THE BENGAL BHAKTI CULT 49 inspired the specific definition of Bhakti of the Bengal school. This is the real expla- nation of the intensely humanistic note of the Bhakti cult in Bengal. It has its root in the conception of the Ultimate Reality as the Universal Man, as the highest revelation of the Divine Personality or Shree Bhagavan. In the cultivation of this Bhakti, the first step is the realisation of the Absolute as the objective of all our sense-activities. The Object of the sense of sight is form or rupam as it is called in our language and literature. The object of the sense of hearing is sound or shavda ; of the sense of touch is heat and cold and softness and hardness ; of the sense of smell is odour ; of the palate is taste. Shavda-sparsa-mpa-rasa-gandha, — these are the objects of our five senses of audition, touch, vision, taste and smell. These constitute the fundamental elements of our sense-knowledge or perceptions The senses and their objects are organically co-related to each other. The world of sight and our visual organ, the world of sound and our audition, the world of smell and our organ of smell, the world of taste and our palate, and the tangible world and the sense of touch, — these depend upon each other for 4
