What is Bhakti in the Bhagavad Gita?
Bhakti is love directed at God, and the Gita's handling of it changed Indian religion. The root means to share or to belong to, so bhakti carries the sense of participation rather than worship at a distance.
What made it radical is who it was open to. 9.32 says plainly that anyone at all who takes refuge reaches the highest goal, including those the ritual system of the time excluded. No qualification by birth, learning or ritual purity is required. That single verse is one of the reasons the Gita travelled far beyond the circles that produced it.
The other surprise is where bhakti sits in the sequence. You might expect devotion to be the beginner's path and knowledge the advanced one. 18.54 puts it the other way round: having become Brahman and grown calm, the person then attains the highest love. And 18.55 says it is through love that he comes to know Krishna as he actually is, which makes devotion the instrument of knowing rather than its reward.
The verses 16
7.16
Four kinds of good people turn to me, Arjuna: the one in trouble, the one who wants to understand, the one who wants something, and the one who knows.
7.17
Of these, the one who knows stands out - always joined, devoted to one thing only.
8.22
That supreme person, within whom all beings rest and by whom all this is spread out, is reached by devotion given to him and to nothing else.
9.14
Always speaking of me, striving, firm in what they have undertaken, bowing to me with love, always joined - so they worship.
9.22
For those who think of me with nothing else beside, who stay near me, always joined - I carry what they need to get and what they need to keep.
9.26
A leaf, a flower, a fruit, water - whoever offers that to me with love, I take it.
9.29
I am the same toward all beings.
9.34
Keep your mind on me.
11.54
But by devotion to me and nothing else, Arjuna, I can be known in this way, and seen as I am, and entered into.
12.2
Krishna said: Those who settle their minds on me and worship me, always joined, with the highest faith - I consider them the most joined of all.
12.6
But those who give all their actions over to me, who hold me as highest, who meditate on me with undivided practice and worship me…
12.8
Place your mind in me alone, let your reason rest in me.
12.20
Those who take up this nectar of the lasting way, just as it has been told, with faith, holding me as the highest - those devotees are exceedingly dear to me.
18.54
Having become the absolute, clear in himself, he does not grieve and does not want.
18.55
Through love he comes to know me as I am and how much I am.
18.65
Keep your mind on me, love me, offer to me, bow to me.