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in order to accommodate their particular religious ends.
Most notable in this connection is their elaboration and
extension of the metaphysical dimensions of rasa-theory in
the interest of allowing the initially literary encounter
with the gopt's Lord to become a distinctly religious
experience. The Gosv膩mins want to create a situation in
which "aesthetic" joy has the potential of genuine, indeed
ultimate, soteriological consequences. Thus the K峁涐梗峁嘺-l墨l膩
is regarded as much more than just another historic or even
supernatural event that has been immortalized by a poet. It
is an ongoing, transphenomenal reality, eternally taking
place on the highest celestial plane.
Imaginative
identification with the story, therefore, if practiced with
sufficient intensity, becomes much more than a source of
aesthetic pleasure, more even than a cause of profound
religious emotion. It is a means of effecting a change in
ontological level, of truly transferring one's being to
K峁涐梗峁嘺's eternal realm or, however briefly, making that world
manifest to the devotee dwelling in the terrestrial sphere.
The metaphysical interest continues in the analysis
of bhaktirasa itself. The permanent emotion of the
devotional sentiment, like that of the poetic rasas, is
latent in the heart of the appreciator.
But in the case of
bhakti, according to the Gosv膩mins, it is not acquired
through ordinary external experience.
The sthayibh膩va of