Page:Bengal Vaishnavism - Bipin Chandra Pal.djvu/41

he is offered this complete merging with the Lord, he does not accept it; because his aim and object is not to be Brahman but to eter- nally love and worship Brahman. The fami- liar dictum of Ramakrishna Paramahansa: “I do not want to be sugar, I want to taste it,” clearly explains this Vaishnavic position. Worship of the Lord is necessary according to the Samkara-Vedanta thought only in a lower stage of spiritual evolution. In the highest stage of illumination, when all individual consciousness is completely merged in the Universal Consciousness, there is no worship, and, therefore, the consciousness of form, though it be not material but spiritual form, is not necessarily implied in Vedantic monism. But in every other system, whether Hindu Vaishnavic or Shaiva or Christian or Islam or Judaic, which accepts the worship of the Lord as an eternal duty, we must concede to the Lord some notes or marks of differentia- tion from His worshipper. Bengal Vaishna- vism declares that these notes or marks or, in a word, this ‘form’ of the Lord is not material but spiritual. The Lord, therefore, is not without form but has a spiritual form of His Own. The Lord is not without body but has a spiritual body. He is not without senses or