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378 Philosophy of the Rāmānuja School of Thought [ch. Gopikā with Krsna, and it is held that the deep emotion is like the erotic emotion that leads to the wedding of the bridegroom with the bride. Bhakti or devotion is described as a special kind of consciousness dissociated from ignorance which reveals itself in the form of a deep emotion. The devotee is supposed to pass through all the stages which a love-stricken woman would do. All the emotions of the devotee, the lover, are for rousing the pleasure of God. Just as a woman's behaviour under the influence of love is intended to bring a smile or twinkle into the eyes of her lover, so the emotion of the devotee is intended solely to please God'. This is regarded as siddha-prema or natural love. Devotees intoxicated by such a love are not necessarily subjected to any kind of code of duty. It is only those whose intoxication by love is so great that they cannot wait and pass through any such discipline as is prescribed in the vaidhi or the upāya stage of prapatti who are driven to embrace God as it were with their melting hearts. The ordinary rules of prapatti are utterly unbinding on these people. In the adoption of prapatti of all the three types mentioned above the personal effort (puruşakāra) necessary is limited to the extent that the individual should hold himself in absolute self-surrender so that God may be inclined to accept even his faults and defects as they are and remove them by His divine grace. In the case of those who are advanced in the stage of prapatti—the paramārtas-God removes even all the prārabdha-karmas and grants them immediate emancipation?.
The person who adopts the path of prapatti is not anxious to attain even emancipation. He has also no specific preference as to the nature of the spiritual emancipation that may be granted to him. To desire emancipation and to attach any preference to any possible state of existence involves an egoistic desire. But the person who has sincerely adopted the path of prapatti must annihilate altogether even the last traces of egoism. On the one side egoism means ignorance, for it is only by false knowledge that a man asserts
ajñāna-nirrtti-prvaka-bhakti-rūpā-pannam jñānam prasādhitam. mahadlitāha-janaka-kāmam samudra-tulvataya tarddhayan megha-sadrsa-tigraho' smat-krsna ity' exam-bhūta-praurtti-hetor bhakter utpādako tarddhakas ca. sa eta hi tasya bhakti-pāratasya-nivandhanā praurttir upāya-phalam ity ucjate.... prāpya-tvarayā stri-eratayā netra-bhramanena etasya sambhramā sare madt'isayā'sum krtra eram atasthā labdha iti tan-mukha-rikāśā-rtham kriyamāņakainkaryatad upeya-ntarbhūtā. Srītacana-bhusana-z'y'ākhyā. MS.
2 etam-bhūtasy'a surira-sthiti-hetuh prārabdha-karme'ti na faktum sakjate sarta-papebhyah mokşayisyāni ity anena virodhāt. Ibid. MS.
