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Rupa Gosvamin begins the BRS with a definition of what he regards as the highest form of bhakti. "Supreme devotion," he says, "is reverent service (anustlana) of Krsna, in accord with his wishes, without any other desire, and unobstructed by knowledge, action, etc. The key factor here is the exclusion of certain elements that, from the Bengal Vaisnava perspective, render one's devotion less than pure (suddha). The highest bhakti is solely affective, as distinguished from "mixed" devotion (misra bhakti), which includes foreign cognitive or conative elements such as Vedantic gnosis, ritual action, and yogic meditation. Thus at the outset Rupa displays his school's characteristic exaltation of emotionalism over knowledge and simultaneously rejects the stance of other Vaisnava acaryas such as Ramanuja, Madhva, and Vallabha, all of whom make room for knowledge in some form in their definitions of devotion. 48 In doing so, he is of course being faithful to Caitanya's radically emotional spirituality.

133 We have already seen how the Gosvamins' affective emphasis translates into the theological stricture that realization of bhagavat, the highest expression of the Godhead, is possible through bhakti alone--not through karma, jnana, or meditative yoga. Now we learn that not even a trace of these other attitudes is acceptable to the authentic devotee. Of all the Vaisnava schools, the Bengal tradition is perhaps the most emphatic and uncompromising in its assertion that pure ecstatic bhakti is the only true way. 49 This being the case, the absence in this definition of explicit reference to love of the deity or psychic absorption in him, common in other definitions of bhakti, The emphasis on service rather than is noteworthy. 50 psychology is no doubt attributable to the Bengal Vaisnavas' conception of highest salvation, which combines myth and metaphysics in the idea, already mentioned, of the acquisition of a spiritual body and the experience therein of the exquisite joy of attendance on Krsna and his companions in the celestial Vrndavana. It must be born in mind, however, that "service" here means more than bodily works alone. In Rupa's definition, the word anusIlana implies constant reverence and worship, a complete centering of all of one's life-faculties on God, somewhat after the spirit of the Gita, but with a greater cultivation of the

134 purely emotional element. It includes the practice of the various devotional disciplines such as submission to the guru, chanting, worship, devotional dancing, pilgrimage, and so on--in a word, all "endeavors in relation to Krsna."51 Such service naturally assumes affection toward, and continuous mental absorption in, the deity.