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At this point, we are finally in a position in which we can piece together and make explicit a reasonably clear picture of the Bhakti-rasayana's for the most part implicit teaching on the relation between bhakti and moksa as "goals of life." To work this out, we need only juxtapose (a) the discussion of the relation between knowledge, non-attachment, and devotion in sections XXV-XXVI; (b) the description of the sixth stage of devotional experience in the commentary on stanza 35, which continues and builds on the thought of (a); and (c) Madhusudana's teaching in both the Gudhartha-dipika and the Bhakti-rasayana on the continuance of bhakti in the state of jivanmukti. Viewed together, these teachings make inescapable the conclusion that our author is depicting devotion in its developed stages as a more advanced and more desirable level of spiritual experience than moksa. The Blessed Lord first appears in the melted mind of the devotee as early as stage five, at which point the 194

195 bhakta is already experiencing the sattvikabhavas ("ecstatic modes"), outward symptoms of an intensely moving inner experience.89 This, however, is only the "sprout" (ankura), the mere beginning, of bhakti. At stage six, the devotee realizes the bliss of the Self, but even this--the final goal of traditional Advaita--is not the end. He goes on to experience and increasingly more blissful levels of spontaneous ecstatic love of bhagavat, plumbing the full range of premabhakti as it was enjoyed by great devotees such as Prahlada and the gopis. Though Madhusudana gives us only a sketchy outline of the higher stages of devotion, it is clear that he regards them as further and more blissful developments beyond the state of Self-realization attained at stage six. If, as we have seen, bhakti, moksa, and yogic samadhi are all forms in which the supreme bliss which is the goal of life may be realized, the implication of the Bhakti-rasayana is that bhakti is the highest of these--that is to say, the highest mode in which the paramapurusartha can be relished.90 This is why, his initial effort to widen the concept of paramapurusartha by transferring that title from liberation to bliss notwithstanding, it is still possible for Madhusudana to speak of bhakti by itself as the highest goal of life. Except for Madhusudana's close verbal identification of bhagavat and the inner Self, and the consequent

196 abstractness of his image of the former, his analysis of the relation between bhakti and moksa is strikingly similar to that presented by the Gaudiya Vaisnavas. As we have seen, the Gosvamins regard the emancipation of the soul from the bondage of mayasakti as preliminary to the emergence of true bhakti. The underlying rationale of Madhusudana's sixth stage is exactly the same, and it accomplishes a similar end: overcoming, through realization of the atman, the hindrances to devotion imposed by bondage to ordinary psychophysical existence. The conception of atman is of course different, but in each case it must be realized in 91 preparation for the highest experience of bhakti. bhagavat.92 On the principle that mystic realization in its nirvisesa ("qualityless") form is much less blissful than savisesa ("qualified") realization, the Gosvamins regard union with brahman to be far inferior to the vision of Again, Madhusudana's analysis of the stages of bhakti reflects a similar attitude. It suggests what for an Advaitin is an almost heretical conclusion, namely, that the nirvikalpaka realization is less, at least experientially speaking, than the savikalpaka. It is almost as if Madhusudana has accepted the classical Vaisnava belief that in Advaitic moksa, since it is a unitive state, bliss is not experienced while in bhakti it is experienced so intensely that the jnanin must remained unfulfilled unless he too can

197 11 taste it in that form. 93 Having defined bhakti as supreme bliss (paramananda), he later on in the Bhakti-rasayana begins to talk of it as preman ("ecstatic love"), which is a key term of the Gaudiya school, as we have seen. He alludes in passing to "the devotion which is of the nature of ecstatic love, and goes on to designate the highest stage of bhakti as "the Supreme Limit of Ecstatic Love."95 Although Madhusudana again is frustratingly vague, it is possible that, since bhakti is both bliss and preman, he is using the latter term to designate the particular kind of bliss experienced in the higher stages of devotion. Preman is the bliss of bhagavat/Brahman, not just attained, but experienced fully and richly in the style of the great devotees of the Bhagavata. This further development and articulation of the ecstatic bliss experience is the chief interest of the theory of devotional sentiment, to which we shall turn in the next chapter. Although, like the Gosvamins, Madhusudana attempts to transfer bhakti from the realm of the mind and its affections to the sphere of the truly real, it is not clear that he carries this task through, with sufficient attention to detail, to a convincing end. We finish reading the Bhakti-rasayana with the feeling that, however impressive the presentation, the question of the final metaphysical value of devotion remains to be considered. The difficulty is the same lack

198 of directness that characterizes the whole text. The reader is forced ascertain the trend of the argument and extend it, on his own, to its logical conclusion. The key, of course, is Madhusudana's identification of bhakti with bhagavat. Because he often speaks as if bhagavat were equivalent to Brahman, it is obvious that he wants to suggest that bhakti shares an equal, i.e., absolute, ontological status. The message of the Bhakti-rasayana is not only that bhakti is an independent path, not only that it is blissful, but also that it is fully real and thus capable of being ejoyed eternally as the supreme goal of human existence. The problems involved in justifying such a conception of devotion in an Advaitic context will be discussed separately in my critical reflections in part III, chapter eight.