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231
Madhusudana appears at first to follow the universal
K峁涐梗峁嘺ite tendency to regard 艣峁浢眎g膩ra, the love of the gopis
for their Lord, as the highest form of bhakti and the
highest rasa. He describes it as "extremely intense"
(tIvratIvra), "the most powerful" (balavattara) of all
sentiments.83
The gopis, he says, experience the "supreme
sentiment" (paramo rasah), consisting of a sublimely
delectable blending of erotic love, parental love,
friendship, and love-in-fear--a mixture in which, according
to a standard rule of the aestheticians, the resulting
flavor is greater than the sum of its constituent
elements. 84
Following the Vai峁ａ箛ava tradition of imitative
bhakti, he says that a devotee "should subordinate his own
mind to that of the VrajadevIs."85
Such thinking, evident also in Madhus奴dana's
description of the highest stage of bhakti at the end of
chapter one of the BR, 86 shows just how far he is willing to
go, as an Advaitin and a renunciate, to accommodate the
ecstatic devotional mood of the Vaisnavas. The description
of bhaktirasa given in the second and third chapters of the
BR is cast explicitly in terms of the experience of K峁涐梗峁嘺's
companions in V峁沶d膩vana. It is designed to suggest the
manner in which the divine bliss of bhakti can be richly
articulated to include all the ecstatic nuances of the
devotion enjoyed by the gopis and the other bhaktas of the
BP.