The Ramanandis, a renunciant ascetic society, have a
religious heritage.
All Ramanandis are worshippers of the deity Rama (bhakta),
but adherents of the Ram Rasik Sampraday emphasize the divine coupleship of
Rama and his wife Sita.
They concentrate their attention on the happy times in
Ayodhya, when the newlywed couple resided there before Rama's cruel expulsion.
Rasik ("aesthete") devotion entails elaborate
visualizations in which devotees see themselves as Rama and Sita's slaves and
companions, and spend their days serving the heavenly couple.
Rasik worshippers often create exacting
"schedules" of the deities' daily routines—down to the quarter-hour
in certain cases—so that they might enjoy the ecstasy of being God's companions
via mental exaltation.
(Devotional practices to the deity Krishna, especially the
divine reverence seen in the Gaudiya Vaishnava religious group, definitely
influence this kind of commitment.) Rasik worship has remained an elite phenom
enon, mostly restricted to a tiny number of ascetics, due to its complexity and
development.
See Peter van der Veer's Gods on Earth (1988) and Philip
Lutgendorf's The Life of a Text (1991) for further information.
