His Talks With The Mayavadi Sannyasi Prakasananda

"In this age of Kali there is no other religion but the glorification of the Lord by utternce of His holy name, and that is the injunction of all the revealed scriptures. And My spiritual master has taught Me one sloka(from the Brhan-Naradiya Purana) which is:

"harer nama harer nama harer namaiva kevalam

kalau nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyatha"

'So on the order of my spiritual master, I chant the holy name of Hari, and I am now mad after this holy name. Whenever I utter the holy name I forget Myself completely, and sometimes I laugh, cry and dance like a madman. I thought that I had actually gone mad by this process of chanting, and therefore I asked My spiritual master about it.

He informed Me that this was the real effect of chanting the holy name, which produces a transcendental emotion that is a rare manifestation. It is the sign of love of God, which is the ultimate end of life Love of God is transcendental to liberation [mukti], and thus it is called the fifth stage of spiritual realization, above the stage of liberation.

By chanting the holy name of Krsna one attains the stage of love of God, and it was good that fortunately I was favored with the blessing.'"

On hearing this statement from the Lord, the Mayavadi sannyasi asked the Lord what was the harm in studing the Vedanta along the chanting the holy name.

Prakasananda Sarasvati knew well that the Lord was formerly known as Nimai Pandit, a very learned scholar of Navadvipa, and His posing as a great fool was certainly to some purpose. Hearing this inquiry by the sannyasi, the Lord smiled and said, "My dear sir, if you do not mind, I will answer your inquiry."

All the sannyasis there were very much pleased with the Lord for His honest dealings, and they unanimously replied that they would not be offended by whatever He replied. The Lord then spoke as follows:

"Vedanta-sutra is comprised of transcendental words or sounds uttered by the transcendental Personality of Godhead. As such, in the Vedanta there cannot be any human deficiencies like mistake, illusion cheating or inefficiency. The message of the Upanisads is expressed in the Vedanta-sutra, and therefore such commentation spoils everything."

"The word Brahman indicates the greatest of all, which is full with transcendental opulences, superior to all. Brahman is ultimately the Personality of Godhead, and He is covered by indirect interpretations and established as impersonal.

Everything that is in the spiritual world is full of transcendental bliss, including the form, body, place and paraphernalia of the Lord. All are eternallycognizant and blissful. It is not the fault of the Acharya Sankara that he has so interpreted Vedanta, but if someone accept it, then certainly he is doomed.

Anyone who accepts the transcendental body of the Personality of Godhead as something mundane certainly commits the greatest blasphemy."

The Lord thus spoke to the sannyasi almost in the same way that He spoke to the Bhattacharya of Puri, and by forceful arguments He nullified the Mayavada interpretations of the Vedanta-sutra.

All the sannyasis there claimed that the Lord was the personified Vedas and the Personality of Godhead. All the sannyasis were converted to the cult of bhakti, and all of them accepted the holy name of the Lord Sri Krsna, and they dined together with the Lord in the midst of them.

After this conversion of the sannyasis, the popularity of the Lord increased at Varanasi, and thousands of people assembled to see the Lord in person.

The Lord thus established the primary importance of Srimad-Bhagavata-dharma, and He defeated all other systems of spiritual realization. Since then everyone at Varanasi was overwhelmed with the transcendental sankirtana movement.

While the Lord was camping at Varanasi, Sanatana Gosvami also arrived after retiring from office. He was formely one of the state ministers in the goverment of Bengal, then under the regime of Nawab Hussain Shah.

He had some difficulity in getting relief from the state service, for the Nawab was reluctant to let him leave. Nonetheless he came to Varanasi, and the Lord taught him the principles of devotional service.

He taught him about the constitutional position of the living being, the cause of his bondage under material conditions, his eternal relation with the Personality of Godhead, the transcendental position of the living being, the cause of his bondage under material conditions, his eternal relation with the Personality of Godhead, His expansions in different plenary portions of incarnations, His control of different parts of the universe, the nature of His transcendental abode, devotional activities, their different stages of development and the rules and regulations for achieving the gradual stages of spiritual perfection, the symptoms of different incarnations in different ages and how to detect them with reference to the context of revealed scriptures.

The Lord's teachings to Sanatana Gosvami form a big chapter in the text of Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, and to explain the whole teachings in minute details will require a volume in itself. These are treated in detail in our book "Teachings of Lord Caitanya."

At Mathura, the Lord visited all the important places; then He reached Vrndavana. Lord Caitanya appeared in the family of a high caste brahmana, and over and above that sannyasi. He was the preceptor for all the varnas and asramas. But He used to accept meals from all classes of Vaisanavas. At Mathura the Sanodhia brahmanas are considered to be in the lower status of society, but the Lord accepted meals in their families also because His host happened to be a diciple of the Madhavendra Puri family.

At Vrndavana the Lord took bath in twenty-four important bathing places and ghats. He travelled to all the twelve important vanas (forests). In these forests all the cows and birds welcomed Him, as if He were their very old friend. The Lord also began to embrace all the trees of those forests, and by doing so He felt the symptoms of transcendental ecstasy. Sometimes He fell unconscious, but He was made to regain consciouness by the chanting of the holy name of Krsna. The transcendental symptoms that were visible on the body of the Lord during His travel within the forest of Vrndavana were all unique and inexplicable, and we have just given a synopsis only.

Some important places that were visited by the Lord in Vrndavana were Kamyavana, Adisvara, Pabansarovara, Khadirvana, Sesasayi, Khelatirtha, Bhandirvana, Bhadravana, Srivana, Lauhavana, Mahavana, Gokula, Kaliyahrada, Dvadasaditya, Kesitirtha, etc. When He saw the place where the rasa dance took place, He at once fell down in trance. As long as He remained at Vrndavana, He made His headquarters at Akrur Ghat.

From Vrndavana His personal servitor Krsnadasa Vipra induced Him to go back to Prayag to take bath during the Magha Mela. The Lord acceded to this proposal, and they started for Prayag. On the way they were met with some Pathans, amongst whom there were a learned Moulana. The Lord had some talks with the Moulana and his companions, and the Lord convinced the Moulana that in the Koran also there are descriptions of Bhagavata-dharma and Krsna. All the Pathans were converted to His cult of devotional service.

When He returned to Prayag, Srila Rupa Gosvami and his youngest brother met Him near Bindu-madhava Temple. This time the Lord was welcomed by the people of Prayag more respectfully. Vallabha Bhatta, who resided on the bank of Prayag in the village of Arail, was to receive Him at his place, but while going there the Lord jumped in the River Yamuna. With great difficulty He was picked up in an unconscious state. Finally He visited the headquarters of Vallabha Bhatta. This Vallabha Bhatta was one of His chief admirers, but later on he inaugrated his own party of the Vallabha smapradaya.

On the bank of the Dasasvamedha Ghat at Prayag for ten days continually the Lord instructed Rupa Gosvami in the science of devoltional service of the Lord. He taught the Gosvami the divisions of the living creatures in the 8,400,000 species of life. Then He taught him about the human species. Out of them He discussed the followers of the Vedic principles, out of them the fruitive workers, out of them the empiric philosophers, and out of them the liberated souls. He said that there are only a few who are actually pure devotees of Lord Sri Krsna.

Srila Rupa Gosvami was the youngest brother of Sanatana Gosvami, and when he retired from service he brought with him two boatfuls of gold coins. This means that he brought with him some hundreds of thoussands of rupees accumulated by the labor of his service. And before leaving home for Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, he divided the wealth as follows: fifty percent for the service of the Lord and His devotees, twenty-five percent for relatives and twenty-five percent for his personal needs in case of emergency. In that way he set an examle for all householders.