"This is the taste that Krishna himself has relished."
Historically, is Sahajiyaism not more dependent on Orthodox Vaishnavism than the other way around? This is a good question and I don't know if I can properly answer it. I believe that universally, up until the present day, the major world religions have always had an extremely ambivalent attitude toward sexuality. There are good reasons for this, which need to be explored. In this, Hinduism is no exception. Despite the existence of a Tantrik subculture, the dominant Hindu ethos has been one geared towards either the K ā ma-ś ā stra of unadorned pleasure-seeking through sexuality, in which Woman is the principal instrument for achieving worldly happiness, or towards a misogynistic attitude in which Woman represents the principal danger to the achievement of spiritual beatitude or mokṣa . These are called, respectively, the pravṛtti and nivṛtti m ā rgas . Bhakti is, in my view, the middle course between these two paths. The Tantrik idea that sexuality can be accommodated to s...