The Self Possessed

Indian devotional (bhakti) literature is one of the most prominent genres for discussion of āveśa and allied notions of divine or oracular possession. Vallabhācārya (1479–1531) provides an epitome of this in his commentary on the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa (BhP 10.27.24),¹ entitled “Subodhinī.” Vallabhācārya writes: bhagavadāveśo hi sarvajñatā bhavati (one who is in a state of divine possession becomes omniscient). Bhakti literature is also the most prominent locus for discussion of the aesthetics of possession, a topic that Vallabhācārya and his followers, as well as the Vaiṣṇava disciples of Śrī Caitanya, take up in full. The underlying bhakti context for these notions is established in the Bhagavad-Gītā (BhG), where Kṛṣṇa asserts that those whose “minds are absorbed in me” (mayy āveśya manaḥ; 12.2) are the best among yogins (yuktatamāḥ).² Furthermore, Kṛṣṇa adds that he saves from the cycle of death and rebirth those whose “thoughts are absorbed in me” (mayy āveśya cetasām; 12.7).³ Later bhakti texts explicitly or implicitly follow the Gitā. For example, in the BhP Uddhava addresses Kṛṣṇa, in a statement that could easily be multiplied, “You, O Master, have said that the discipline of devotion [bhaktiyogaḥ], by which the mind, after eliminating all attachment, enters [āviśet] into you, is independent [of other disciplines]” (11.14.2). Bhakti theologians elaborate these statements, eventually expanding the domain of āveśa to include absorption in ontological states within the broad boundaries of saṃsāra, as well as in specified experiential states.

Ānandavardhana, in his great work on poetic theory, the Dhvanyāloka, presents a verse that reads in part:

Abhinavagupta, commenting on this in his Locana, goes so far as to define bhakti in terms of possession or, in the translation of Ingalls et al., absorption: “bhakti is absorption (āvesa) in that (Lord) … whose nature is the highest form of the self, the essence of the universe, born of successive acts of worship preceded by faith, etc. Nothing is found equal to it, nor does anything resemble it.”⁵ One of the important features of North Indian bhakti theology, as already hinted, is its indebtedness to classical poetic theory (alaṃkāraśāstra). Absorption in certain highly specified moods (rasa) is the essence and goal of aesthetic experience, and bhakti was regarded by its advocates as a rasa or mood of compelling spiritual significance.⁶ Indeed, āvesa, rather than samādhi or any other term indicative of self-transcendence adopted from philosophical discourse, became perhaps the primary word for describing a devotional state. This exalted state of devotion retains an experiential component generally considered absent from the experience of samādhi. In the devotional experience of āveśa the experiencer is fully immersed in his or her beloved deity, yet still retains a relationship with that deity.

This sense of separateness within immersion represents the paradox of āveśa as a devotional state. In that state, any one of a number of rasas, particularly śṛṅgāra or erotically adorned love, is fully expressed in the personality and ahaṃkāra of the devotee, while (paradoxically again) leaving the “I” standing.⁷ Abhinavagupta distinguishes the experience of rasa from yogic experience. The former, in his view, partakes in a similar, corresponding, paradox, though he does not refer to it in these terms. In the experience of rasa, one is immersed in one’s own self (svātmānupravesāt) while fully engaging the subtle traces (vāsanā) of our inherent sense of love, among other sentiments (nijaratyādi-vāsanāveśavaśāt). In this statement, Abhinavagupta admits to a complex self (ātman), which is consistent with the self we are proposing as the operative Indic concept, after it is stripped of its thin veneer of institutional brahmanātman theological detritus. Abhinava is speaking not of devotional love or any other devotional state but of aesthetic experience in relation to poetry and drama. Nevertheless, the correspondence is clear and was taken up and adapted by later bhakti theologians, especially Vallabhācārya and the two Gosvāmīs, Rūpa and Jīva in the sixteenth century. This functional paradox, appropriately labeled bhedābheda (nondifference in difference) by the Gosvāmīs, was absent in yogic samadhi.⁸ Thus, in his own fashion, Abhinavagupta hints at a relationship between bhakti and āveśa that was already recognized in the BhP, though he appears to have arrived at this understanding independently of the latter, which hardly, if at all, figures in his work. However, succeeding generations of bhakti theologians were consciously indebted to the BhP for expressing this relationship in narrative discourse, as well as to Abhinavagupta for providing it, albeit independently, with a subtly nuanced analytical apparatus. It is this conjunction of rasa and bhakti that we discuss here.

Vallabhācārya mentions āveśa in several brief works. His Nirodhalakṣaṇa,⁹ a text of twenty verses describing the symptoms (lakṣaṇa) of the highest devotional state (nirodha), contains the following verses: “Indeed, for the benefit of those whose senses have become defiled as a result of immersion in the world [saṃsārāveśa], [I declare that as a general principle] one should connect all the [sense] objects with Kṛṣṇa, the underlying omnipotent Lord. Worldly pain or separation cannot exist for those whose minds are always immersed in [āviṣṭa] the attributes of the destroyer of the demon Mura [viz. Kṛṣṇa]. Their joy is similar to that of Hari.”¹⁰ Similarly, in his own commentary, Prakasa, on the Śāstrārtha section (verse 53cd) of his Tattvārthadīpanibandha (Essay Illuminating the Nature of Truth), Vallabhācārya states that, for one in a state of divine possession (bhagavadavese), the Lord’s own attributes, such as pervasiveness, enter that person, even if the individual soul (jīva) is not itself all-pervasive.¹¹ In the third verse of the Pañcapadyāni, a short text enumerating qualities of those who are best suited to listen profitably to the BhP, Vallabhācārya says: “Those who know, without doubt, Kṛṣṇa as He really is, believing with all the faculties of their heart, are restless either because of possession [āveśa] by the Lord or because of entering into the highest state of bhakti [nirodha], not otherwise.”

The most important Sanskrit commentator on Vallabhācārya, Puruṣottama (mid-seventeenth century), says on a passage from the Bālabodha, a brief tract placing Vallabhācārya’s philosophy in the context of competing systems of thought, that the Supreme Absolute, parabrahman, has entered (āveśya) various ṛṣis in order to compel them to expound different philosophies.¹² For example, claims Puruṣottama, parabrahman as Nārāyaṇa caused Nārada to become possessed (āveśita) so that he would compose Pāñcarātra texts. In the Saṃnyāsanirṇaya, a brief work describing renunciation driven solely by unbearable longing for the Lord, Vallabhācārya says, “There can never be āveśa of Hari of bodies that are overcome by sense objects.”¹³ In his Subodhinī on the BhP, Vallabhācārya refers to the svāminīs (viz. gopīs) immersion in Kṛṣṇa’s creative love games (līlā) as līlāveśa.¹⁴ One final reference may be given, out of the dozens of occasions Vallabhācārya uses the word āveśa. In the Subodhinī, Vallabhācārya cites a verse explaining that if the Lord completely possesses one’s thoughts (cittāveśaḥ) as a result of remembrance of His name and attributes (smaraṇa), Viṣṇu will undoubtedly grant enlightenment (mokṣa).¹⁵ Vallabhācārya articulates this as part of a three-stage process: seeking (anveṣaṇam), absorption into the Lord’s līlās (līlāveśa), and omniscience (bhagavadāveśa). This indicates reciprocity: first, the bhakta enters the Lord’s līlā, then the Lord enters the bhakta. The realization of these latter two stages is represented in the Subodhinī by the twofold initiation into the Puṣṭimārga mantras, the first consisting of eight syllables (aṣṭākṣara), the second of five (pañcākṣara).

Vallabhācārya’s Nirodhalakṣaṇa, verses 17–19, addresses the importance of total sensory commitment to the Lord’s sevā or fully embodied performative service. Not only should all the sense organs contribute, but so should certain bodily functions that are rarely mentioned in this context. The verses translate:

Puruṣottama emphasizes that this verse describes bhagavadāvesa, possession by the Lord. If a person possesses all the qualities of the divine, then that person is worthy of being treated as divine. These archetypal qualities (guṇas) that achieve full perfection in the “person” of the lord are majesty (aisvarya), potency (virya), glory (yasas), beauty (sri), knowledge (jñāna), and dispassion (vairāgya).¹⁷ The nature of this possession is illustrated by the maxim (nyāya) of fire and an iron ball (vahnyayogolakanyāya). If an iron (ayas) ball (golaka) is thrown into the fire (vahni), it becomes fiery. By taking on the guṇas of the Lord, an individual can actually become divine. Puruṣottama refers here to Brahmasutra 3.3.20, sambandhād evam anyatrāpi, and Vallabhācārya’s Aṇubhāṣya on it,¹⁸ which states explicitly that in performing the proper spiritual practice one takes on or becomes possessed by the characteristics of the Lord, like the iron ball coming in contact with fire.¹⁹ Puruṣottama states in his Bhāṣyaprakāśa on this sūtra that it is the Lord who possesses the bhakta, not the reverse, and as a result some of the Lord’s attributes manifest in the devotee.²⁰

Thus, Vallabhācārya uses āveśa in several related senses: the Lord and his attributes entering and pervading a devotee, the devotee entering the Lord or his līlās, or the supreme brahman pervading an individual. In addition, thoughts can be pervaded and an individual can become completely immersed in the world (saṃsāra). Indeed, saṃsārāveśa (possessed by the cycle of birth and death) is a common term in texts of the Vallabha tradition (sampradāya). Thus, as in the compounds līlāveśa, saṃsārāveśa, and other frequently attested terms such as akṣarāveśa (absorbed in the absolute), the Vallabha sampradāya employs the word āveśa to indicate immersion in existential or psychological states. It is important to note that, in the Vallabha sampradāya and other North Indian bhakti traditions, āveśa indicates an intensity of engagement, a state clumsily regarded (or disregarded) as “emotionalism” by countless scholars and commentators. It is this intensity that sets bhakti apart from full partnership in the ethos of control advanced by previous incarnations of systematic brahmanical thought. It is not that bhakti is not brahmanical—far from it. But it participates equally in a “vernacular” ethos thinly veiled by both the obvious Sanskritization of vernacular narrative in texts, such as the BhP, and the proliferation of an experientially based vocabulary in regional Indic languages. This includes the extensive use of āveśa and, in South Indian Tamil devotional poetry, of the word aruḷ indicating, as Handelman and Shulman have shown, “‘possession’—a presence intensified beyond bearing—or the experience of the deity’s true (nija, aghora) form.”²¹ As is clear from investigations in earlier chapters, these represent strong continuities from the Ṛgveda and the early and medieval Tamil poems, which must be regarded as vernacular and orthodox.

The material on āveśa in the Gauḍīya (Bengali) tradition of Kṛṣṇa bhakti is equally rich and is consistent with these findings. I shall briefly examine a few passages from the works of Jīva and Rūpa Gosvāmī, the two greatest disciples and successors of Śrī Caitanya (1486–1533). One of the important and unique uses of āveśa in this tradition, explicated by Rūpa, occurs in the term āveśāvatāra. Avatāras may be either full or partial “descents” or appearances of the Lord in the world, manifested for the purpose of performing a specific action or series of actions. Rūpa’s Saṃkṣepa-Bhāgavatāmṛta (Concise Nectar of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa) catalogues various types of avatāras. Āveśāvatāras are, in the words of S. K. De, “not real Avatāras but Avatāras by analogy; because here the Lord enters into particular Jīvas and thus exalts them into Avatāras.”²² These avatāras share the essence of the Supreme Lord (svarūparūpa), but possess only a fraction of his power (śakti). Jīva Gosvāmī, one generation after Rūpa, refines Rūpa’s views in his Śrīkṛṣṇasandarbha. According to Jīva, various sages are “in possession” (āvesa) of different aspects of the Lord’s power: his jñānaśakti or power of knowledge, his bhaktiśakti or power of devotion, and his kriyāśakti or power of action. Occasionally, adds Jīva, a special devotee is possessed wholly by the Lord (svayamāvesa).²³

The earliest available account of the life of Śrī Caitanya, perhaps composed during his lifetime, is the Sanskrit Caitanyacaritāmṛta by Murārigupta. Murāri reports that, at various moments in his life, Caitanya revealed himself as an āveśāvatāra of Kṛṣṇa, based on his experiences of āveśa of Varāha, Nṛsiṃha, and Saṃkarṣaṇa.²⁴ Śrī Caitanya’s frequent bouts of divine intoxication resembled states of madness or possession, reminiscent of such accounts in ethnographies. One such account is recorded in a later vernacular Caitanyacaritāmṛta, this one the better-known Bengali version by Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, completed by 1615. This text records that on Vijayadaśamī, the festival day on which Rama’s victory over the demon king Rāvaṇa is celebrated, while Caitanya’s disciples acted out the roles of Hanumān’s monkey-soldiers, Śrī Caitanya himself “was inspired with the spirit of the devoted Hanumanta [hanumān avese]. And so he took branches and felt as if he was on the wall of Lanka and was about to break it down. For he cried out in rage [krodhāvese], ‘Where art thou, O Ravana? Thou hast stolen the Mother of the world, so I shall kill thee with all my kinsmen.’”²⁵ In view of these accounts, the question may be posed whether other experiences of āveśa by individuals without biographers who lived in times much more remote to twentieth-century ethnography and linguistic idiom might also have resembled spirit or deity possession in forms recognizable from ethnographies. We will return to this question in the conclusions, but for the moment we can say that there appear to be continuities, though different social, cultural, and sectarian conditions forced differences as well.

Just as āveśa of the Lord or of his exemplary devotees, the denizens of Vraja, indicates to Vallabhācārya an exalted state of grace, the followers of Caitanya also maintain that “[p]erfection, or salvation, is … understood as total absorption (āvesa) in an eternal body which resides in Vraja.”²⁶ This is to be accomplished by rāgānugābhakti-sādhana, “devotional practice in which one imitates the passion (of the denizens of Vraja in their archetypal relationships with Kṛṣṇa).” This is described at length by David Haberman and involves “total identification with and absorption in (āveśa) the world of the dramatic character.”²⁷ These characters include several of Kṛṣṇa’s associates mentioned in the BhP, especially as they are represented in dramatic performances such as Kṛṣṇa līlās. It is such “identification with and absorption in” characters known, studied, and felt that offers the devotee an opportunity of ecstatic participation in the Lord’s līlās. In his Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu (1.2.272), Rūpa states that this ecstatic participation is passion (rāga) of the highest absorption (paramāviṣṭatā), because this is Kṛṣṇa’s own true passion.²⁸

The related notions of possession and embodiment are confronted in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school not only in its doctrines of avatāra and āveśa but also in a doctrine of multiple embodiment. Avatāra, as we have seen, has many (indeed, innumerable possible) gradations and types of manifestation, all emanating from the top down, from Kṛṣṇa’s own unimaginable motivations and actions. We also saw that the devotee, the bhakta, is capable of exploring these nuances from the bottom up, so to speak; this is one of the possibilities of bhakti-induced āveśa. In an environment in which manifestations and degrees of divinity are matters of doctrine, it is not surprising that humans too are empowered to explore and occupy multiple bodies. In the version of the doctrine fixed by Rūpa Gosvāmī in the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu and the commentaries on it, the physical body is called the sādhaka-deha or sādhaka-rupa. It is this body that is visible to others. But advanced devotees are able to perform divine service (sevā) not just with their physical bodies but with their meditative bodies (siddha-rūpa, siddha-deha) as well.²⁹ Haberman describes the siddha-rūpa as:

The most striking consequence of this belief is the male practice of dressing as a woman in performing personal or public sevā. This cross-dressing enables male bhaktas to self-identify more closely with the milkmaids (gopis), the ideal people. This, they believe, intensifies the quality of their devotion and allows them to become more seamlessly possessed of the gopī with whom they feel an affinity. This practice, Haberman says, was never particularly common, though anyone who spends much time in Braj will occasionally see such devotees. The self-identification can be so strong, the devotion so single-minded, that the devotee truly believes he is performing his sevā, singing, dancing, or chanting, with his siddha-rūpa, though others can see only the sādhaka-rūpa. This has parallels with festival possession examined earlier from the ethnographies in Tamilnadu, Tulunad, Kerala, Garhwal, Assam, and elsewhere. Although the possession here is not oracular, it is, like the others, bhakti-induced and notably ecstatic. And, like a few of the others, it encourages gender interchangeability.³² The difference is that the present tradition is robustly Sanskritic—representing a departure from what we find in South India, Garhwal, and so on, which are traditions transmitted beyond the pale of Sanskritic culture. Although it is uncertain whether the cross-dressing is mentioned in any Sanskrit text,³³ strongly suggesting that it was originally a local non-orthodox practice, the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu (1.2.294–295) appears to know and condone this practice when it states that a practitioner of rāgānugābhakti-sādhana who strongly desires such an emotional experience (tadbhāva) should remember Kṛṣṇa and his various stories and exploits, intensely identify with the resident of Vraja (viz. a gopī) who is most beloved (preṣṭha) to him, then imitate that person with both his sādhaka-rūpa and his siddha-rūpa. I deal further with this cultural dynamic between folk and classical, this “vernacularization” of Sanskrit traditions, in the general conclusions in Chapter 13.

The following story further augments the relationship between devotional self-identification and possession. This extraordinary account is found in the commentary by Priyā Dās, written in 1712, with further elucidations by subcommentators, on Nabhadas’s Bhaktamāl. In this account of the performance of a Kṛṣṇa līlā near Puri, the actor playing the role of Narasiṃha, the man-lion incarnation of Viṣṇu, became so engrossed in, or possessed by, the character he was playing that he actually killed and eviscerated the actor playing the demon-king Hiraṇyakaśipu, an avowed enemy of Viṣṇu. In order to prove that the actor was himself innocent, and not personally responsible for the murder, he was asked by the court to take the role of Daśaratha, the father of Rāma, in another līlā. Following the story line of the Rāmāyaṇa, the actor, so engrossed in—or possessed by—his character, attained such a degree of sorrow at Rama’s exile that he actually died of grief during the performance, thus proving his innocence.³⁴ As if once were not enough, Sarah Caldwell states that, at several temples at the other end of India, in Kerala, “we were told legends of the accidental murder of the actor playing Dārika by the actor playing Kāḷi, who lost control and became too strongly identified with his bloodthirsty heroine.”³⁵ In these accounts we find a clear lack of distinction between spirit or deity possession, intense absorption in emotion, and acting.³⁶ Perhaps the point is not to distinguish them, but to recognize that they share certain features and are identified in a similar manner, with similar vocabulary, by the indigenous culture. Some of the repercussions of this are explored below.

In view of these accounts of possession in the performances of the Kṛṣṇa and Rām līlās, can we ask whether the equivalent of “dramatic possession” is found in Sanskrit theater? The answer appears to be a qualified “yes.” We should be careful, however, not to confuse possession with other altered states. For example, in Kalidasa’s rendition of the tale of Purūravas and Urvaśī, Purūravas wanders about in a state of madness born of extreme longing for his beloved Urvaśī, who had disappeared in a sage’s garden (Vikramorvaśīya, Act 4). Although one can say that Purūravas is possessed with longing for Urvaśī and that he exhibits many of the same mental and physical symptoms of spirit or deity possession, he cannot be possessed in the sense being addressed here. Kālidāsa likely would have called it āvesa, praveśa, and so forth had he intended it in the primary meanings discussed here. Nevertheless, the proximity of Purūravas’s experience demonstrates that it is probably unwise to label an experience “possession” unless the sources provide direct support. Sanskrit texts tend to be precise to a fault, even if interpretation is occasionally warranted. In spite of frequent self-censorship of possession and emotion in general, especially in the colonial period, as discussed earlier, most Sanskrit authors, especially dramatists, poets, and redactors of religious and secular tales, had the means to point the reader in that direction.

It is important at this point to enquire about whether, or indeed the degree to which, the imitation participates in the essence or quintessence of possession. In support of Kalidasa’s Purūravas, we again turn to Vallabhācārya. He asks in the second verse of his brief Nirodhalakṣaṇa: “Will the Lord bestow on me that pleasure that the gopis as well as all the residents of Vraja enjoyed in Gokula?” Puruṣottama, commenting on this, invokes the “maxim of delirium resulting from deep attachment” (āsaktibhramanyāya). As a result of deep attachment and longing, it is possible to become delirious and behave as if one is really in the presence of the longed-for individual. Puruṣottama cites the classic example of the longing of the milkmaids after the disappearance of Kṛṣṇa from the great circle dance (rāsalīlā; BhP 10.29–33). After Kṛṣṇa disappears, one of the milkmaids begins playing with her comrades, acting as if she were herself Kṛṣṇa and they were Yasodā. Following her example, the others reciprocate. To whatever extent this might be drama or ritual, complicating the balance of spontaneity and control, the point is that it was enacted in order to help disclose their bhāva or emotional state. The gopis were not, of course, Kṛṣṇa and Yasodā, at least in their occupations as milkmaids, nor are they explicitly described as entering into states of possession. But their mental states so closely resemble possession states that they are referred to as bhāvāveśa or līlāveśa. And in this way they became Kṛṣṇa and Yaśodā, at least temporarily.

In this way, āveśa becomes closely connected with bhāva. The latter has the general meaning of “becoming, existing, a state of being” but more generally indicates “nature, condition, emotion, mood, experience.”³⁷ It is “as much an emotional as a cogitative state and is not ideational at all.”³⁸ It is the word usually employed when speaking of devotional experience, emotion, absorption, a state of being.³⁹ Bhakti poets speak of bhāva, in which the devotee partakes of the nature of the deity, in terms akin to possession, including entry, immersion, ecstasy, insanity, and loss of self-consciousness. The following passages from the BhP illustrate the proximity of āveśa to bhāva. In the eponymous Bhramara-Gīta (BhP 10.47), the gopīs praise a black bee (bhramara) said to be the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, in disguise. Kṛṣṇa responds: “Having totally immersed [āveśya] your mind, which is completely devoid of [other] tendencies, in me, meditating uninterruptedly on my form [anusmarantyaḥ], you will soon come to me.”⁴⁰ This is nearly identical to BhG 12.2 and other passages cited above, but an experiential means, cognitive operation, or mood—in other words a bhāva—is indicated here. Bhāva, then, indicates that an immersion into an experience, an āvesa, has already occurred. In the rāsalīlā section of the same book (skandha) of the BhP, Kṛṣṇa explains to the gopīs that “bhāva of me results from hearing [my praises], seeing [me], meditating [on me], and singing [about me], not from close physical proximity to me” (BhP 10.29.27).⁴¹

The difference between āveśa and bhāva seems to be that āveśa is a state of “open” absorption, in that the elements of the experience as well as the identity of the experiencer can shift in different directions, while bhāva denotes a specific experiential state in which the identity of the experiencer is not necessarily threatened. In bhakti-induced āveśa, the very self-identity of the experiencer is reconstituted by the Lord’s presence and bliss as the devotee “comes to” the Lord, which in the case of the BhP implies entrance into the Lord’s līlā (divine play). Bhakti induced bhāva, in contrast, is a mood that allows the devotee to experience grace, in this case Kṛṣṇa’s, while not necessarily entering into the creative forces (or līlā) that inhere in that grace. Another passage in the BhP describes āveśa as a liberating condition, something that cannot necessarily be said of bhāva: “Even while engaged in action, one whose thoughts are absorbed [āviṣṭacittaḥ] in your lotus feet—hearing, reciting, contemplating, and causing others to remember [saṃsmarayan] your auspicious names and forms—is not destined for rebirth” (10.2.37). Bhāva, an “emergent mood”⁴² engendered by devotional absorption, is characterized by a depth of mood familiar to āvesa. However, āveśa is a deeper and more generalized experience that can be induced only by more advanced devotees. Anyone may experience bhāva, but very few can experience true āvesa.

An illuminating description of this distinction may be found not in a Sanskrit text but in the Bengali Kathāmṛta, the biography of the nineteenth-century saint Ramakrishna, by “M” (Matsyendranath Gupta). It is striking that Ramakrishna’s frequent states of divine intoxication resonate with those of Śrī Caitanya (a fact that Ramakrishna himself did not fail to notice—indeed, he claimed to be an incarnation of Śrī Caitanya). In this text the terms bhāva and āveśa are brought together in an example of a usage that is still attested in contemporary North Indian spiritual discourse.⁴³ Jeffrey Kripal notes that the Kathāmṛta records Ramakrishna as bhāvāviṣṭha (established in ecstasy) and samādhiṣṭha (established in union).⁴⁴ Kripal has not fully grasped the distinction between the two. In fact bhāvāviṣṭha is better translated as “immersed in bhāva” (āviṣṭha here should be read as āviṣṭta)⁴⁵ or “possessed by divine experience.” The Kathāmṛta describes Ramakrishna’s states of ecstasy in the following terms: “When Ramakrishna is in samādhi, his body becomes motionless, his eyes and lips are parted slightly in pleasure, his lips are sealed in a smile. In bhāva, on the other hand, he can move, even dance, and his lips are free to talk, even if his speech is garbled in its ecstatic drunkenness.”⁴⁶ In this text, at least, āveśa and samādhi are implicitly equated and are distinguished from bhāva, which is clearly an ecstatic state coincident with ordinary relational activity.

It is not without interest that the term bhāvāveśa appears perhaps as early as the seventh century, in the farcical drama Mattavilāsa, supposedly composed by the Pallava king Mahendravarman, also the reputed author of the Bhagavadajjukā. In the prologue, the sūtradhāra introduces a besotted tantric skull-bearer (kapālī) as one whose pilgrimage through the three worlds is characterized by many moods (rasa) as a result of immersion in (divine) experience (bhāvāveśavaśād).⁴⁷ The state of bhāvāvesa in the Mattavilasa is similar to Ramakrishna’s bhāvāviṣṭ(h)a in that the bhāva is the experiential state, while the āveśa is the means by which it is experienced. In other words, āveśa here denotes a process that also helps to define an experiential state.

In this connection, it is relevant to reprise an observation by A. K. Ramanujan on Nammāḻvār, the great Tamil saint whose poetry predates by several centuries the works of Vallabhācārya and Rūpa Gosvāmī. Nammāḻvār “speaks frequently of being entered, filled, taken over, enslaved as well as enabled by a divine being,”⁴⁸ characteristics of possession found in contemporary ethnographies. Although Nammāḻvār wrote in Tamil, this description could be extended to many Sanskrit authors. In this way, bhāva adds a dimension of emotional intensity to the Vedic āvesa, in which the (ostensible) instigator is not the possessor but the one being possessed. Āveśa and bhāva tew appear to share this feature, except that bhāva adds a dimension of emotional clarity and direction to the āvesa.

One of the characteristic features of “alternative” advaita theologies—including the viśiṣṭādvaita (qualified nondualism) of Rāmānuja, the śuddhādvaita (pure nondualism) of Vallabhācārya, and the acintyabhedabheda (inconceivable nondifference in difference) of Śrī Caitanya and his disciples—is that the universe and the Lord are held to be equally real and equally absolute.⁴⁹ This may be seen in the sense of identification of the sādhaka-rupa and the siddha-rupa in rāgānugabhakti-sādhana described above and in Vallabhācārya’s assertion that an image or (otherwise considered) representation of Kṛṣṇa is not a representation of the Supreme Lord, but his actual embodied form (svarupa). This continuum of reality from the absolute to the relative introduces one of the problematic issues involved in possession. If the universe is held to be false (mithya) or illusory (māyā), or as matter and spirit ontologically and phenomenologically separate, then any animation, any discernible sign of life may be construed as spirit animating, taking control of, possessing matter. This would be similar to cases we have discussed, in which brahman possesses intrinsically inert, insentient, imagined, and thoroughly malleable form, or puruṣa animates prakṛti but remains ever distinct from it. The corpse of the dead king Amaruka is just that—a corpse, dead, inert, insentient, devoid of divine essence, a mere product fortuitously placed. In this way, all life is nothing but possession—the “natural” interpenetration of spirit and matter—and phenomena otherwise regarded as possession are little more than embellishments on that theme, a more nuanced or higher order of possession. Irrespective of how such a general notion might interact with formal philosophical doctrine, most possession accounts in religious literature and Sanskrit fiction endorse this separation, at least for dramatic or narrative purposes. Indeed, the dramatic gravity of accounts of possession in the Upaniśads, the Kathāsaritsāgara, and the MBh, for example, would be severely diminished if this ontological gap were not assumed.

However, in Vallabhācārya’s suddhādvaita the entire universe is divinized; brahman, always called akṣarabrahman in the Vallabha school, is regarded as the body of Kṛṣṇa. Thus the Lord cannot interpenetrate with the universe as a separate insentient entity. Furthermore, all beings (jīvas) are regarded as particles of the Lord (bhagavadaṃśa), thus the nature of their relationship with akṣarabrahman is similar to that of the Lord himself. Just as embodiment is divinized, āveśa is, in the idiom readily employed in the texts of the Vallabha school, ādhidaivikī (divine), rather than ādhibhautikī (worldly). This distinction may be useful with respect to the material reviewed here: ādhidaivikī possession must bear the extra weight of special philosophical or theological context, while ādhibhautikī possession, devoid of this weight, has greater narrative and dramatic freedom. The former is limited to certain highly developed bhakti contexts (it is doubtful that devotional possession noted by anthropologists, for example, that described by Caldwell, Vogt, or Sax, would be situated in theological contexts similar to that of Vallabhācārya), while the latter dominates elsewhere, including that described in the Upaniṣads, the MBh, yoga, and the medical literature.

The devotional context of āveśa would not be complete without looking at related uses of the central concept of bhakti, namely love, applied in human situations, in which devotional love is also arguably manifest. Hara cites several relevant passages from the Kathāsaritsāgara (KSS) in which āveśa is linked with the word smara (erotic love): e.g., smarāviṣṭa (possessed by erotic love; KSS 81:55); smarajvarāveśavivaśa (in a swoon as a result of possession by lovesickness; KSS 119.156); ārūḍhasmarāveśa (overcome by sexual conquest; KSS 65.230).⁵⁰ The Prakrit drama Karpūramañjari (2.1) by Rājasekhara (c. 900 C.E.) also employs the word āvesaṃ as “amorous passion.” In the Rāmāyaṇa (5.1.33) we also find the expression vīryam āviveśa (possessed by virility). The meanings of Tamil aṇaṅku (“woman” and “possession”) were occasionally conflated. Burrow states, “Sexual desire and lovesickness can also be regarded as a kind of possession and be denoted by the word aṇaṅku.” He provides the following verse: “They say that infatuation with deceiving women for those devoid of discriminating knowledge is possession by an evil spirit” (āyum aṟiviṉar allārkk aṇaṅk eṉpa / māyar makaḷir mayakku / Kuṟaḷ 918).⁵¹ The valorization of evil and diminution of women displayed here is not shared in most of these texts. Nevertheless, these terms share syntactical territory with English expressions such as “possessed by an idea” and “possessed by a desire.” Neither the English nor the Sanskrit are “possession” in the sense strictly applied by anthropologists, but they express a pressing immediacy, a passion or passionate intent, which are indicative of the category of possession attested in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil texts, and apparently in English as well.

5. tvam eva paramātmasvarūpo viśvasāras tasya bhaktiḥ śraddhādipūrvaka upāsanākramajas tadāveśas tena tulyam api na labdham āstāṃ tāvat tajjātīyam; see also Ingalls et al. 1990:655. A sensitive study of the relationship between the words śraddhā, kṛpā, anugraha, and prasāda would greatly enhance our understanding of bhakti. Steps in this direction are: Bhattacharya 1971; Hoens 1969; Jamison 1996: 176–184. Bhattacharya and Jamison note, appositely for Abhinavagupta’s definition of bhakti, that in sraddhā the senses of trust and confidence seem to precede that of faith.

15. Subodhinī on BhP 10.2.37: smaraṇena kriyāḥ purṇāś cittāveśaś ca tatra hi | jñānakriye yadā viṣṇus tadā mokṣo na saṃśayaḥ || See also Tattvārthadīpanibandha 45c–46b: vairāgyaṃ sāṅkhyayogau ca tapo bhaktiś ca keśave | pañcaparveti vidyeyaṃ yathā vidvān hariṃ viśet || (The fivefold knowledge through which a wise person may enter into Hari are dispassion, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, austerities, and love for Krṣṇa). The process of entering can thus work both ways: Hari entering the devotee or the devotee entering Hari.

17. Lālūbhaṭṭa, in his Prameyaratnārṇava (cf. Das 1986:37), a Puṣṭimārga text of the late seventeenth century, cites Muṇḍaka Up. (iti śruteḥ) 3.2.9 in elaborating on this: brahmavid brahmaiva bhavatīti śruteḥ brahmabhāve sati bhagavaddharmāveśe jāyamānasya vyāpakatvasya bhagavadvākyaviṣayatvāt. The point here is that the experience of brahman (brahmabhāve sati) brings onto the devotee the qualities of the Lord (bhagavaddharmāveśa).

28. “Passion (rāga) is the state of being naturally and completely absorbed [paramāviṣṭatā] in the beloved; that form of devotion that consists of such passion is here declared to be Rāgātmikā” (Haberman 2003:76–77). Elsewhere, Haberman duly notes that “[t]he practitioner of bhakti, however, never identifies with Kṛṣṇa. This fact distinguishes bhakti from Tantric visualization and identification, where the practitioner does identify with the god” (1988:192n40). See Delmonico’s comments on the term paramāviṣṭatā in his review of Haberman 1988: “Āviṣṭatā is another form of āvesa, which means mental or emotional absorption in an idea or person. Thus, rāga or passion in the context of Rūpa’s discussion means a spontaneous or natural paramount absorption in the desired object, in this case Kṛṣṇa. Both Jīva and Visvanātha say that this state of absorption is an effect through which Rūpa means to point to its cause, a thirst or desire consisting of love (preman)” (Delmonico 1993:145). Rūpa’s meaning is that supreme emotional absorption in Kṛṣṇa is in fact the highest access to him.

30. Haberman 1988:89. He lists three other terms for this body: bhagavatī-tanu, vaikuṇṭha-mūrti, and mukta-puruṣa. A related doctrine is found in the Puṣṭimārga, in Harirāya’s commentary, called Bhāvprakāś, on the Brajbhāṣā vārtās or “histories” written by Gokulanātha, one of the grandsons of Vallabhācāṛya. These include the tales of the 84 disciples of Vallabhācārya (Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā) and the 252 disciples of Viṭṭhalnāthjī, Vallabhācārya’s second son (Dosau Bāvan Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā). Harirāya’s commentary and its doctrine of triple embodiment, called tin janma (three lives), requires further study. Briefly, however, the three janmas are the adhibhautika, the body of the individual before initiation into the Puṣtimārga, the adhyātmika or spiritual body reconstituted after brahmasambandha, the Puṣtimārga rite of initiation, for use in sevā and in discourse with other bhaktas, and the adhidaivika or divine body as a consort of Kṛṣṇa’s (e.g., Candrāvalī) adopted for use in the eternal lila, in Goloka.

36. The eminent Indian archaeologist, Dr. M. S. Nagaraja Rao, a native of Mysore, informs me that his father, M. Srinivasa Rao (1900–1955), a noted actor who performed with a traveling troupe in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamilnadu for three decades, was best known for his role as Hanumān in the Laṅkādahana drama. In this play Hanumān leads the army of monkeys and bears to Laṅkā to rescue Sītā from the clutches of Rāvaṇa. Srinivasa Rao would prepare for this role by fasting and living a celibate life, qualities for which Hanumān was celebrated. He would break his fast only during the drama itself, after sacking Laṅkā, by dining on bananas, continuing his Hanumān bhāva.

48. Ramanujan 1981:117. See Chapter 4 for the Tamil terms. See also Gold 1987:94ff. Vaiṣṇava texts, particularly those on Kṛṣṇa bhakti emphasize correctly generated bhāva, in which the bhakta is consumed by love for Kṛṣṇa. Also relevant here is the view of Śrī Aurobindo, who concludes, with respect to bhakti, that after enlightened realization has occurred, strenuous activity to maintain it is not necessary because “knowledge of the Divine takes possession of one’s consciousness on all levels” (Ghose 1971:307).

50. Hara 1979a:270n56; also KSS 22.113, 95.23: madanāviṣṭa (madana = smara); 37.205, smarāveśavivaśa; also Rāmāyaṇa 3.44.13, 46.17: manmathaśarāviṣṭa (overcome by the arrow of Eros) (Manmatha is also identical to Smara, both being names of Kāma[deva], the God of love); Skanda Purāṇa 3.3.22.56: smarāveśa (excitement due to love); Matsya Purāṇa 154.246: nāveśaṃ samapadyata (not fallen victim to passion); Madanaketucarita 73, a mid-eighteenth-century text on erotics, has the term bhāvāvesāsnigdhatārā (love as total immersion in passion). See also Bṛhaddevatā 7.46–47, where pra√viś, a more logical choice for sexual entrance, is employed: bhagāntaram pravisya (having entered inside her vulva) (the Maruts entering the vulva of Ghoṣā), and above, chapter 6 notes. It is relevant to note that the visual depiction of complete swooning to the forces of interpersonal love, an acceptable kind of possession in India, is readily available in Hindi cinema. I suspect that this aesthetic has a long history; see, for example, the 1960 classic film Barsaat ki Raat.