Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.12

c10.s3.12

It is believed that the ultimate source of this devotional attitude of Bhakti is divine grace (Prasāda) ; but since the human self is said to have affinities with the divine, a limited freedom of will and action is not denied. But the idea of complete surrender (Praptatti) to divine will and grace, to which man is, by his very nature, taken to be predisposed, makes this freedom only nominal or illusory by divesting it of its power of fully asserting itself. Individuality is indeed acknowledged, but individuality is regarded as a limitation which should be transcended, not by intellect, or by will, in which lies the root of all evil, but by emotional susceptibility, which is inborn, but which can operate only through divine grace, incomprehensible (Acintya) in its divine sportiveness (Līlā). The divine grace, again, is not connected with any ethical purpose, or ethical conception of sin, suffering and forgiveness ; it is merely an act of divine omnipotence. It is, therefore, clear that the idea of divine sportiveness (Līlā) and divine grace (Prasāda), as understood by the Bengal school, leaves little room for moral activity, if the term moral is taken in its wider application and not identified with the religious. There is, no doubt, the belief in the ultimate rationality of a well ordered universe, but what is conceivably well ordered need not be morally constituted. From the ethical point of view, such an attitude of devotion is not immoral but unmoral, being essentially negative, except in its relation to the deity. It is not outright passivism, but it fails to furnish the motive for any strenuous social or individual morality. There are indeed frequent admonitions to exert oneself, to overcome evil, to engage in good works; but it is difficult to reconcile ecstasy with activity, the emotional aspiration 'to be' with the volitional effort 'to do', the doctrine of non-resistance and surrender with the exercise of personality, which is not personal, and incentive to worldly activity, which is not worldly. The injunctions to service are indeed not futile, nor in actual practice does the spontaneous spring of human sympathy ever run dry; but the trend of a doctrine of devotional exaltation of emotion, which believes that all activity except religious activity is misery, is towards an unmoral, if not positively immoral, isolation.