Rasik

Person able to appreciate a developed
artistic mood (rasa); someone who is
cultured and sophisticated. In the context of religious practice, the word refers
to a person who has transposed this
appreciation of aesthetic mood into a
devotional setting. Rasik devotees
(bhakta) would engage in elaborate
visualizations of their chosen divinity
and mentally accompany that divinity
during the day. These meditative visualizations were said to give the devotee a
sense of participation in the divine play
(lila) of God’s presence on earth and
thus sharpen his or her enjoyment of
it. The two religious communities that
laid the greatest stress on this ability
were the Pushti Marg and the Ram
Rasik Sampraday, whose objects of
devotion were the gods Krishna
and Rama, respectively. This type of
worship is almost exclusively focused
on these deities, or on other forms of
the god Vishnu.