ruci [desire, interest, pleasure, relish, taste, wish]
In the Gaudiya tradition we meet the term ruci in Rūpa Gosvāmī’s famous explanation of the nine stages of Bhakti.
The process begins with faith (śraddhā). Faith grows through association with other devotees (sādhu-saṅga), and through patient devotional practice (bhajana-kriyā). This then leads to decreasing material attachments (anartha nivṛtti) and increasing steadiness (niṣṭhā). These experiences then awaken taste for bhakti (ruci). By means of this taste we can then increase or attachment to divine sentiments (āsakti), increase our mood of loving, and finally reach pure love of God (prema), the highest stage of Bhakti Yoga.
In this way ruci corresponds to the moment when our experience of flavour turns from external experience and becomes more internal, more directed toward the heart and toward our feelings. It’s the moment when our basic faith in the truth of Bhakti, and in the value of good association and bhajan open a door to our first experience of the spiritual pleasure of Bhakti. We feel the attraction and the energy of Bhakti through the pleasure it brings to our hearts.
Our access to this pleasure, our ability to taste this spiritual pleasure, even if only slightly, is called ruci. It is our first experience of the connection between emotion and meaning, between feeling and soul.
The language of Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu is precise and technical. It aims to name and explain the different properties and processes of the spiritual path of Bhakti, both so that we can recognise them when we see them, and so that we follow the path the point to.
Ruci is not just the name of something we taste. It’s not a specific taste, like chocolate, strawberry, or cardamon. It’s a relationship to taste. It’s the realisation that the sensations given to us are the reflection of a spiritual sensation. Ruci is the realisation of the connection between material and spiritual experiences. It’s the first understanding of our ability to taste something more than what our material senses give us.
In other words, ruci is the first experience of the desire to taste something more, to experience the pure, spiritual sensation that we now can feel lies beyond our poor material sensations.
This is the basic inspiration of Bhakti on all levels of realisation : taste increases desire for more taste.
If Bhakti were the process of discovery of the answer to a mathematical equation, then we would be fully satisfied and satiated once we had solved it. But Bhakti is the inverse of this material quest. The result of the path of Bhakti is not a satisfied heart, but an insatiable one. It is one in which desire is never extinguished, but steadily grows.
Ruci is both the moment of opening of our senses to new emotional flavours, and the realisation that this opening comes from our soul and leads to our soul. Ruci is an invitation of the heart to join the heart.
Ruci is the moment of wanting to let ourselves be lifted higher, to let this newly tasted pleasure increase our ability to taste, open us to the beauty and truth of the feelings within us, draw us beyond our ego-selves and deeper into our spiritual selves (savarūrpa).
In other words, ruci is not just the name of an emotion, it is a way of being in a world of emotions. It’s not the name of a feeling, but the discovery of an attraction to a higher and deeper kind of feeling. Ruci is the discovery that the flavours of life of are not just flavours, but also the attraction of souls to those flavours.
Ruci is the experience that channels—if only in a preliminary way—the spiritual energy that will eventually carry us to the deepest and most meaningful level of our spiritual selves, the love of the divine (prema).