22/12/2021
About the book:
In the sixteenth century, an extremely advanced expert in bhakti-yoga named Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī wrote a handbook on its theory and practice. He called his book Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, “The Ocean of the Nectar of Divine Love.” For a long time its secrets remained locked in the ancient Sanskrit language. Fortunately for us, a modern master of the knowledge and techniques of bhakti-yoga, His Divine Grace Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, translated the book into English and began training his students in its mysteries. Śrīla Prabhupāda titled his translation The Nectar of Devotion.
Before he came to America in 1965, Śrīla Prabhupāda lived in a quiet room in the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple, and through his window he could see and draw inspiration from the samādhi of Rūpa Gosvāmī. Seven years later, Śrīla Prabhupāda returned to the Rādhā-Dāmodara temple. And in the courtyard, near Rūpa Gosvāmī’s samādhi, he gave for his disciples a series of lectures on The Nectar of Devotion. Selections from those lectures, full of deep spiritual insight into bhakti, have been interwoven with excerpts from The Nectar of Devotion to form the substance of this book.
We invite you to share in Rūpa Gosvāmī’s teachings on bhakti-yoga, the art of eternal love, as they have come down to us from his foremost modern follower in disciplic succession. If we can learn to love God through bhakti-yoga, then we can learn to love everything and everyone else in the proper way, in the way that will bring us the most happiness, the best happiness, the happiness of eternal love.
About the author:
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was a pure devotee of Lord Krishna and a bona fide spiritual master in the Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya. He translated into English three major texts – Bhagavad-gita, Srimad-Bhagavatam and Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita that contain the essence of Vedic knowledge. He also wrote a number of other books that explain in detail the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupada’s books have been translated into more than 80 languages and they are known for their authoritative presentation of Vedic knowledge with depth, clarity and lucidity. They have earned the appreciation of scholars from different universities around the world. Srila Prabhupada wanted his books to be widely published and distributed everywhere. We are making a humble effort in this direction by distributing his books extensively for the spiritual benefit of all.
