Aesthetic emotion (Hinduism)

A rasa is the involuntary state produced in the spectator originally of drama, but the theory was later extended to the other arts. The state might be romantic, comic, sorrowful, violent, heroic, terrifying, repulsive or marvellous (plus, in non-dramatic literature, peaceful). The determinant is what is occurring in the drama, the state is what arises from the determinant (a ghostly figure produces apprehensiveness, shock and fear) and the consequent is the physical response - bulging eyes, trembling, cry of alarm. There are thirty three transitory or subsidiary states and eight or nine permanent or predominant states, each associated with a particular rasa - love, mirth, grief, fury, resoluteness, fear, revulsion, wonder (and peace). The rasa is not experienced as its permanent state is experienced in real life. The experience is direct and vivid just as if it were one's own response to real circumstances yet with complete detachment. For example, one experiences grief neither of one's self in a particular situation nor of any other person distinct from one's self - it is grief generalized. It is the function of literature to generalize emotion so that it can be tasted like this. The response arises only inasmuch as the evoked emotion is within one's experience - it is a re-experience of one's own emotion, a calm, unthreatening, recreative ordering of what is already within.

Distinct from conation (kriti) and cognition (jnapti), rasa is the nature of enjoyment or actual aesthetic experience - it is the aesthetic enjoyment which is an emotional experience. Different commentators have described this state, which is experienced by persons of taste as sattva or purity predominates and the other gunas are suppressed. Rajas would produce restlessness and tamas unconsciousness, whereas here there is the manifestation of the experience through sattva. The emotion is entire and indivisible, self-luminous, made up up cognition and bliss, free from the cognition of other objects and related to realization of the Absolute, of the essence of transcendental wonder. During the experience the individual psychic components cannot be distinguished, it is a mass of feelings, emotions and sentiments. Not just an affective experience but also cognitive, it is composed of both cognition and joy. Being both self-luminous and self-aware, it is experienced by itself and not through some other mental mode. It contains a self-conscious element of cognition and is self-aware. The experience is free from the touch of cognitions of other objects - lost in his own aesthetic enjoyment, the person is unconscious of all other objects. He experiences aesthetic enjoyment as a yogin experiences Brahman, direct and immediate, lost in the enjoyment as the yogin is lost in Brahman, although the experience is inferior to the intuitive experience of Brahman. In this ecstasy of joy, distinction of subject and object is lost. The essence of the enjoyment is transcendental wonder, transcendental in that it is felt as an appreciative spectator would identify himself with a person whose emotion is expressed by an actor on a stage. This wonder is of the nature of expansion of the mind and constitutes the core of the aesthetic enjoyment. < Aesthetic enjoyment or relish is essentially joyful in nature, arising from the bliss of the self as the meaning of poetry or drama is appreciated. Skilful acting, for example, excites the permanent emotional dispositions of the spectator, who forgets the distinction between himself and others and experiences the intense joy of the self evoked in him. This extraordinary emotion is free from consciousness of self and not-self, friend and foe, and devoid of all distinctions of space and time, free from all obstacles. Unlike flashes of intuition, perception, recollection and other kinds of knowledge, or the intuitive experience of Brahman, it is associated with permanent emotional dispositions of love, mirth and so on.

There can be no aesthetic enjoyment without subconscious impressions or emotional dispositions like those of love or anger. These impressions or vasanas are innate or acquired and are necessary conditions for such enjoyment. Thus philosophers, devoid of innate emotional dispositions, or some affectionate people, devoid of acquired emotional dispositions, are dead to all aesthetic enjoyment since an emotional disposition is an indispensable prerequisite. Also essential is taste, persons devoid of taste cannot experience the ecstatic joy of aesthetic enjoyment. Rasa springs from the bliss of the self as it realizes the meaning of poetry, for example, and enjoys it. It cannot be made known to others since it exists only as it is experienced, and similarly it cannot be proved - its only proof is the experience, it cannot be proved by some other kind of knowledge. The emotion is identical with the actual enjoyment, aesthetic enjoyment being the only proof of aesthetic emotion and being identical with it. It is not a mental structure but a mental function, a concrete actualized emotion felt by a person of taste as a concrete emotion.

The various conditions which produce an aesthetic emotion do so through activity - vyapara - known as sympathetic identification. This sympathy may be, for example, with emotions experienced long ago by the personages represented by actors on the stage; and enables the person to identify with the persons represented. Without this sympathetic rapport there would be no aesthetic emotion - there must be an illusory sense of identity, a feeling of at-one-ment, projection and identification. There is a peculiar sense of make-believe as the emotion is experienced as the spectator's own and yet not his own.

The aesthetic enjoyment (carvana) is identical with aesthetic emotion (rasa) but is not consistently there with it - it appears and disappears and is only experienced occasionally. An aesthetic emotion is not an effect although its appearance and disappearance may lead it to appear so. It is extraordinary since it is proved by its own enjoyment and is incompatible with the ordinary processes of knowledge. Whereas common emotion is interested, aesthetic emotion is disinterested. Common emotion is immediately personal, aesthetic emotion is impersonal - it is generic, common to all trained spectators. It contains elements of transcendental wonder, the nature of the expansion of the mind awakened by the marvellous. The experience is unique and underived although evoked by a variety of conditions.

Different aesthetic emotions have different effects on consciousness. Erotic and ludicrous emotions bring blooming of consciousness; heroic emotion and the emotion of wonder bring consciousness expansion; horror and fear produce agitation of consciousness; fury and pathos bring about obstruction of consciousness. Although they are produced by different causes they have the same effect on consciousness.