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According to orthodox Advaita, the liberated saint at death should attain videhamukti or disembodied liberation. Having realized his eternal identity as Brahman, he experiences after the demise of his physical frame no further existence as a separate center of consciousness. His individuality is simply dissolved. What remains is a state of monistic kaivalya ("isolation"), consisting of nothing but the self-luminous oneness of the pure Brahman, from which even the slightest trace of Ignorance (avidyalesa), the smallest remnant of duality that may have persisted in the state of jIvanmukti, has been eliminated. If this is the ultimate destiny of all jivanmuktas, as the soteriology of Advaita seems to require, it would appear necessary to conclude that bhakti cannot continue in the final state of liberation, even for great devotees who have attained the supreme heights of devotion. But, if this is the case, the bhakta will be no better off in the long term than the jnanin who was a non-devotee. Both the devotee and his devotion will in the end dissolve in the absolute unity of Brahman. This, of course, would completely undermine the case for bhakti's being the supreme goal of life. If nothing else, the paramapurusartha must at least be a state which does not come to an end.

311 Madhusudana does not discuss this problem at all, except to indicate almost in passing that the devotional experience, once attained, is eternal. In section IX of the Bhakti-rasayana the objection is raised that, if devotion were something different than knowledge of Brahman, it would be, no matter how desirable, only a temporary goal like the joys of heaven (svarga), which must eventually end in a further earthly incarnation. Our author argues that this is not the case: Heaven and the other goals cannot be enjoyed forever. They can be experienced only at certain limited times and places through certain specific bodies and sense organs, and, moreover, they are pervaded by the two-fold pain of perishability and contingency. So they are certainly not ultimate. The uninterrupted flow of the bliss of devotion, however, is ultimate because it can be enjoyed equally in all times and places without limitation as to body and sense organs, like the fruit of knowledge of Brahman, and because it does not have 3 the two-fold pain of perishability and contingency. This, unfortunately, is all Madhusudana sees fit to tell us. It is obvious here that our author is suggesting that bhakti is not "perishable," that it is an experience that has no end. We feel the need, however, of a more detailed explanation. Does Madhusudana want, as Gupta suggests, to allow jIvanmukti as the sixth stage of devotional experience, but avoid videhakaivalya ("disembodied liberation"), its natural consequence, the devotee can continue to enjoy the bliss of devotion eternally?4 It may be, but how this possibility should be conceived, and how it might be accommodated within the so that

312 framework of Advaita, Madhusudana does not say. The liberated devotee's continued enjoyment of devotional bliss in a celestial realm such as brahmaloka could be imagined as a sort of post-mortem extension of the jivanmukta state. There is the difficulty, though, that in Advaita even brahmaloka is a phenomenal, ultimately impermanent state, the residents of which, as we have seen, attain absolute liberation with the dissolution of that world at the end of a cosmic age. Vaisnava theology avoids this problem by positing a transphenomenal "abode" (dhaman) of God, a supercelestial heaven 5 that is beyond maya and therefore truly eternal. To this divine abode the liberated soul can go to enjoy eternal bhakti. Advaitins, however, cannot recognize the possibility of such a transphenomenal realm; they can admit nothing beyond maya except Isvara and the pure, formless Brahman. It therefore seems that, even if some sort of postmortem existence is granted--as Sankara actually does allow for those enlightened beings to whom the Lord has entrusted certain cosmic "offices" (adhikara) 6--the (adhikara)6--the jIvanmukta-devotee will eventually have to attain videhamukti at the end of the world-age, and therewith lose his experience of bhakti and be content with the mere bliss of moksa. Thus, there is a serious difficulty in the idea of bhakti as an eternal experience of the individual mukta. If Madhusudana wants the notion of enjoying devotion

313 "equally in all times and places without limitation as to body and sense organs" to suggest continued individual experience, and if he wants the eternality of devotion to be based on such experience, the concept of final liberation or videhamukti, like the theory of jIvanmukti, must also be considerably reworked and expanded.