Sannyasa

After consulting with Kesava Bharati, the Lord left Navadvipa for Katwa to formally accept the sannyasa order of life. He was accompained by Srila Nityananda Prabhu, Candrasekhara Acharya, and Mukunda Datta. These three assisted Him in the details of the ceremony. The incidence of the Lords' accepting the sannyasa order is very elaborately described in the Caitanya-bhagavata by Srila Vrndavana-dasa Thakur.

Thus at the end of His twenty-fourth year the Lord accepted the sannyasa order of life in the month of Magha. After accepting this order He became a full-fledged preacher of the Bhagavata-dharma. Although He was doing the same preaching work in His householder life, when He experienced some obstacles to His preaching, He sacrificed even the comfort of His home life for the sake of the fallen souls.

In His householder life his chief assistants were Srila Advaita Prabhu and Srila Srivasa Thakur, but after He accepted the sannyasa order His chief assistants became Srila Nityananda Prabhu, who was deputed to preach specifically in Bengal, and the six Gosvamis (Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, Gopala Bhatta Gosvami, Raghunatha Dasa Gosvami, and Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami), headed by Srila Rupa and Santana, who were deputed to go to Vrndavana to excavate the present places of pilgrimage.

The present city of Vrndavana and the importance of Vrajabhumi were thus disclosed by the will of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

The Lord, after accepting the sannyasa order, at once wanted to start for Vrndavana. For three continual days He travelled in the Radha Desha (places where the Ganges does not flow). He was in full ecstasy over the idea og going to Vrndavana. However, Srila Nityananda Prabhu diverted His path and brought Him instead to the house of Advaita Prabhu in Santipura.

The Lord stayed at Sri Advaita Prabhu's house for a few days, and knowing well that the Lord was leaving His hearth and home for good, Sri Advaita Prabhu sent his men to Navadvipa to bring mother Saci to have a last meeting with her son. Some unscrupulous people say that Lord Caitanya met His wife also after taking sannyasa and offered her His wooden slipper for worship, but the authentic sources give no information about such a meeting. His mother met Him at the house of Advaita Prabhu, and when she saw her son in sannyasa, she lamented.

By way of compromise, she requested her son to make His headquarters in Puri so that she would easily be able to get information about Him. The Lord granted this last desire of His beloved mother. After this incidence the Lord started for Puri, leaving all the residents of Navadivpa in an ocean of lamentation over His separation.

The Lord visited many important places on the way to Puri. He visited the temple of Gopinathjim who had stolen condensed milk for His devotee Srila Madhavendra Puri. Since then Deity Gopinathji is well known as Ksira-cora Gopinatha. The Lord relished this story with great pleasure.

The propensity of stealing is there even in the absolute consciouness, but because this propensity is exhibited by the Absolute, it loses its perverted nature and thus becomes worshipable even by Lord Caitanya on the basis of the absolute consideration that the Lord and His stealing propensity are one and identical. This interesting story of Gopinathaji is vividly explained in the Caitanya-caritamrta by Krsnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami.

After visiting the temple of Kisra-cora Gopinatha of Remuna at Balasore in Orissa, the Lord proceeded towards Puri and on the way visited the temple of Saksi Gopala, who appeared as a witness in the matter of two brahmana devotees family quarrel.

The Lord heard the story of Saksi Gopala with great pleasure because He wanted to impress upon the atheists that the worshipable Deities in the temples approved by the great acaryas are not idols, as alleged by men with a poor fund of knowledge. The deity in the temple is the arca incarnation of the Personality of Godhead, and thus the Deity is identical with the Lord in all respects. He responds to the proportation of the devotees affection for Him.

In the story of Saksi Gopala, in which there was a family misunderstanding by two devotees of the Lord, the Lord, in order to mitigate the turmoil as well as to show specific favor to His servitors, travelled from Vrndavana to Vidyabager, a village in Orissa, in the form of His arca incarnation. From there the Deity was brought to Cuttack, and thus the temple of Saksi Gopala is even today visited by thousands of pilgrims on the way to Jagannatha Puri.

On the way, His sannyasa rod was broken by Nityananda Prabhu. The Lord became apparently angry with him about this and went alone to Puri, leaving His companions behind.

At Puri, when He entered the temple of Jagannatha, He became at once saturated with transcendental ecstasy and fell down on the floor of the temple conscious. The custodians of the temple could not understand the transcendental feats of the Lord, but there was a greaat learned pandit anmed Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who was present, and he could understand that the Lord's losing His consciousness upon entering the Jagannatha temple was not an ordinary thing.

Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who was the chief appointed pandit in the court of the King of Orissa, Maharaja Prataparudra, was attracted by the youthful luster of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and could understand that such a transendental trance was only rarely exhibited and only then by the topmost devotees who are already on the transcendental plane in complete forgetfulness of material existence. Only a liberated soul could show such a transcendental feat, and the Bhattacarya, who was vastly learned, could understand this is the light of the transcendental literature with which he was familiar.

He therefore asked the custodians of the temple not to disturb the unknown sannyasi. He asked them to take the Lord to his home so He could be further observed in His unconscious state. The Lord was at once carried to the home of Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who at that time had sufficient power of authority due to his being the sabha pandit or the state dean of faculty in Sanskrit literatures.

The learned pandit wanted to scrutinizingly test the transcendental feats of Lord Caitanya because often unscrupulous devotees imitate physical feats in order to flaunt transcendental achievements just to attract innocent people and take advantage of them. A learned scholar like the Bhattacarya can detect such imposters, and when he finds them out he at once rejects them.

In the case of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the Bhattacarya tested all the symptoms in the light of the sastras. He tested as a scientist, not as a foolish sentimentalist. He observed the movement of the stomach, the beating of the heart and the breathing of the nostrils. He also felt the pulse of the Lord and saw that all His bodily activities were in complete suspension.

When he put a small cotton swab before the nostrils, he found that there was a slight breathing as the fine fibers of cotton moved slightly. Thus he came to know that the Lord's unconscious trance was genuine, and he began to treat Him in the prescribed fashion.

But Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu could only be treated in a special way. He would only respond to the surrounding of the holy names of the Lord by His devotees. This special treatment was unknown to Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya because the Lord was still unknown to him. When he saw Him for the first time in the temple, he simply took Him to be one of many pilgrims.

In the meantime the companions of the Lord, who reached the temple a little after Him, heard of the Lords' transcendental feats and of His being carried away by the Bhattacarya. The pilgrims at the temple were still gossiping about the incident.

But by chance, one of these pilgrims had met Gopinatha Acarya, who was known to Gadadhara Pandit, and from him it was learned that the Lord was lying in an unconscious state at the residence of Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, who happened to be the brother-in-law of Gopinatha Acarya.

All the members of the party were introduced by Gadadhara Pandit to Gopinatha Acarya, who knew the Lord before, now tried to establish the Lord as the Personality of Godhead, and the Bhattacarya tried to establish Him as one of the great devotees. Both of them argued from the angle of vision of authentic sastras and not on the strength of sentimental vox populi.

The incarnation of God are determined by authentic sastras and not by popular votes of foolish fanatics. Lord Caitanya was an incarnation of God in fact, but foolish fanatics have proclaimed so many so-called incarnations of God in this age without referring to authentic scriptures.

But Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya or Gopinatha Acarya did not indulge in such foolish sentimentalism; on the contrary, both of them tried to establish or reject His divinity on the strength of authentic sastras.

Later it was disclosed that Bhattacarya also came from the Navadvipa area, and it was understood from him that Nilambara Cakravarti, the maternal grandfather of Lord Caitanya, happened to be a class fellow of the father of Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya.

In that sense, the young sannyasi Lord Caitanya evoked paternal affection from Bhattacarya. Bhattacarya was the professor of many sannyasis in the order of the Sankaracarya sampradaya, and he himself also belong to the cult. As such, the Bhattacarya desired that the young sannyasi Lord Caitanya also hear from him about the teaching of Vedanta.