Chapter One: Rāgamayī Bhakti and Its Vaishnava Tradition
Signs of a devotee in whom Rati has arisen
- Forbearance. Even when disturbances such as the loss of wealth, children, or honour, failure, blame, or illness occur, the mind does not become agitated in the slightest.
- Never wasting time. Not even a moment is squandered on worldly pursuits; throughout life, mind, speech, and body remain continually engaged in activities connected with divine service.
- Detachment. A natural lack of taste for every enjoyment of this world and the next.
- Absence of pride. Although endowed with excellent conduct, thought, and spiritual standing, one remains wholly removed from honour and prestige and respects even the lowly.
- Confident hope. A firm hope in the heart of attaining God and divine love.
- Intense longing. An exceedingly powerful and exclusive longing to attain one's chosen Lord.
- Constant taste for singing the Name. So natural a desire to sing the Lord's sweet and holy names that the singing never ceases, and immeasurable bliss is experienced in every single name.
- Attachment to recounting the Lord's qualities. One sings his qualities and recounts his loving līlās day and night, becoming restless if some unavoidable cause ever prevents it.
- Love for the places where the Lord dwells. An ardent desire to live in Mithila, Awadh, Vrindavan, and the other places where the Lord performed enchanting līlās and whose ground was sanctified by the touch of his feet.
Prema
The deepening of bhāva is called prema. Even if a cause capable of destroying it should arise, prema remains forever and in every respect unbroken: sarvathā dhvaṃsa-rahitaṃ saty api dhvaṃsa-kāraṇe— "entirely indestructible even in the presence of a cause of destruction." [Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, Sthāyī 57]
Prema is of two kinds. The love of a devotee who knows the Lord's greatness and follows only the regulated path is accompanied by knowledge of that greatness. The love of one who follows the path of rāga is generally exclusive—free from knowledge of divine majesty.
As this prema gradually reveals its sweetness, it melts the butter of the heart by its power, like the sun, and develops into sneha. The mature condition of prema is called sneha. Sneha intensifies the experience of the beloved just as oil increases a lamp's heat and light. This state of mind is regarded as inferior, intermediate, or superior. The theorists of rasa also distinguish two essential forms of sneha: ghṛta-sneha, affection like clarified butter, and madhu-sneha, affection like honey. The highest maturation of sneha is called māna, in which speech develops oblique forms that conceal one's own inner condition—