The Career and Teachings of the Supreme Lord Sree Krishna-Chaitanya

by Sri Narayan Das Bhakti Sadhukar

CHAPTER XI

 

UNRECOGNISED DIRECT MANIFESTATION

 

From the point that we reached in the previous Chapter begin, with a staggering suddenness, the overwhelming series of direct Manifestations which are also at first necessarily unrecognized. The beginning of this change is thus described by Thakur Sree Brindavandas. On a certain day the Lord under pretense of nervous break-down manifested all the perturbations of loving devotion. All on a sudden he began to utter words that are not of this world, rolled on the ground, laughed and smashed the house. He spoke with a deep, loud voice, girded up His loins and beat all persons whom He chanced to find about Him. His whole Body repeatedly attained the state of suspended animation and these fits of exclusiveness were so peculiar that they filled all beholders with terror. The friends came soon to learn the tidings of His supposed indisposition and turned up in a body. They busied themselves with devising the proper treatment of His mental derangement for so it appeared to them to be. Buddhimanta Khan and Mukunda-Sanjaya came to the House of the Lord with all members of their families. They applied to His Head medicinal oils, technically known as Vishnu and Narayana oils. Everyone offered the kind of help that suggested itself to him. But the Lord does everything by His own uncontrolled Will. How could He be cured by any external aid?

The Lord shivered in every Limb and gesticulated violently. His loud exclamations terrified everybody. The Lord said: ‘I am the Lord of all the worlds; I uphold the world, whence My name is Vishwambhar. I am He, but no one knows Me.’ With these words He begins to run at all the people to get hold of them. In this manner The Lord did disclose His own Lordly Nature under the guise of nervous malady. Yet no one understood, being prevented by His Power. Some held that He was possessed by a demon. Others opined that it was the doing of witches. Some expressed the view that it was undoubtedly a case of madness as He manifested the symptom of talking incessantly. By these indications they failed to understand His real Nature, being thus deluded by the Power of the Lord. They applied various curative oils to His Head and kept His Body immersed in oil in a large vat. The Lord laughed without restraint as He lay afloat in oil, which gave all persons the impression that He had a very serious attack of the worst type of the disease.

Having by His Will sported for a while in this manner, the Lord regained His normal health by giving up the show of nervous malady. At this sudden recovery all people rent the sky with loud acclamations of the Name of Hari. In their joy, they made lavish gifts of clothing in such huge quantities that it baffles all calculation. All the people were gladdened by the tidings of the Lord’s recovery. All said, ‘May the great Pandit live for ever!’ ‘The Lord of Vaikuntha,’ observes Thakur Brindavandas, ‘made merry in this manner. Who has power to know Him if He does not make Himself known?’

These manifestations of spiritual perturbations described by Thakur Brindavandas in the above passage, are liable to be misunderstood. They were manifested by Sree Gaursundar under the form of the symptoms of nervous malady. Those who want to understand everything in terms of ordinary mundane experience and are not prepared to admit the existence, or possibility of existence, of the super-mundane, naturally reject the clear testimony of the Vaishnava writers to the effect that the spiritual perturbations are not physical phenomena at all even though they necessarily appear as such to the clouded vision and understanding of all mortals.

The principle has already been discussed elsewhere. It applies to the whole range of spiritual manifestations. The Name Krishna, the Remains of the food tasted by Krishna, the Objects used in the worship of Krishna—such as buildings, utensils, etc., the body and mind of the person who worships Krishna, are, every one of them, spiritual entities, the consensus of opinion of all empiricists to the contrary notwithstanding. It is a difference of view which separates those, who admit the existence of the eternal and unbridgeable gulf that divides the spiritual from the material, from those who consciously or unconsciously, hold that the two are identical. The latter form the large and influential body of the anti-transcendentalists and philanthrophists.

But the real transcendentalists possess an intelligible and consistent theistic philosophy. They believe in the actual substantive existence of the super mundane plane which never submits to the inspection of the material senses. The spiritual manifestations belong to the transcendental plane. They have to be carefully distinguished on the one hand from all worldly phenomena and on the other from dishonest or misguided exhibitions of the pseudo-transcendentalist. Everyone is free to believe or not believe a thing or a proposition. But no clear thinker would claim the right of misrepresenting, or deliberately misunderstanding, a proposition or an occurrence. The materialists and pseudo transcendentalists have deliberately misunderstood and mis-stated the accounts of the Spiritual Scriptures. This is not honest blunder.

It was this possibility, nay the certainty of deliberate misunderstanding on the part of all disbelievers and pseudo-believers, that led Sree Gaursundar to devise this method, for saving them from the offense of blasphemy, of disguising the satvika manifestations of spiritual love under the form of the symptoms of a disease with which they have the closest external similarity. The opinion of those, who hold the view that the so-called satvika manifestations are also themselves due to the diseased condition of the brain, does not carry any more weight than deliberate misrepresentations. No physician can understand the real cause of the appearance or cessation of the phenomenon known as disease. But it is unfortunately only a small number of doctors who suspect and allow for this great insufficiency of the grounds of their knowledge in opining about bodily manifestations of any kind. Medical science is no less subject to the fundamental limitations of sensuous empiricism than its sister sciences. No science in the modern sense of the term would deserve a serious hearing unless it either helped the codification or widening of our stock of worldly experience.

Considered from this point of view the science of medicine has no jurisdiction over spiritual manifestations, and this ought to be more clearly recognized acted upon and proclaimed by the leading scientists of to-day than they are always accustomed to do. They are, of course, free to criticize the methods and experiences of the Absolutists. It is only when they are really unable to understand spiritual matters after proper endeavor that such criticism has its real use in exposing the vagaries or opposition of insincere persons and thereby preventing mischief from that quarter. But let them not forget their legitimate function by themselves setting up as spiritualists and attempting in that unscientific manner to manufacture theories of the Absolute on the basis of any worldly stuff and thereby prove one more nuisance and obstruction in the way of the honest inquiry of the Transcendental. Those who willfully offend against reason are rightly punished by the perpetuation of their ignorance, for which they have to thank only themselves. The satvika perturbations due to love for Krishna, are objects of longing to devotees of the very highest order who are absolutely free from all ignorance and all taint of self-seeking. This is necessarily unintelligible to those who have not thought it worth their while to cross the threshold of spiritual life. Their self-sufficient attitude towards the problems of the eternal duties, is only a proof of their utter slavery to the illusory power of Vishnu, the goddess Maya, who is ever usefully engaged in deluding the race of the hypocrites of all shades.

The utterances and activities of the servants of Vishnu are a perpetual enigma to the shrewdest atheists. No efforts of their perverted intellect can find out their real significance. The words uttered by the Vaishnava are transcendental, as are all activities. They are perfectly incomprehensible to conceited sinners who have been assigned this material world as the place of their abode as the expidatory? punishment of such perversity. The deluding power of Vishnu is ever engaged in guarding the portals of the transcendental realm against the impious assaults of all builders of the Babel. The realisation of this truth alone enables us to attain that perfect humility of the spirit to which the gates of the eternal realm of Vishnu are ever likely to open of themselves. The humility that is current in this world is the perverted reflection of the substantive spiritual quality and is all the more heinous because such disguised form of self-conceit constitutes the deliberate misrepresentation of true humility. External roughness or smoothness of conduct is no criterion of the real humility. The really humble conduct of the self-less devotee of Vishnu may seem as rudeness, conceit and even arrogance to the pretended view of the deliberate hypocrite. There is no help for a person who chooses to willfully misunderstand. Such persons have been aptly compared to the owl whose eyes are denied only the sight of the glorious Sun.

To many impartial critics who are fully conscious of the vagaries of our present intellect in its pretended efforts to approach the Absolute and who are, therefore, prepared to reserve their judgment on a subject so alien to their whole experience the conduct of Sree Gaursundar, on this particular occasion, may still seem to be open to the charge of apparent inconsistency. They may properly enough ask whether Sree Gaursundar wanted to be regarded as the devotee of Krishna, or as Krishna Himself. If He wished to teach the people of this world the highest and only service of the Absolute Person by His own practice, how could the Manifestation of His real Nature as Recipient of worship be consistent with such purpose?

This criticism overlooks the fact that there is a very close approximation to the Divinity in the highest stage of devotion when the devotee is apt to be persuaded that He is Krishna Himself and in that mood sets himself to imitating the Activities of Krishna. This is to be carefully distinguished from the erroneous conclusion of the professors of the cult of the undifferentiated Brahman that the fulfillment of worship, which they regard as only a probationary stage, is attained by complete merging with the Object of worship Who is conceived as being absolutely devoid of form and activity of any kind.

In the case of the true devotee the worship is not a make-believe, temporary expedient as it is in the case of the other. If the service which we offer to Krishna is supposed to be due to certain changing circumstances it at once loses the character of sincerity and truth. The Vaishnava knows Himself to be the eternal servant of the Lord. He does not think it possible or desirable to merge in Krishna and thereby cease to be His servant. This is the ambition of those hypocrites who, while pretending to be the servants of a god whom they cannot or do not purposely attempt to define, really cherish in the back-ground of their disloyal minds the design of being some day freed from the irksome necessity of such service as the reward (?) of their insincerity! To them, therefore, the end is necessarily different from the means.

By the adoption, for the time being, of a particular method, which is to be discarded on the attainment of the object of such endeavor, the Absolute cannot be realized. The relative can never lead, not even as a means, to the Absolute. It involves the fallacy of the major premise. The major premise in this case is too narrow and the middle term is undistributed. Untruth cannot lead to the Truth. By means of the Truth alone the Truth can be realized. As we do not possess the knowledge of the Truth and have no chance of ever knowing Him with the help of our present limited faculties we are either doomed to the state of eternal ignorance or liable to be enlightened from above by grace. There is no other alternative. The Vaishnava; therefore, accepts the latter alternative for attaining to the knowledge of the Truth. The abstract monist holds consistently neither to the one nor to the other. He does not believe fully either in his own ability, or in revelation. He has, therefore, no locus standi and necessarily tumbles headlong into the depths of Uncertainty which he calls God or Brahman in order to delude himself and his followers with the hope, which, despite all perversity, his and their natures instinctively demand, that they are for a time being as a sort of servants of the Absolute. When the true devotee exhibits the moods and activities of his Master he does so as a loyal servant rendered completely oblivious of his own separate existence and interests, by the contemplation of his Beloved. But he knows, specially at such moments more fully than ever, that he himself is not the Master. The conduct of the monist in his so-called realized state (siddhi) bears no resemblance to the activities of the devotee engrossed by the thoughts of his Master who, due to his consequent forgetfulness of his own self, thus enacts the Master’s part. But the monist ceases to function on merging with the Absolute ( ?).

In the case of Sree Chaitanya He is sometimes found to be declaring Himself to be Krishna. Those who want to misunderstand will say that He was guilty of inconsistency of conduct because He could have easily avoided any suspicions being aroused regarding the sincerity of His own conduct by abstaining from such explicit declarations of His possession of the Master’s Nature. But at the same time we must remember that He was not merely simulating but actually personating the devotee. This is incomprehensible to us. But it happens to be the fact, as testified to by the author of Sree-Chaitanya-Charitamrita in the opening verses of his work dealing with the object of the Lord’s Appearance in this world. The real object, says Sree Krishnadas Kaviraj, was to taste His own sweetness by clothing Himself with the disposition and beauty of Sree Radhika. All other work could have been, and was as a matter of fact actually performed by the secondary Avataras. The Lord’s own special Purpose in appearing in the world, which cannot be realized by any except Himself, was to experience the love of Sree Radhika for Himself. He, therefore, could not be recognized by those who were not His innermost devotees.

It is true that He was recognized as Krishna by His followers from whom He did not hide His real Nature. This was necessary for the purpose of the Leela and the possession of such knowledge by His devotees served to enhance the charm of their service and also to regulate their conduct. Therefore, these direct manifestations possess a double face like Sree Chaitanya Himself. Those who choose to ignore the face of the devotee, will miss the real significance of His Conduct and Teaching, no less than those who disregard the Divine face. All so-called partial truth is a deluding empiric conception and has no place in spiritual experience. In the absolute realm there is diversity, without rupturous dividing lines.

In order to be able to understand the activities of the devotees of the Absolute Person Vishnu it is necessary to remember that enlightenment from above is the indispensable essential precondition. It is futile to attempt to know Him by means of our present limited understanding. Hence the necessity of having recourse to the spiritual preceptor and spiritual initiation. Initiation (diksha) consists in complete submission to the Absolute, which is equivalent to loyal and sincere submission to the guidance of the spiritual Preceptor, such submission being identical with obedience to the Word of Krishna as revealed in the satvata Shastras of which the spiritual Preceptor is both the only bona fide exponent and follower, the indispensable requisites for spiritual preceptorship.

The act of the disciple in submitting to the Preceptor, is not to be confounded with the renunciation of the right of private judgment or subordinating one’s own judgment to another’s. Both Preceptor and disciple are under obligation to obey only the spiritual Scriptures. It is a matter of willing admission of superior progress on the path of the Eternal, and not a question of enforced servitude. Both preceptor and disciple are free and sincere enquirers of the Absolute by the method of unconditional submission to the Absolute. Both realize the necessity and the rationale of such submission. Both know that the only real freedom consists in absolute submission to the Truth. All these conditions are scrupulously observed in their mutual relationship by the bona fide Preceptor and disciple. The effect of such practical submission to the Absolute is freedom from the limitations of the materialized senses. No sooner is this act of complete self-surrender to the spiritual Preceptor made then the devotee is accepted by Krishna as His own. The body, senses and mind of such a person are surcharged with the spiritual essence by the Grace of Krishna. And the initiated thereby becomes eligible for eternally serving the Feet of Krishna by the purified body, senses and mind.

The service of the Absolute is possible only on the plane of the Absolute and in the spiritual body by means of the spiritual senses. The soul of jiva possesses body, senses and mind. Krishna has also His own Divine Form, Senses and Mind. The soul of the jiva is constituted to serve Krishna with his spiritual body, mind and senses. The activities of the jiva in this world, in the fallen state, is a perverted deluded caricature of his true and eternal function. The body, mind and senses of the devotee appear to conditioned souls to be similar to their adventitious material body, senses and mind. But this is not really the case. It is the effect of delusion. The satvika perturbations which are possible only in the spiritual body, appear to the materialized vision of sinful jivas as possessing the character of physical manifestations. Such conclusion is equally deluded. Those who do not admit the necessity of submission to Krishna, cannot necessarily understand what the practice of such submission implies. The act of submission is the key to the spiritual realm. The denial of this is tantamount to ignorance. The refusal to submit to the Truth is the logical equivalent of the slavery of untruth by means of the deluding physical senses. The atheists are the only ignorant and unfree persons by their refusal to follow the guidance of their reason.

Sree Gaursundar talked much while He was exhibiting the Leela of Direct Manifestation under the guise of nervous distemper. This confirmed the suspicions of those who were looking out for the symptoms of disease. The words uttered by the devotee are transcendental sounds that have the power of producing spiritual enlightenment by freeing from worldliness, if the unprejudiced ear is turned to them. The Transcendental Lord is served as the Transcendental Sounds. Those who admit the spiritual nature of the devotees of Krishna know that they are constantly engaged in the service of Krishna on the plane of the Absolute. The utterance of too much earthly sound is no doubt a sign of aggravated worldliness and is the malady of madness to which we are sometimes subjected by the mercy of Krishna so that we may be reminded thereby of the insubstantial and transitory nature of our most highly valued worldly possessions. One suffering from the aggravated disease of worldliness is not healed by the application of medicines which are supplied by physical Nature for the restoration of the worldly delusion. Such malady, treatment and cure all belong to the realm of delusions. They only serve to keep up the deluded idea of the wholesome nature of this world and its concerns for the correctness of atheists by such bitter experience. The delusion of those who put their trust in the delusion of the earthly physicians, who have a very high opinion of themselves, their science and its utility, is augmented by the practice of such trust.

The maladies of both worldly patients and worldly doctors can be healed only if they learn to distinguish between the symptoms of real disease, the punishment of sin, and the similar spiritual manifestations of devotees who are absolutely free from all taint of worldliness, which are the only cure of all diseases. But the ill-fated have not the leisure, so wholly engrossed they choose to be in their worldly concerns and self-gratulations, to exercise their unprejudiced reason on the subject of their disease of the worldly sojourn. They are so absolutely persuaded of their own rectitude that they employ their wits in disproving the claims, to any real goodness, of those very persons who endeavour to cure them of their worldly disease by affording them the opportunity of listening to those redeeming sounds that bring the tidings of the Absolute to all benighted souls. They mistake, as the symptoms of an unsound mind with which unfortunately they are only too familiar, words and utterances that are the only medicine of their diseased souls. This infatuity is the corrective punishment of their unwarrantable self-complacency. Krishna’s Deluding Power is ever seeking the holes in the coats of everyone of us in order to disturb us in the most sensitive parts and thereby to cure us of the disease of such fatuous reliance on the resources of our deluded, limited understanding. He, therefore, sends His own beloved ones, in the guise of patients, to the doctors of this world for delivering such of them as keep their ears open to the voice of Krishna spoken through the mouths of His devotees. But the other sort seeing, sees not, and misses their only opportunity, as further corrective punishment for their gross, deliberate worldliness. This is the fate of those worldly-wise people who consider the Unrestrained Talk of Sree Gaursundar as a conclusive proof of His madness.

Of course it is possible, not inevitable for a time even after initiation, for a person to exhibit the state of suffering from the actual effects of sensuous activities that he had indulged in before his initiation. This does not come amiss to the bona fide probationer who never wants to get rid of his merited sufferings in lieu of his intention to serve. Such suffering causes the genuine probationer no pain but, on the contrary, is to him a source of unalloyed spiritual bliss as providing greater opportunities of service. To the uninitiated the sight of apparent suffering of the devotee presents a double face, viz., of those patient sufferings and merited punishment, both of which are untrue and are a trick of the Deluding Power to prevent the obstinate impious from serving the devotee as devotee. The doctor who may be called by the devotee to treat him is afforded the opportunity of rendering unconscious service to the Vaishnava and will obtain his reward in the shape of a lessening of his worldliness, if he is careful not to allow his mind to cherish any prejudice against the bona fide of the real devotee merely from the fact that he might have been guilty of worldly conduct in his past life. This total absence of all irrational prejudice is possible only in a person who is sincerely conscious of his own imperfections.

A doctor who treats a real sadhu without prejudice thereby unconsciously serves Krishna Himself and obtains as his reward freedom. from all ignorance by the mercy of the sadhu who is pleased to manifest to him his real spiritual nature by the will of Krishna. As soon as one obtains the real sight of the Vaishnava he instantly awakes from the deep waking slumber of ignorance to which he was being lulled by the deluding tricks of Maya. No amount of any so-called unprejudiced service rendered to a non-Vaishnava can lead to such a result. On the contrary if a non-Vaishnava is too zealously served his so-called benefactor (?) is liable to be punished by an increase of his delusion as he would thereby only develop the vanity of false humanity which makes him overlook the distinction between the Vaishnava and the non-Vaishnava as recipients of our service. Such a person can hardly be expected to be ever able, unless after he is really cured of his fondness for non-Vaishnavas, to grasp the real significance of the eternal distinction between the spiritual and the material, or to realize the truth that his soul has no affinity whatever with the objects and aspirations of this world.

The apparent defects of a bona fide Vaishnava have been aptly compared to the mud and froth that are sometimes found in the holy water of the Ganges. These in no way affect the eternal and unchangeable purity of the sacred stream that issues from the Holy Feet of the Supreme Lord. On the contrary even such mud and froth themselves imbiblie, by contact with the chastening water of the Ganges, the quality of delivering all really unclean persons from the sticking dirt of worldliness. It requires a really impartial and supremely patient judgment to be able to enter into this spirit of the philosophy of theism. Sree Gaursundar’s teachings are a sealed book to the crooked and captious, but are easily understood by the really candid. Worldly merit or demerit is of no help in this matter. Sincerity of the soul is ~e one thing needful. Insincerity is the concomitant of worldliness which is the cause of all our self-made ignorance and misery.

But some may still raise the objection that Sree Gaursundar could have done even greater good and obtained a better hearing for His teachings if He had exhibited no such symptoms even of apparent madness. Of course the Supreme Lord is free to do whatever He likes and there can be no defect in what He Wills or Does. Gaursundar was, in this instance, exhibiting the Leela of the ideal devotee. The necessity for such performance lay in the fact that the deliverance of all fettered souls is absolutely dependent on the realization of the transcendental nature of the devotee of God. Such realization can alone enlighten him regarding the spiritual nature of His own proper self. The object of Sree Gaursundar was to remove all misconceptions that stand in the way of such realization.

One of the commonest fallacies of this wide world is that religion is only one specific department of human activities out of many; or, in other words that it is possible to serve both God and Mammon at the same time, or at any rate in recurring succession. This idea, it would not be an exaggeration to observe, has been allowed by culpable negligence on the part of writers to pervade all literature of modern times. Religion is pedantically differentiated from politics, from morality, from aesthetics and from worldly activities of all sorts, not so much for the purpose of emphasizing the eternal distinction between the spiritual and the material but with the sinister motive of restricting the scope of religious activity itself within defined worldly bounds. If this fallacy, which is so widely disseminated, once finds a real lodgment in the brain, one can never realize the nature of the spiritual service of God, nor understand that it is possible to practice the same even while we are placed in this world without doing harm to anybody. I may notice in passing that the practice of so-called religious toleration, which is so much affected by a particular stamp of thinkers, is also based upon the above fallacy, viz., that it is possible without any real danger to anyone to keep religion out of the other affairs of life. One, who prays regularly to God in the evening and morning and thinks that thereby his obligations to Godhead are at least partially fulfilled, utterly misunderstands the nature of his duty as the exclusive servant of the Lord. The obligation to serve Krishna is a self-imposed principle which knows no limits. Krishna can and ought to be served in all circumstances by each and every person of this world. One who really serves Him does so in his every act and thought. The devotee serves Krishna at all times both when he wakes and when he seems to sleep. Every act of the devotee under every circumstance is an act of service. One who fails to understand this fundamental principle of spiritual existence, cannot recognize the devotee of God and is doomed to sin and worldliness for this reason, notwithstanding all his exertions resembling the external conduct of the real sadhus.

The devotee of Krishna serves Him under all circumstances and he does nothing else. He neither eats nor sleeps but only serves. When He exhibits the activity of apparent eating and sleeping he does so for our benefit in order to show us how ever we, for whom eating and sleeping are necessary, can get rid of this false existence with its whole round of so-called interminable duties and obligations, if we only obey the Word of God manifested in the holy Scriptures and explained by the discourse and practice, of the eternal servants of Krishna who, by His command, make themselves visible to our mortal senses and who live and move in our midst for the fulfillment of the beneficial Purpose of the Supreme Lord in regard to ourselves. Such is the real nature of the true servants of Krishna. The Vaishnava tells us that the soul of every entity has the capacity of serving Krishna however circumstanced he may appear to be. The souls of the stone, the tree, the baby in the womb, the lunatic, the dying and the dead, are all equally eligible in this matter. Because no circumstance of this deluding world, however formidable or adverse it may seem to be to our eclipsed cognition, can offer any real obstruction to the spiritual service of the Lord. It is the truth of this proposition that the devotees are engaged in establishing for the benefit of the unbelievers of this world, by all their teaching and practice.

It would be a great blunder, therefore, to suppose that any evil can befall the servants of Krishna, here or elsewhere. The devotee is put by Krishna in all possible situations in order to train up the judgment of those who profess to believe in them It is only when a person’s budding faith survives this purgatorial ordeal that he is in a position to understand the teaching of the Vaishnava which is identical with his conduct. Conversely the hypocrites are prevented from committing the offense of the pretense of serving the devotee by such constant searching of their weakest points. These exhibitions serve the doubly beneficial purpose of enhancing the faith of all sincere seekers of the Truth and keeping at a distance all those who have no inclination to serve Krishna but only themselves.

In this world we cannot really serve Krishna; we can only serve those servants of the Lord who are mercifully sent by Him into our midst to deliver us from the state of sin and ignorance. Krishna cannot be served by the sinful and the ignorant. Those who think that it is possible to serve Krishna with the resources of our limited understandings or by the physical bodies, confound the transcendental service of Krishna which passes the understanding of man with the corresponding atheistical performances. To complete this delusion they are also firmly persuaded by reason of their cultivated aversion to Krishna that whatever any individual sinner may choose to fancy as the Truth contains an element of truth. What they really want is that Truth must serve them and not they the Truth. They want to be the masters and not the servants of Krishna. But these irrational, hypocritical, self-seeking, misguided atheists are prevented, by their perversity due to such senseless prostitution of their freedom of will, from having the Sight of Krishna or His devotees.

Those who fail to realize the fatal nature of the offense committed against the Vaishnavas, are unfit to serve the devotees of Krishna although by such service alone conditioned souls can be delivered from the consequences of their willful transgressions. It is an offense against the Vaishnavas to suppose that a bona fide Vaishnava does anything else than the service of Krishna which is absolutely free from the least taint of worldliness. It is also an offense against the Vaishnavas to serve or associate with a non-Vaishnava, or to suppose that a sinner while in the state of sin is a Vaishnava. Until we are freed from these impious errors we cannot be said to desire the mercy of the true devotees of the Lord. The transcendental activities and teachings of Sree Gaursundar as expounded and practiced by His associates and the followers of His associates, can alone save us from these errors to which an Age given to superficial controversies, like the present, has an abnormal besetting tendency to subscribe.

The real significance of these Pastimes of the Lord, although they happened to be perfectly explicit, were not apparently permitted to be understood even by the devotees in order to impress upon worldlings the truth that no one is able to know Him until and unless He enables one to know.

The tidings of the recovery of Sree Gaursundar filled everyone with joy. The Vaishnavas specially availed of this opportunity of impressing upon Him the necessity of serving the Feet of Sree Krishna by arguing the reason that there is no certainty of life or sanity. Sree Chaitanya was naturally partial to the Vaishnavas. Their exhortations made Him smile as He stopped to do obeisance to them all on His way in the company of His innumerable pupils.

Sree Chaitanya then resumed His duties as teacher. He taught His pupils inside the Chandimandap of the house of Mukunda-Sanjaya. While the Lord was thus engaged in expounding the texts to His pupils perfumed medicated oil was applied to His Head by some exceptionally fortunate persons of many good deeds. Sree Chaitanya took His seat in the middle of the room and was surrounded by His pupils who sat in a circle round their Teacher. That gathering is without a parallel in the annals of the world. Sree Brindavandas Thakur ransacked the Scriptures for a parallel instance for the purpose of comparison. At Badarikasrama Sree Narayana teaches Sanaka and other Rishis sitting round Him in a circle. The Act of Sree Gaursundar resembled this Leela of Sree Narayana Himself. The comparison holds good for the reason that the Darling of Sachi is the Same as Sree Narayana who dwells at Badarikasrama. It was, therefore, the very same Pastime of Badarikasrama that Sree Chaitanya was thus enacting in the company of His disciples at Nabadwip.

At the conclusion of His teaching by mid-day Sree Gaursundar would go out with His pupils to the Ganges for His Bath. After sporting for a time in the holy water of the Ganges He returned home and worshipped Vishnu. Offering water and circumambulating Sree Tulasi He sat to His meal by uttering repeatedly the Name of Hari. Sree Lakshmi Devi served the Food and the Lord of Vaikuntha ate the same. The pious mother was privileged to have the full view of this Sight. After meal He used to chew betel and then retired for rest. Sree Lakshmi Devi tended His Feet as the Lord laid Himself down in His Bed. The Lord then bent His Auspicious Glance on the goddess who serves in the office of Sleep of the Supreme Lord. Having rested for a while Sree Gaursundar used to go out of the house a second time with His books.




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