Paper short abstract:

In my presentation I would like to discuss traditional Indian theory of aesthetic experience called "rasa theory", appropriated by the Gaudiya Vaishnava theology and practice, as a non-reductionist hermeneutics of religious experience. My presentation will be based on my own ethnographic research of religious experience in the Hare Krishna movement.

Paper long abstract:

Rasa theory, based on existing models present in India, was particularly expounded in the work by Bharata Muni called Nātyasāstra which Indologists date somewhere between 200 BC to 200 AD. This theory of aesthetic experience (rasa), directed primarily to literature and drama tries to account for emotional and contextual elements conducive to the onset of aesthetic experience in a reader or a spectator. Pervasive throughout the works of traditional Sanskrit scholars like Abhinavagupta, Bhoja etc., the rasa theory became a dominant model to theorize but also to create literary or performative art. Rasa theory discusses elements of experience like dominant and auxiliary emotions, stimulants and enhancers of emotions (individuals, contexts, text and embodied performance) and involuntary expressions of emotions.

In 16th century the theory was taken up by Gaudiya Vaishnava theologians like Rupa Goswami who used rasa theory to develop a model of religious experience and consequent religious practices whose sole aim is to arrange situations and activities that are seen as more amenable in induction of the ultimate aesthetic emotion - that of love of God or bhakti. In Gaudiya Vaishnavism rasa theory thus became a model for personal and communal religious transformation. This "embodied aesthetics of bhakti" (Holdrege) as reverberated through Gaudiya Vaishnavism and its offshots offers perhaps a new, yet traditional perspective on human experience that tries to include both its phenomenology and the intersubjectivity, where experience is evoked and mediated rather than caused or transferred.