Discover Bhakti, the timeless wisdom of the self, love, and the means to achieve lasting happiness and inner fulfillment.At Exploring Bhakti we uncover the ancient teachings of Bhakti yoga — the yoga of divine love -- and uncover what Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam say about the true self, the nature of consciousness, the world, self-realization, peace, sacred love and how to reconnect with the Sweet Absolute in the joy of mutual loving exchanges, which brings the highest bliss.For beginners and seasoned seekers alike, we explore yoga philosophy in a practical way that’s inspiring and easy to connect with and can transform your life. We maintain the richness of the yoga tradition while presenting it in a simple, authentic, and accessible way.I’m Pranada Comtois. I’ve been living, studying, and teaching Bhakti for over 50 years, and have authored 3 award-winning books on it. Welcome.

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What does it really mean to “cheat death”? In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we explore a profound spiritual question: can death actually be overcome? Through the lens of samsara, rebirth, and the story of Dhruva, we uncover what it means to go beyond the cycle of birth and death—and how real spiritual practice transforms our experience of dying.

Cheating Death: The Spiritual Science of Dying to Live

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Do you ever feel stuck trying to make the “right” decision—overthinking, second-guessing, and still unsure what to do? In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we explore a deeply practical and spiritual approach to decision-making using five powerful filters: motives, contentment, prayer, time, and surrender. This isn’t about finding the perfect choice. It’s about learning how to make decisions in relationship—so that whatever you choose becomes part of your path, not a mistake.

Easy Decision Making: 5 Spiritual Filters That Actually Work

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If you’ve explored psychedelics, healing work, or altered states and felt something meaningful—but also incomplete—this episode is for you. We look honestly at why these experiences feel spiritual, where they fall short, and what the heart is actually seeking beneath them. With clarity and compassion, we explore how Bhakti offers not just a glimpse of connection—but a living, sustainable relationship that fulfills the longing many seekers have been chasing for years.

Are Psychedelics and Ayahuasca Revelations Spiritual?

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In this episode, we explore how eating can become a spiritual practice—not through restriction, but through consciousness, gratitude, and devotion. You&#39;ll learn about sattvic foods that support mental clarity and spiritual practice, why offering your food matters even if you eat &#34;clean,&#34; and how this simple, ancient practice can transform every meal into a moment of connection with the Divine. This is an invitation to stop just feeding your body—and start nourishing your soul.

4a Eating as a Spiritual Practice: Conscious Eating in Bhakti

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Do you have to change your entire life to practice Bhakti… or can it meet you exactly where you are? In this episode, we explore the different ways Bhakti can be lived—from ashram life to practicing quietly at home—and gently clear the confusion around identity, culture, and what “real” devotion looks like. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite fit into traditional spiritual molds… or wondered if you have to become someone else to walk a devotional path—this conversation will ground you.Bhakti is not about performance, aesthetics, or external form. It’s about relationship. And that relationship can begin right in the middle of your actual life.

3a Do You Have to Change Your Life to Practice Bhakti Yoga?: An Honest Answer

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There’s a quiet longing in many of us—not just to manage our lives better, but to feel that our lives are meaningful, connected, and held within something sacred. In this episode, we explore how the Bhakti calendar invites us into a different relationship with time—not as something to control, but something to enter into. Through holy days, fasting, and simple practices, we begin to shift from spiritual fragmentation into gentle, steady connection. This is an invitation to bring devotion into the rhythm of your real life—softly, sincerely, and in a way that nourishes both heart and soul.

2a Understanding the Bhakti Calendar and Sacred Time

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What do we do when life doesn’t go the way we planned—when we feel overwhelmed, heartbroken, or quietly lost despite doing everything “right”? This reflection explores how life’s challenges can become a doorway into something deeper. Through the lens of Bhakti, we begin to shift from control into relationship, from resistance into offering, and from isolation into connection with Krishna as our Divine Friend. This is a gentle, practical path for turning pain into something meaningful, personal, and transformative.

1a Heartbreak as Your Doorway to Something Deeper: Turning Pain into a Path to Our Divine Friend

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There comes a point in the spiritual journey where doing more, learning more, and even healing more no longer satisfies the deeper ache within the heart. This episode invites you into the world of the Srimad Bhagavatam—a sacred text that doesn’t just explain reality, but reveals how to enter into a living, loving relationship with it. Moving beyond self-improvement and into devotion, we explore Bhakti as a path of connection, intimacy, and divine love—one that meets you exactly where you are and gently calls you home.

35: Srimad Bhagavatam: The Heart of Bhakti Yoga & Divine Love

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Discover the Bhagavad Gita as a living conversation between the soul and the Divine. In this complete overview, we’ll explore its essential teachings on the self (ātma), karma, time, the yoga paths, and the awakening of the heart through bhakti, the yoga of love and relationship.If you’ve sensed that success or self-improvement alone can’t quiet the restlessness within, the Gita offers timeless clarity — a way to move from confusion to connection, from anxiety to anchored devotion.

34: Bhagavad Gita: Life Lessons, Yoga Paths & Timeless Wisdom for the Modern Seeker

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The yoga universe is teeming with countless divine personalities, each shimmering with purpose and mystery. If you’ve ever wondered who these beings are—Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Durga, Hanuman, Ganesh, and others—and how they all relate, you’re not alone. This episode takes you gently into the heart of the yoga cosmos, where philosophy meets wonder, revealing the intimate order behind the multitude of divine forms—and how understanding this mystery deepens our relationship with the Supreme through Bhakti.

33 Oh, My! The Many Personalities of the Yoga Universe

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So much of our modern yoga journey begins on the mat—seeking balance, strength, and peace. But beneath the asanas lives a deeper longing: the soul’s quiet call to remember its source. In this episode, we step beyond posture practice to explore yoga as a complete spiritual map. Together, we’ll travel through the four great yogas—action, knowledge, meditation, and devotion—and rediscover the luminous thread that unites them all in the heart of Bhakti.

32 Mapping the 4 Paths of Yoga: Discovering the Hidden Treasure

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Liberation is often presented as the summit of spiritual life, the great exhale after lifetimes of striving. But what if freedom is not the end, only the threshold? In this episode, we gently enter a deeper vision offered by Bhakti Vedanta: a fifth dimension of consciousness in which the soul does not dissolve into peace but awakens into intimate, ecstatic love. For the thoughtful seeker who longs for more than relief from suffering—who senses that the heart was made for relationship—this exploration opens a luminous possibility beyond mere transcendence.

31 Beyond Liberation: The 5th Dimension

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30: The Wisdom Texts of Vedanta

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Love does not appear all at once—it matures through trust, relationship, practice, and lived experience. In this episode, we explore the nine stages of Bhakti yoga as a reliable, time-tested path that carries the soul from its first spark of faith to the full flowering of divine love. Drawing from Bhakti wisdom texts and realized teachers, this teaching reveals Bhakti not as blind belief, but as a replicable science of love—one that gently reshapes the heart, restores meaning, and leads us home to a living relationship with the Sweet Absolute.

29: From Faith to Divine Love: The 9 Stages of Bhakti Yoga

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What if letting go didn’t mean losing control—but discovering peace deeper than control could ever give? In this episode, Pranada explores the true meaning of surrender and why trusting the Divine isn’t weakness or passivity, but the soul’s courageous return to trust and achieve liberation. Learn how conscious surrender opens the heart to divine love, dissolves fear, and transforms daily life into an effortless collaboration with the Sweet Absolute. For the seeker weary of control, fragmentation, and self-effort, surrender is revealed as reciprocal love with the Divine Friend, the doorway to fearlessness, and the ground where devotion becomes natural, joyful, and whole.

28 The Power of Surrender: Freedom and Fearlessness in Divine Trust

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In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we look at the four foundational virtues that support spiritual growth in Bhakti-yoga: mercy, truthfulness, cleanliness, and austerity. These aren’t rules for control, but principles of freedom. Rooted in the Vedic concept of dharma, they are more than moral guidelines but natural expressions of a purified heart devoted to the Supreme. Discover how these virtues, when supported by devotion, humility, purity, and surrender, become a spiritual path to joy and freedom.

26: Bhakti’s Four Pillars: Dharma and Devotion

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In a spiritual landscape crowded with techniques, promises, and mixed motivations, many sincere seekers quietly wonder why devotion has not yet delivered the depth of love they long for. In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we turn toward a subtle and essential inquiry: if Bhakti is pure by nature, how does it sometimes feel diluted in lived experience? With philosophical clarity and a compassionate understanding of the conditioned heart, we explore the distinction between Bhakti as divine reality and Bhakti as practiced by those still shaped by desire. This reflection offers both reassurance and direction, revealing how devotion naturally purifies itself when approached with sincerity, patience, and exclusive intent to please the Sweet Absolute.

27 When Devotion Isn't Yet Pure

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For many sincere seekers, devotion begins with inspiration but falters when daily life presses in with its demands, distractions, and subtle compromises. In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we turn to the timeless guidance of Rupa Goswami, who offers a clear, compassionate map for sustaining spiritual life over the long term. These teachings speak directly to those who long for depth, steadiness, and integration – showing how Bhakti grows when it is protected, nourished, and lived with awareness, discernment, and loving relationships.

25 6 Keys to Grow Devotion; 6 Traps That Sabotage Us

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For many sincere seekers, spiritual life has become a long, earnest journey filled with effort, practices, and self-refinement—yet still accompanied by a quiet sense that something essential is missing. In this episode of Exploring Bhakti, we look deeply at what Bhakti truly offers, not only as a devotional path but as a complete healing of mind, body, and soul. Drawing from Bhakti Vedanta and lived experience, this exploration speaks especially to those who have tasted meditation, mindfulness, and self-development, yet long for an integrated, relational path that leads beyond temporary relief to lasting meaning, transformation, and love.

24 Bhakti: Life Changing Effects on Mind, Body, & Soul

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Rather than asking for withdrawal from the world, Bhakti invites us to infuse ordinary acts—work, cooking, caring, reading, giving—with devotion and conscious love. In this episode, we explore how simple daily practices can gradually awaken a living relationship with the Divine Friend, helping us move from striving and fragmentation into remembrance, meaning, and heartfelt connection.

23: Transforming Daily Life into Devotion: Inside a Bhakti Practice

Discover Bhakti, the timeless wisdom of the self, love, and the means to achieve lasting happiness and inner fulfillment.

At Exploring Bhakti we uncover the ancient teachings of Bhakti yoga — the yoga of divine love -- and uncover what Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam say about the true self, the nature of consciousness, the world, self-realization, peace, sacred love and how to reconnect with the Sweet Absolute in the joy of mutual loving exchanges, which brings the highest bliss.

For beginners and seasoned seekers alike, we explore yoga philosophy in a practical way that’s inspiring and easy to connect with and can transform your life. We maintain the richness of the yoga tradition while presenting it in a simple, authentic, and accessible way.

I’m Pranada Comtois. I’ve been living, studying, and teaching Bhakti for over 50 years, and have authored 3 award-winning books on it. Welcome.