Bhakti as Refusal of Numbness

Bhakti—the path of devotion, emotion, and relational intensity—stands opposed to the numb, managed response that dominates contemporary crisis discourse. Mirabai's bhakti was ecstatic, embodied, uncontained by propriety. Applied to anticipatory grief for civilization, bhakti becomes refusal: a refusal to stay in the cool distance of analysis, to manage feeling, to perform concern without embodied intensity. This is not sentimentality but fierce aliveness. The numbness that grips many in the face of civilization's destabilization is a kind of spiritual death. Bhakti as refusal of numbness means allowing ourselves to feel the full weight of what is changing, to sing and weep and rage, to inhabit our bodies and hearts completely. In this passionate presence, wisdom becomes possible—not the wisdom of detachment but of radical engagement with what matters most.