What is the place of emotions in spirituality?

[Ms. Bhanu Samykya asked: Padanamaskaram Swami, What is the place of emotions in spirituality? How to differentiate the basis of emotion towards God? How can I know whether my emotions related to God are out of real devotion or out of aspirations hidden inside? Can emotions towards God come out of ignorance also without any spiritual knowledge? Please help me understand the reality and help me come into the correct path Swami. - At Your Divine Lotus Feet, Bhanu Samykya.]

Swami replied:- In worldly life or spiritual life, first, knowledge and analysis with the help of intelligence is necessary before getting emotion (devotion) to implement anything in practice. Emotion after knowledge is appreciable due to its safety given by the knowledge. Suppose you want to run towards Delhi. First you must enquire the path to Delhi and then run on that correct path. If you run without the initial enquiry, you may be running towards Chennai in opposite direction! Hence, knowledge of direction is important, which can be given by knowledge only. Knowledge, emotion (devotion) and practice is the correct sequence either in Pravrutti or Nivrutti.

Your consciousness is well aware of your internal worldly desires. If such awareness is not experienced by you, certainly you don’t have  worldly desires. Desires cannot exist in you without your awareness about them. Emotions about God can’t come without the proper spiritual knowledge from which you can recognize the details of the divine personality of God. If emotions about God are coming even from the ignorance of God, it means your emotional devotion is based on some worldly aspiration to be granted by God. The details of the personality of God is multi-dimensional, evolved based on very sharp logical analysis and it brings very powerful attraction towards God. Such attraction results in the emotional devotion to God, which must be pure by not having aspiration for any fruit in return from God. Such emotion is the true love or true devotion to God. Such pure emotion can never come without knowing the details of the personality of God, which are termed as spiritual knowledge.

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