Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship

—one rasa and one embodied form. The discipline of all these servants is to worship Sri Sita-Rama through their respective qualities. The male group always attends to outward affairs, while the divine women remain engaged in inward, bliss-increasing play. Rama is the very form of rasa: raso vai saḥ—“He is rasa.”

Rama cannot remain without Sita, nor Sita without Rama, even for an instant: Rāmo na Sītayā śūnyaḥ, Sītā Rāmaṃ vinā na hi.

The manifestation of amorous worship

The amorous rasa is not a means toward some further result; it is an eternally perfected reality. To imagine that it consists merely in a couple meeting and experiencing the pleasure born of sexual union is a profound error.

The amorous mystery worshipped by great perfected beings such as Shiva, Sanaka, and his brothers—within whose ocean of bliss they remain immersed—is divine, eternal, perfected, and self-manifest. The beloved Sita and Rama are the eternal form of desire itself. Through eternally varied modes of play, they continually raise the waves in the current of bliss belonging to the amorous rasa. This rasa is an avatāra of the Self whose nature is being, consciousness, and bliss.

The feminine principle is foremost in increasing the joy and exaltation of this rasa, and this bliss is available to all of us in the receptive feminine mode.

Though omniscient and omnipotent, Rama remains restless with thirst for love and continually produces love within his devotees through manifold play. Rama’s supreme devotees function as men in outward affairs, but in the inward work all are divine women. In reality, a single rasa divides and flowers as male and female companions.

Janaki is the inspirer of the inward activity. She is the sovereign, and therefore all follow her will; Ramachandra himself is governed by her desire. Rama and Janaki exist in perfect harmony. If their manifested forms were simply one, rasa could not arise. Their very form is amorous delight. There is no fixed enjoyer and enjoyed: the One becomes two within a single līlā, for līlā and for savouring its rasa. This is duality within nonduality—the play of two within one, or of the One as two: one Self, two bodies.

“Rama” is explained as he in whom devotees delight and who delights in them:

Devotees of rasa delight in Sri Rama, the abode of innumerable divine qualities, and Sri Rama himself delights in those devotees. Therefore he is called Rama.

Just as the ocean is wholly water and honey wholly sweet, Rama is rasa within and without. He is the form and substance of rasa. What, then, need be said of women? So compelling is the beauty of his form that even men who behold him may long to become women and receive the happiness of embracing him.¹