The second form of bhakti is, in colloquial language, listening to lilas or stories of divine beings. If we think with our rational mind, then these lilas about enlightened beings can help inspire us to accept a different lifestyle, mentality, and mode of behaviour. However, it also has a psychological meaning. It is the nature of the mind to involve itself in constant gossip and criticism. The moment you stop your mind gossiping and criticising, it becomes calm, peaceful and fixed, it begins to experience a different kind of personal nature, which is not attracted to the world of senses and objects. That is the experience of shoonyata, the void, awareness of a different quality manifesting.
We go one step further in our inner transformation to an awareness of qualities which are not manifesting now and rise above the influence of ego and identity, of ‘mine’ and ‘I’, because we identify with our thoughts actions, beliefs, ambitions, ego, the world, family and society. Identification is not bad, but the moment we become indispensable in the process of identification, then ego becomes very powerful. If I begin to think that I am indispensable then my downfall has begun. I have become even more caught up in the grip of my ego, in the identity of ‘mine-ness’.

The third form of bhakti is amaan, to become egoless. In order to be egoless it is necessary to have vairagya and live in the world, but not be of the world. In fact, the entire philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita is based on this very principle – do what you have to do, fulfil your dharma, carry out your obligations, but do not think that you are the indispensable one. Do not have any attachment to the results of the actions, because attachment is another way of identifying with the ego.
I may be attached to something, whether to a person, or to the results of an action. Wherever there is even the slightest inkling of attachment, there is a connection with ego. Possessiveness, desire, ambition are all involved in attachment. To be egoless is to have vairagya, a different vision of life where we are able to experience the state of non-being. I call it non-being in the world of maya. So, vairagya began as the first requirement for the first level of viveka, and the first level of bhakti, and it has come into the third level of bhakti.

The fourth form of bhakti is japa. Japa is not only the repetition of God’s name, or religious and mystical identification. It is not even repetition of a mantra. It is constant remembrance that I, who live in this body, the individual self, and the cosmic self which pervades the entire universe, are one. In japa, the essence has to be realised. A raindrop and water in the river or ocean are two different things, but they are composed of the same essence or matter. If the raindrop thinks that, “I am a raindrop and not of the same essence as water,” then there is a difference. Japa is the process of identifying with the Divine or cosmic Nature. It is a method by which a person who has attained viveka and vairagya can disassociate the individual self from the manifest dimension and link with the cosmic dimension.
However, in order to come to this level of japa, we have to begin with a mantra and a mala, because when we repeat a mantra psychically, changes take place. Externally, we feel a sense of happiness, quietness, peace, contentment, and a release of stress. Other symptoms are experienced internally at a deeper psychic level of which we are not aware. They represent the changing of the energies which govern the body and mind, the awakening of the pranas in the body and mind. Japa is a process of identification between an individual and the cosmic state- sattwa.

Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, Ganga Darshan, 21.11.1994