Introduction
39
The Lord taught the Gosvāmī about devotional service, comparing it to a creeper, and He advised him to protect the  bhakti  creeper most carefully against the mad elephant offense against the pure devotees. In addition, the creeper has to be protected from the desires of sense enjoyment, monistic liberation and perfection of the  haṭha-yoga  system. They are all detrimental on the path of devotional service. Similarly, violence against living beings, desire for worldly gain, worldly reception and worldly fame are all detrimental to the progress of  bhakti  or  Bhāgavata-dharma .
Pure devotional service must be freed from all desires for sense gratification, fruitive aspirations and culture of monistic knowledge. One must be freed from all kinds of designations, and when one is thus converted into transcendental purity, one can then serve the Lord by purified senses.
As long as there is the desire to enjoy sensually or to become one with the Supreme or to possess the mystic powers, there is no question of attaining the stage of pure devotional service.
Devotional service is conducted under two categories, namely primary practice and spontaneous emotion. When one can rise up to the platform of spontaneous emotion, he can make further progress by spiritual attachment, feeling, love, and many higher stages of devotional life for which there are no English words. We have tried to explain the science of devotional service in our book  The Nectar of Devotion  based on the authority of  Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu  by Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī.
Transcendental devotional service has five stages of reciprocation.
1. The self-realization stage just after liberation from the material bondage is called the  śānta  or neutral stage.
2. After that, when there is development of transcendental knowledge of the Lord's internal opulences, the devotee engages himself in the  dāsya  stage.
3. By further development of the  dāsya  stage, a respectful fraternity with the Lord develops, and above that a feeling of friendship on equal terms becomes manifest. Both these stages are called  śākhya  stage, or devotional service in friendship.
4. Above this there is the stage of paternal affection toward the Lord and this is called the  vātsalya  stage.
5. And above this stage there is the stage of conjugal love, and this stage is called the highest stage of love of God, although there is no difference in quality in any of the above stages. The last stage of conjugal love of God is called the  mādhurya  stage.
Thus He instructed Rūpa Gosvāmī in devotional science and deputed him to Vṛndāvana to excavate the lost sites of the transcendental pastimes of the Lord. After this, the Lord returned to Vārāṇasī and delivered the