48 BENGAL VAISHNAVI8M tke satisfaction of one’s own senses ; while prema is defined as desire for the satisfaction of the senses of Shree Krishna. W’W «»ro i Satisfaction of the senses is an element common to both lust and love. The difference between the two is in their conscious objec- tives. In lust the desire for self-satisfaction or self-enjoyment dominates. In love not self-enjoyment, but the enjoyment or pleasure of the object of love overwhelms and almost obliterates the desire for self-enjo3’^ment. This is the culmination of all love-romance. The consciousness of self is completely lost in the highest and purest love. This is common human experience. Our love, as George Elliot somewhere saj's, “at its highest flood loses itself in the Infinite’’, which means that the culmination of all true love, even in human experience, is not only the complete absence of the consciousness of self, but the realisation of the Universal in and through our particular passions. This universal human experience is really theori^h of the raganttga cult of Bengal Yaishnavism. It is this universal human experience of the sex-passion or sex-romance that has
