Only devotional service can lead the being to God, the Supreme Person. Only devotional service can allow the saint, with a realized soul, to meet the Lord face to face. God is drawn to devotional service, so it is in the mastery of this science that Vedic knowledge [of the Vedas, the original holy scriptures] culminates. What is this particular seduction that devotional service exerts so strongly on the Sovereign Lord, and what is the nature of this service?
The Vedic scriptures [of the Vedas, the original holy scriptures] teach us that God, the Supreme Person, the Absolute Truth, is self-sufficient and that maya, the delusion, can never affect him in any way. Also, the power which surpasses the Supreme must be purely spiritual and therefore cannot belong to material manifestation. The bliss enjoyed by the Supreme Lord cannot be material in nature like the impersonal concept of the bliss of the spiritual being. Devotional service is an exchange between two people and cannot be found only in oneself. Therefore, the joy of self-realization cannot be compared to devotional service.
God, the Supreme Person, possesses three varieties of internal energy: The power of pleasure, the existential power, and the cognitive power. We find in the Visnu Purana (sacred book) the following prayer addressed to the Lord:
O my God, support of all that is, the three attributes, the power of pleasure, the existential power, and the cognitive power, exist in You as one and the same spiritual power. Never do the attributes of material nature, the cause of joy, sorrow or a combination of the two, inhabit Your Person, for You are free from all material attributes.
Since the power of pleasure, the personal manifestation of the bliss of the Supreme Lord and the source of his pleasure exists eternally in Him, the theory that the Lord appears on the plane of material virtue cannot be accepted. The conclusion of the impersonalist (one who believes that God is only a Formless, Supreme Spiritual Being) is opposed to the assertion of the original holy scriptures that the Lord possesses a power of transcendental bliss. When the latter is manifested by the grace of the Supreme Lord in the person of a servant of the Lord, it takes the name of love of God. This love of God is another attribute of the blissful power of the Lord. Hence, the devotional service between the Lord and his devotee is a manifestation of this transcendent blissful power. The power which constantly adorns God, the Supreme Person, with pure bliss is not material, as the followers of the impersonalist doctrine would like in their ignorance of the identity of the Sovereign Lord and of his power of pleasure.
These ignorant people cannot understand what distinguishes impersonal spiritual bliss from the variety which characterizes the energy of spiritual pleasure. The Lord obtains all his transcendent pleasure through this power of pleasure, and He confers it on his pure devotee.