Chapter One: Rāgamayī Bhakti and Its Vaishnava Tradition
Dancing, rolling on the ground, singing, crying aloud, twisting the limbs, roaring, yawning, drawing long breaths, disregarding public opinion, salivating, bursting into loud laughter, reeling, hiccupping, and similar actions are called anubhāvas: outward expressions through which the feelings of the mind become visible. Anubhāvas are of two kinds, cooling and projective. Singing, yawning, and the like are cooling; dancing and similar movements are projective.
A mind overwhelmed by feelings directly or indirectly related to the Lord is called sattva; what arises from that sattva is called sāttvika. The eight sāttvika-bhāvas are paralysis, perspiration, horripilation, breaking of the voice, trembling, change of colour, tears, and dissolution or fainting.
Varieties of Sāttvika-bhāva
The embodied states are of three kinds: unctuous, infused, and dry. The unctuous kind is principal or secondary. An unctuous state produced through a direct relation with Sri Krishna is principal; one produced through a somewhat indirect relation is secondary. The sāttvika condition of devotees in whom rati has arisen is called infused. A state that appears in a person without rati, sometimes produced by joy, wonder, or another response to hearing the Lord's deeds, is called dry.
All the sāttvika-bhāvas are further divided into four degrees: smoky, flaming, luminous, and intensely luminous. Some authorities add a fifth, supremely luminous. A single embodied state, or several together, that is only slightly manifest and can still be concealed is called smoky. One state fully manifest, or two or three states manifest together and concealible only with difficulty, are called flaming. Three, four, or five intensified states manifest at once are called luminous and cannot be hidden. Five, six, or all the states simultaneously arising at their highest intensity are called intensely luminous. In mahābhāva, these intensely luminous states become supremely luminous and reach their absolute culmination.
There are also semblances of embodied spiritual emotion, of four kinds: arising from a semblance of rati, arising from a semblance of sattva, devoid of sattva, and contrary. The semblance found in seekers of liberation and similar persons arises from a semblance of rati. When a naturally soft heart develops an intensified appearance of joy or wonder, it is called a semblance of sattva; the embodied appearance produced from it is said to arise from that semblance. In a heart superficially soft but inwardly hard, and in an inner being apparently devoted to divine worship—