Of all the ideas that guide us in devotional practice, bhāva and rasa are the most subtle, profound, and intimate. They describe the two purest functions of the heart: the way our heart relates to the world in its purest form (bhāva) and the flavour of the soul’s pure and natural love for the Divine (rasa).
The best English translation of ‘bhāva’ is perhaps ‘mood’. And yet there is an important difference between our everyday mood and our spiritual mood (bhāva).
In material consciousness, our mood refers to our general emotional state of mind, temperament, or attitude. Our material mood influences the temporary emotions we experience, which are shaped by the temporary conditions of the material world, our thoughts, or our bodies. Thus we speak of being in a ‘good’ mood (cheerful, excited, calm) and being in a ‘bad’ mood (grumpy, gloomy, anxious), all of which are based on our relation with our bodies and our minds.
In spiritual consciousness, bhāva. refers not to our emotional state of mind, but to the emotional state of soul.
In the course of our practice, once we have reached soul consciousness—the simple realisation that we are souls, not mere temporary bodies—the next step is to realise that this soul exists in an emotional relation with the Divine. Bhāva is the spiritual mood that reflects this emotional relation with the Divine.
If we are in soul consciousness, we are in a bhāva, a spiritual mood. But which bhāva?
Rūpa Gosvamī has explained that several kinds of moods are dominant in Bhakti. There is, for example, the peaceful mood (śānta-bhāva), the mood of service (dāsya-bhāva), the mood of friendship (sākhya-bhāva), the parental mood (vātsalya-bhāva), or the romantic mood (mādhurya-bhāva). These moods can be firmly fixed (sthāyi-bhāva) or chaning (sancāri-bhāva).
(In a different context, bhāva is also the name of a stage in Bhakti practice.)
Our bhāva, the mood of our soul, determines the way that we experience love for the Divine (prema), just like our everyday mood influences how we express feelings toward others in daily life.
The deeper our bhāva, the great will be the love we express. The more evolved our bhāva, the more personal and intimate our love for the Divine will be. And the more full and complete our bhāva, the more intensely and sweetly we will experience the flavours of love for the Divine. This flavour of feelings is called rasa.
While feelings in material consciousness are limited to material consciousness and to mental experiences of our world, spiritual feelings are made of the purest, and most condensed essence of emotions—the very quintessence of feeling. They are the ‘juice’ of feelings, the rasa.
Rasa is transcendental emotion, beyond any material equivalent. It is the only form of feeling that can be shared with God.
Rasa is the most personal, intimate, unique relation with Kṛṣṇa. The rasa of each devotee flows from the individual nature of their soul and the incomparable nature of its relationship with God.
This is why rasa is often described as the flavour of prema. The eternal soul is not in an impersonal relationship with Kṛṣṇa, like a magnet indiscriminately attracting any arbitrary piece of metal. Each emotion between the soul and the Divine is specific, individual, and unique—one of a kind in all of creation. It possesses a flavour that is proper to the individual soul.
This is also why we don’t say that the love of the devotee, like the love of Divine, is simply ‘received’ as if it were a telegram. Instead, we say that because love of the Divine (prema) is pure flavour (rasa), it is to be relished (āsvādana).
Just as the divine love that flows to Kṛṣṇa from the individual souls (prema) causes Kṛṣṇa to relish rasa, and just as the divine love that flows to other jīvas allows them relish rasa, so too does our happiness in loving—simply, purely, and authentically—become an endless source of peace and well-being.