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166
Madhus奴dana started with his pledge to the Bh膩gavata and
thus declared cittav峁泃ti [the mental mode] to be bhakti.
But later on .
he almost unconsciously landed into a
spiritual region where bhakti becomes Bhagavat Himself
28 and not a mere cittav峁泃ti.
Madhusudana is forced in this direction for two
related reasons, though I am not at all not sure that this
movement is unconscious, as Gupta suggests. First, in his
desire to establish that it is the paramapuru峁Ｄ乺tha and the
highest sentiment, he wishes to identify bhakti with supreme
bliss. A mere mental mode, a product of m膩y膩, cannot be
bliss, so Madhusudana has to establish that bhakti is
something greater. 29 But it is axiomatic in Advaita that
only Brahman and Isvara (in the language of the BR,
bhagavat) can be said to be supreme bliss. On this account
alone, then, bhakti must be identified with one or the
other.
Second, Madhus奴dana wants to give devotion an
otological status that is, at the very least, commensurate
with that of mok峁�a. But how can a cittav峁泃ti be placed on a
par with liberation, especially when the latter has been
identified by Samkara as equivalent to the unchanging
Absolute? So again, bhakti must somehow be assimilated to
the supreme principle. The well-known equation of mok峁�a and
Brahman has already closed off one way of accomplishing
this. While the Gosv膩mins give bhakti a near-absolute
status by equating it with the Lord's highest sakti, this