Page:Bengal Vaishnavism - Bipin Chandra Pal.djvu/21

 Bhagavan is the ground and explanation of our cosmic life and experience on the one side, and our social, including the domestic, life and experiences, on the other. Bhagavan is, therefore, not impersonal, but the Supreme Person, holding together our smaller and differentiated individual personalities. This, briefly, is the fundamental theological or philosophical position of Bengal Vaishnavism.

This Bhagavan is not an abstraction. Bhagavan is not a philosophical generalisation of human experience. Bhagavan is a concrete reality, a Person. The concept personality implies differentiation and duality. We realise ourselves as person through our relations first, with outer nature, where we are the knower and all natural objects, whether animate or inanimate, are objects of our knowledge. We are also moved by attractions and repulsions in our relations with these natural objects. And through these we realise ourselves as emotional beings. These objects are objects of our emotions. But here, that is, in simply knowing and feeling, our full personality is not realised. Knowing provokes feeling and feeling leads to action or desire for action