Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.10

c10.s3.10

It may by conceded that the Bengal Vaisnava faith firmly believes that happiness, in the sense of earthly enjoyment, can never be the end of life, but that self-realisation, in the form of devotional joy, is alone the *summum bonum*. Not mere Vaidhi Bhakti, which derives its authority from Sastric injunction and can therefore be transcended, but Prema-bhakti, which arises spontaneously through man's surrender and God's grace, is the exclusive object of all human activity. It may be urged that all this necessarily implies an ethical attitude, for service to divinity is as much a moral as a religious necessity. But it should not be forgotten that self-realisation, as well as happiness, is understood by Caitanyaism in a peculiar sense. It is not meant to constitute the foundation of a higher or larger ethical life, but to imply an exaltation of purely individual religious emotion as the entire goal of human existence. The highest mode of spiritual emotion undoubtedly implies purity and intensity of faith, but the Prema-bhakti resolves itself into a form of religious sentimentality, a continuous frenzy of divine madness (Divyonmada), an all-engrossing mystic state of yearning, trance, rapture and vision, which may remain morally pure but ethically insufficient. This emotional, even sensuous, realisation may be harmless and beautiful in its mystic form, but it is entirely individual and self-centred; and being extremely personal in ardour and concrete in expression, it tends naturally towards a devout orgy of ecstatic excess. It is not an escape from the bondage of the senses because it lands one in another kind of refined sensuousness.