ART IN BENGAL VAISHNAVIM 71 tuality of the Bengal Yaishnava cult of bhakti. This bhakti is the pursuit of the love of the Lord through rasa or bhava or the emo- tions. And it is clearly laid down in the very first aphorism of the scripture of aesthetics or rasa of Bengal Yaishnavisni that I The mind must be completely cured of all sensuous attachments or sense-quickening to generate rasa or romance or what is called bhava here or the emotion. The test of the purity of the mind is the absence of all manner of sense-quickening even in the pre- sence of the objects of the senses before the senses and through them before the mind. This purity can only be attained by what is called the vicarious method of idealisation and spiritualisation. Those who know or understand these fundamentals of the Art of Bengal Yaishnavism cannot, therefore, charge it with eroticism. In fact, even in the ordinary experiences of sex passion, if only we minutely analyse them, we find that though it originates in our sex activities, it always strives to tran- scend these activities. As long as we have not been able to do so, our sex-love does not and cannot rise to the level of the romantic.
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