"Described in a multitude of texts of the Upanishads, such as 'Who abiding in the soul.'
"By the worship of 'adoration,' a man casting off his defilement becomes a qualified votary;
"By the subsequent worship of 'emanation,' he becomes qualified for the worship of 'manifestation;' next,
"By the worship thereafter of 'the subtile,' he becomes able to behold the 'internal controller.'"
The worship of the Deity is described in the Pañcha-rátra as consisting of five elements, viz., (1.) the access, (2.) the preparation, (3.) oblation, (4.) recitation, (5.) devotion. Of these, access is the sweeping, smearing, and so forth, of the way to the temple. The preparation is the provision of perfumes, flowers, and the like appliances of worship. Oblation is worship of the deities. Recitation is the muttered ejaculation of sacred texts, with attention to what they mean, the rehearsal of hymns and lauds of Vishṇu, the commemoration of his names, and study of institutes which set forth the truth. Devotion is meditation on the Deity. When the vision of the visible world has been brought to a close by knowledge accumulated by the merit of such worship, the infinitely compassionate Supreme Spirit, tender to his votaries, bestows upon the votary devoted to his lord and absorbed in his lord, his own sphere infinite and endless, marked by consciousness of being like him, from which there is no future return (to the sorrows of transmigratory existence). So the traditionary text—
"When they have come to me, the high-souled no longer undergo future birth, a receptacle of pain, transitory, having attained to the supreme consummation.
"Vásudeva, having found his votary, bestows upon him his own mansion, blissful, undecaying, from whence there is no more return."
After laying up all this in his heart, leaning upon the teaching of the great Upanishad, and finding the gloss on the Vedánta aphorisms by the venerated Bodháyanachárya too prolix, Rámánuja composed a commentary on the Śárírakamímánsá (or Vedánta theosophy). In this the sense of the first aphorism, "Then hence the absolute must be desired to be known," is given as follows:—The word then in this aphorism means, after understanding the hitherto-current sacred rites. Thus the glossator writes: "After learning the sacred rites," he desires to know the absolute. The word hence states the reason, viz., because one who has read the Veda and its appendages and understands its meaning is averse from sacred rites, their recompense being perishable. The wish to know the absolute springs up in one who longs for permanent liberation, as being the means of such liberation. By the word absolute is designated the Supreme Spirit, from whom are essentially excluded all imperfections, who is of illimitable excellence, and of innumerable auspicious attributes. Since then the knowledge of sacred rites and the performance of those rites is mediately through engendering dispassionateness, and through putting away the defilement of the understanding, an instrument of the knowledge of the absolute; and knowledge of sacred rites and knowledge of the absolute being consequently cause and effect, the former and the latter Mímánsá constitute one system of institutes. On this account the glossator has described this system as one with the sixteenfold system of Jaimini. That the fruit of sacred rites is perishable, and that of the knowledge of the absolute imperishable, has been laid down in virtue of Vedic texts, such as: Scanning the spheres gained by rites, let him become passionless; Not wrought by the rite performed, accompanied with inference and disjunctive reasoning. Revelation, by censuring each when unaccompanied by the other, shows that it is knowledge together with works that is efficacious of emancipation, in the words: Blind darkness they enter who prefer illusion, and a greater darkness still do they enter who delight in knowledge only; knowledge and illusion, he who knows these both, he passing beyond death together with illusion, tastes immortality by knowledge. Conformably it is said in the Pañcharátra-rahasya—
"That ocean of compassion, the Lord, tender to his votaries,
"For his worshipper's sake takes five embodiments upon him.