we don’t have complete faith in the process of devotional service. There are two conditions for these mixed devotional service activities to be useful:1) we have to have a proper motive; 2) we have to execute them under the guidance of a very experienced devotee.
The vastu sakti of the activities of svarupa-siddha-bhakti is bhakti posaka, it nourishes our devotion, whether we are aware of it or not. The vastu sakti can be easily blocked. By doing devotional service accidentally we may achieve some nitya-sukriti and then it will turn into sraddha. Sraddha is the first step to pure devotional service. But the activities of svarupa-siddha-bhakti will give us nitya-sukriti, it will help us to develop sraddha in pure devotional service, sraddha will bring us to sadhu-sanga, and sadhu-sanga will bring us to everything else.
The element of cheating blocks the power of svarupa-siddha-bhakti. We are trying to exploit the spiritual energy of the Lord to derive some benefit. The blockage is coming from the separatist mentality, it means that somebody separates his interest from the interest of the Lord. We are in the illusion of what is good for us. If we manage to please the Lord somehow, this is the best thing which can happen to us. But if we always keep separate interests in whatever we do, the power of pure devotional service will decrease.
Nine different kinds of motivations in three modes of material nature: 1) tama-guna (himsa, dambha and matsarya); 2) raja-guna (visaya, yasa, aisvarya) 3) sattva-guna (karma-nirharam, karma-tadarpanam, yastavyam). All these motivations describe a cheating mentality "I have my separate desires". Svarupa-siddha-bhakti without guna is called akincana-bhakti, we just want to please the Lord. Therefore we need a guru, we don’t know whether Krisna is pleased with us or not.
