Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.25

c10.s3.25

It may be properly urged that even if the actual or implied ethical teaching of Caitanyaism is scanty and unsatisfactory, the spirit of Caitanya's life, which inspired saintly and selfless men to great devotion, stands above the body of its tenets. There is indeed a great deal of religious appeal in Caitanya's devotional personality, in his passionate and sincere adoration; but it must be said that the excess of mystic emotionalism and the ardent pursuit of a sublime erotic fancy, which left him almost a nervous wreck in his later years, do not bear witness to great service. Nor could they have been a great ethical force, inasmuch as his practice of the devotional faith, as it is recorded, was essentially an individual, and not a social, experience. Caitanya, in these years, lived entirely in and for the ecstasies, trances and visions of Bhakti; they, as well as his daily worship and adoration, consumed all his energies. There is no evidence of restraint, no fear of excess, no self-criticism, no rational test, nor ethical consideration in these mystic indulgences, occurring continuously day after day and marked more and more by nervous unsteadiness and suggestibility. All this may be the consummation of the spiritual aspiration of the faith, but from the ethical point of view, Caitanya’s life of ‘divine madness’ at Puri is singularly empty. No larger problem of the welfare of man and the world impinges upon his ecstatic consciousness; his devotion is unworldly also in the sense that it moves in a world unconnected with all that we mean by the term ethical. Modern knowledge tells us that there is nothing mysterious or miraculous in such trances, visions and ecstasies; they are phases of nervous sensibility, rather than of spirituality, even if induced by spiritual causes; they are found, more or less, in all excessively emotional religious practice of all ages and climes. But even assuming their spirituality, one must face the fact that they do not satisfy the ethical demand. The experience of divinity, which is only possible in mystic trances and raptures, is of little value to mankind, however much it may spiritually stimulate the mystic himself; and the question may be legitimately asked whether a religious attitude should entirely consist of such erotico-mystic susceptibilities.