Regulated knowledge involves a gradual raising of the living being to the spiritual platform, and the highest spiritual realization is knowledge that the Personality of Godhead is the reservoir of all spiritual tastes, or rasas. Everybody desires to relish some sort of taste derived from sense perceptions, and these sensual pleasures are called rasas.
Regulated knowledge involves a gradual raising of the living being to the spiritual platform, and the highest spiritual realization is knowledge that the Personality of Godhead is the reservoir of all spiritual tastes, or rasas. Everybody desires to relish some sort of taste derived from sense perceptions, and these sensual pleasures are called rasas. There are 12 varieties of rasas: (1) raudra (anger), (2) adbhuta (wonder), (3) śṛṅgāra (conjugal love), (4) hāsya (comedy), (5) vīra (chivalry), (6) dayā (mercy), (7) dāsya (servitorship), (8) sakhya (fraternity), (9) bhayānaka (horror), (10) bībhatsa (shock), (11) śānta (neutrality), (12) vātsalya (parenthood).
The sum total of all these rasas is called affection or love. Primarily, such signs of love are manifested in adoration, service, friendship, parental affection and conjugal love. And when these five are absent, love is present indirectly in anger, wonder, comedy, chivalry, shock, fear and mercy. The rasas were originally exchanged between the spiritual living being and the Supreme Lord, both of whom are spiritual. The Lord is the fountainhead of all rasas. Every living being is endowed with a particular type of rasa to be exchanged with the Lord. In the liberated condition, this primary rasa is experienced in full. In the material plane, the rasa is experienced in the perverted form, and thus the rasas of the material world are exhibited in the material form of anger and so on.