Page:Bengal Vaishnavism - Bipin Chandra Pal.djvu/47

all knowledge, and complete aloofness from both attachment and repulsion. This Bhagavan holds within Himself all sense-objects. In other words, the whole universe of both matter and men exist in the very Being of Bhagavan. He is not without sense-organs, though his sense-organs are not like our sense- organs physical, but spiritual. The senses exist organised in our bodies ; Bhagavan has also His body, though it is not like our bodies made of mortal flesh. Bhagavan has also a social organism, the contents of which are spirit like Himself, of the same kind or class as Himself but differing from Him in that they are not independent existences but dependent on Him for their existence and activities. Bhagavan not only has the power of attraction in Him but as no power exists in the abstract, He has in His own being those whom He cons- tantly attracts by His own qualities. This is the logic of the term Bhagavan as applied to the Absolute. And these are the contents of the conception of the Absolute or what may be called the Concrete Universal in the Vaishnavic thought of Bengal. In our Vaishnavic thought and realisa- tion the world, therefore, is not unreal or an