7 « BENGAL VAISHNAVISM real romantic stage is reached, the physical in the mother loses itself in the spiritual, and the spiritual or the universal manifests itself in the particularities of the mother’s physical, psycho-physical, mental and emo- tional constitution. All the physical mani- festations of mother-love appear, when this stage is reached, even when its object is not present before the mother’s senses. Similarly, the same remark applies equally to the madhurya or the romance of the man and woman relation. Every relation of the sexes is not madhurya. Every sex relation does not rise to the level of rasa or the romantic, how- ever exulting or passionate the experience of it may be. There is a natural exultation and even a passionate longing for losing one’s self, body and spirit — all, in the union with the object of one’s sex passion. This is no uncom- mon experience. Absolute purification of the senses or their idealisation is not essential for the attainment of this experience. But this very common physical experience is no proof of the elevation of the ordinary animal sex passion to the plane of the spiritual and the romantic. This is no proof that the sex pas- sion has been elevated to the plane of rasa or romance. The first evidence of it is that the
