06 bhakti

Chapter 9 places possession in the context of devotional practice. This is perhaps the most important aspect of possession, as the intensity of personal engagement is revealed in both text and practice to be the signal determining feature in personality identification. And in India bhakti it is nearly always linked to an intensity driven by a single-minded love for the deity. Thus, in the context of devotional practice, personal identification with a deity is often interpreted as possession. The primary textual locale for this is late first-millennium Sanskrit and Tamil bhakti literature, eventually extending to Hindi, Marathi, and other regional literatures. Although this narrow, interiorized, single-minded (ekāgratā) focus is ostensibly resolute and impenetrable, it is, in South Asia, indicative of the porousness of the self and the fluidity of personhood.