Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.11

c10.s3.11

For, in this attitude of devotional rapture, intellectual satisfaction is not considered essential. It is said to be an escape also from the bondage of Karman, and it takes no interest in socialised human life. It is described as a kind of mystic intuition, not of the nature of Upaniṣadic Jñāna or Yoga, but derived essentially from detached emotional exaltation. Its feelings and ecstasies are all inward : they live in and for themselves. But being unrelated and isolated, they lose virility, and become liable to delirious abandon and consuming excess of passionate sentimentality. Emotion in itself is not to be deprecated ; it should take its proper place in every religious system; but, to save it from morbidity, it must be related to will and intellect, to life and reality. There is enough of intellectual subtlety in Caitanyaism, but not much intellectual virility ; the fundamental motive to will and fuller living seldom vitalise its capricious and subjective joys of mystic vision. We are not concerned here with the question whether emotional elation is right or wrong in itself, or whether it can become a mystic channel of communion with the divine ; but it should be admitted that no full and rounded type of religion can be broad-based on emotionalism alone, inasmuch as it fails to satisfy the entire personality of man.