Maybe i am too generous about Emerson but I do see a semblance of vaisnavism in his writings. He did read the B.g, upanishads and was especially fond of visnu purana. He spoke of the lord hari the sporting and wonderful god as very different from judgemental christian God. Bhaktivinoda Thakur is known to have written to him.
Hard as it is to describe God, it is harder to describe the Individual. A certain wandering light comes to me which I instantly perceive to be the Cause of Causes. It transcends all proving. It is itself the ground of being; and I see that it is not one & I another, but this is the life of my life. That is one fact, then; that in certain moments I have known that I existed directly from God, and am, as it were, his organ. And in my ultimate consciousness Am He.
Journal, May 26, 1837
What lies behind us and what lies before us are
small matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson
All true greatness must come from internal growth.
Journals, October 17, 1832 Emerson
GOD
God cannot be intellectually discerned.
Journals, July 21, 1831
And one quote from goethe is very good as it tries to encourage us to cultivate our own realisation on reading others thoughts. Similar to what maharaja says about scriptural knowledge doesnt become one' own till you realise it.
All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts alreadythousands of times; but to
make them truly ours, we must think them over
again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe