Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Auspicious appearance

On March 7, 1486 the land of Bengal was blessed with the appearance of a great luminary. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, prophesized as the incarnation of divine love by the Vedic scriptures, was born in a Brahmin family in the town of Nabadwip, West Bengal, India. Throughout his life, acquaintances affectionately referred to him by many names, such as Sachinandan, the son of Sachi, his mother. Because his birth took place under a neem tree, he was also lovingly called Nimai, especially during his Childhood and youth. The townspeople knew him as Gauranga, because of his light golden skin and physical beauty. Later in life, upon taking vows of renunciation, he would formally be given the name Chaitanya, and after his reputation as a great saint spread, the honorific title Mahaprabhu (Great Master) was further bestowed upon him.

Chaitanya‟s forefathers came from Sylhet in East Bengal, but had left their ancestral home to come to Nabadwip, which was then a great center of learning. They established the new family home on the banks of the Ganges, where Chaitanya‟s father Jagannath Mishra had been born. Chaitanya‟s Mother Sachi devi was the eldest daughter of another Nabadwip scholar, the astrologer Nilambar Chakravarti. The young couple had eight successive daughters, but none survived childbirth. Finally Sachi‟s ninth child, a boy named Vishwarupa, was born. Twelve years later, Chaitanya followed.

Chaitanya‟s birth corresponded with Krishna‟s spring swing festival, Dol Yatra, which is celebrated on the full moon day between February and March. Vaishnava theologians say that Krishna, who is always absorbed in the love of his precious gopis, accepted the mood and golden hue of the goddess Srimati Radharani and left his beloved Vrindavan to appear in his secret abode of Nabadwip, the hidden Vrindavan. In this incarnation, he flooded the land of Bengal with divine love and brought order back into the land’s political, judicial and social orders.

Ordinarily, on the full-moon day, the moon proudly rises to bathe the world in pure, gentle rays of silver. On Dol Purnima of 1486, however there was an eclipse, as though nature was announcing that another moon, unique and divine, was also rising on that night-one that was greater in fullness, purity, coolness, gentleness, generosity, and poetic beauty than any ordinary moon, or indeed any other joy-giving thing in the world. As it was spring, the still leafless trees were filled with fresh new twigs and copper-colored sprouts. The mango buds were attracting swarms of buzzing bees in search of nectar, while the flower shrubs and creepers waved their branches and spread their fragrance in the wind. It was as though the goddess of nature herself was a young bride who, on hearing the jingling ankle bells of her groom, the Lord of the infinite worlds, had dressed herself in all her finery and was now eagerly awaiting his arrival for the wedding. Seeing nature take on such a beautiful aspect, one could easily conclude that this truly was the day that the Creator and His creation were to be united.

The ladies of the town blew their conch shells, filling the earth and sky with an auspicious reverberation. In every direction, the earth was filled with peace, the river waters were calm and even the ordinary plants and creatures seemed to be filled with joy. The world was awash with bliss. The sound of the Supreme Lord’s name was on everyone’s lips and all hearts overflowed with happiness. It was as though all were holding their breath in expectation of his appearance as Nimai, the son of Sachi.

After Chaitanya’s birth, astrologers assessed his birth chart in preparation for his name-giving ceremony. They conclptouded that, in accordance with the scriptures, the name Vishwambhar was    appropriate, for it means one who supports, nourishes and protects (bhara) the universe (visvam). Nevertheless, everyone continued to affectionately call him Nimai.

Chaitanya's transformation

Despite being wed to a beautiful and virtuous wife, Chaitanya's interest in married life slowly waned. In early 1509, when he was nearly twenty-three years old, he travelled to Gaya in order to offer oblations at the holy Brahma Kund for the repose of his departed father‟s soul.  After he had bathed in Brahma Kund and finished these sacred rites, Mahaprabhu went to Chakrabera Tirtha, where the famous temple to Lord Vishnu‟s lotus feet stands. While meditating there, Mahaprabhu heard someone reciting the glories of the Deity from the scriptures. He began to experience transcendental ecstatic symptoms, a veritable Ganges of tears flowed from his eyes.

While still in this condition, Mahaprabhu met Ishwar Puri, who was to become his spiritual master. As soon as they saw each other, they were both overwhelmed by waves of ecstatic love for Krishna. Mahaprabhu told Ishwar Puri that the actual purpose in coming to Gaya had been to meet him. 

He further said to his Guru: "My trip to Gaya became a success as soon as I saw your lotus feet. One who comes here to offer oblations delivers his forefathers and perhaps himself as well. As soon as I saw you, however, millions of forefathers were immediately delivered from their material bondage. No holy place could ever be your equal. Indeed, saints like you are the only real reason any holy place is able to sanctify the pilgrim. Please lift me out of this ocean of material entanglement. I hereby surrender my body and life to you.  All I ask of you is that you please give me the nectar of Krishna's lotus feet to drink.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu thus emphasized that the greatest benefit that comes from visiting places of pilgrimage is in meeting the holy people who frequent them. Therefore, no one should think that visiting a place of pilgrimage is ever equal to coming into contact with an authentic saint or spiritual master. The spiritual master is so powerful that he can bestow upon a taste for the nectar of service to Krishna, the highest purpose in life according to Mahaprabhu.

The truth is that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is the universal spiritual master; he is Krishna, incarnating as his own devotee in the mood of Radharani in order to distribute the means for attaining love of God. Nevertheless, in order to teach the necessity of taking initiation from a bona fide spiritual master, he displayed this pastime of receiving the ten-syllable Krishna mantra from Ishwar Puri.

After initiation, Nimai became permanently intoxicated with devotion to Krishna. On his return home to Nabadwip, he was no longer the same proud but fun-loving scholar he had been. He was completely indifferent to all his previous preoccupations, including family life. He stopped teaching his students and even closed down his school. He spent all his time looking everywhere for Krishna, calling out Krishna's name and fainting due to separation from Krishna.

Soon thereafter, Nimai began to participate in kirtans, or ecstatic festivals of singing and dancing to the holy names of Krishna, in the house of Srivasa Pandit, an elderly Vaishnava who lived nearby. To this day, Srivasa's house is called the “Sankirtan Rasa Sthali,” in comparison to the place where Krishna had his rasa dance with the gopis. Just as that was the most significant of Krishna's pastimes, sankirtan is the most significant of Mahaprabhu's pastimes.  Mahaprabhu also held kirtans from time to time in the house of Chandrashekhar Acharya.

The vibrations of this kirtan washed over the land as far as Shantipur. Soon thereafter, all of Mahaprabhu's associates – Nityanada Prabhu, Advaita Prabhu, Hari Das Thakur, Gadadhar Pandit, Srivasa Pandit, Pundarik Vidyanidhi, Murari Gupta, Hiranya, Ganga Das, Vanamali, Vijaya, Nandanacharya, Jagadananda, Buddhimanta Khan, Narayan Pandit, Kashishwar, Vasudeva, Sriram Pandit, Sri Govinda, Govindananda, Gopinath, Jagadish, Sridhar Pandit and many others – came to join him in the nightly chanting.

This was the beginning of the sankirtan movement. It was as though the transcendental god of love had descended from the spiritual sky, conquering over the hearts of everyone and manifesting on their tongues in the form of Krishna's sweet name.

Nimai becomes a Scholar

While Nimai was still very young, his brother Vishwarupa left home and became a wandering monk never to return. As a result, when Nimai was of age to begin his education, his parents resisted sending him to school, for they were afraid that if he became too educated, he would also become indifferent to worldly life and end up leaving home like his brother. In response to this, Nimai used his precocious intelligence to force his parents to send him to school. On day, Sachi Mata scolded Nimai for some childish misdemeanor, and the boy went off in a huff to sit on a pile of refuse. When she started to chastise him for getting dirty, Nimai cleverly answered:

"You won’t let me go to school, I am supposed to be a Brahmin, but if I am not educated, how will I be able to distinguish good from bad? I am illiterate, so how can you expect me to tell the difference between a pure place and an impure one? It’s all the same to me."

After hearing Nimai speak in this way, Jagannath Mishra decided it was pointless to hold him back and so enrolled him in the school of Ganga Das Pandit. In a very short time, Nimai had mastered Sanskrit grammar and much more. If he encountered any scholar on the street, the cocky young lad would challenge him with trick questions about grammar or logic. The town’s pundits would be embarrassed by their inability to answer Nimai and so would immediately cross the street to avoid him, but in fact, Chaitanya was teaching the real purpose of learning through his actions.

Jagannath Mishra died before Nimai had finished his schooling. Nimai dutifully performed the customary funeral rites for his father and then returned to concentrating on his studies. Before long, his reputation as a brilliant student had spread far and wide and he was able to open a small school and take students of his own.

At about this time, Keshava Kashmiri, a famous scholar who made his living by travelling and engaging other scholars in debate, arrived in Nabadwip.  Nadabwip’s pandits were afraid of being defeated by the Kashmiri Brahmin and losing their own reputations and that of the town itself as a center of learning. They consulted among themselves and decided to appoint Nimai as their representative. Their reasoning was that if the young scholar lost, no real harm would be done to Nabadwip’s reputation; on the other hand, if he won, it would be a feather in everyone’s cap. Were Keshava Kashmiri to be defeated by a mere boy, he would depart in shame and not bother to challenge any of the town’s other scholars.

As soon as the two scholars sat down to their intellectual joust, Keshava Kashmiri composed a hundred extemporaneous verses in glorification of the Ganges. Nimai responded by focusing on   only one of these verses and pointing out a number of errors in grammar, meter, vocabulary, and rhetoric.  This made all the Kashmiri pandit's erudition seem tarnished, and everyone present applauded Nimai's brilliant victory.

Not long afterward, Nimai was married to Lakshmi Devi, the daughter of Vallabha Acharya. A few months after the wedding, he set off for East Bengal, or what is now Bangladesh, on a teaching tour to earn some money. His reputation was greatly enhanced on this trip, but when he returned, he found that Lakshmi Devi had been bitten by a snake during his absence and was no longer in this world.

For the next year, Nimai taught at the house of Mukunda Sanjaya. He would tutor his students from early morning until noon, and then pursue his own studies through the afternoon until late at night.

In the meantime, Sachi Devi became anxious to see her son married again. She engaged Kashinath Pandit to broker Nimai’s marriage to Vishnupriya, the saintly daughter of Sanatan Mishra. Sanatan Mishra was a Brahmin from a respected family, a great devotee of Vishnu who possessed many good qualities: he was charitable, a welcoming host, truthful, and self- controlled. Furthermore, as a scholar to the royal court, he was very wealthy.

Another wealthy citizen of the town, Buddhimanta Khan, volunteered to finance the wedding. When the auspicious moment came, Nimai set off with great pomp in a festive wedding procession to Sanatan Mishra’s house.  The rituals were carried out, and the couple was united in marriage.

Mahaprabhu takes Sanyasa

During the year that Mahaprabhu inaugurated the sankirtan movement in Nabadwip, he performed many wonderful pastimes in the streets and homes of its residents. Through these pastimes, he revealed all six traits proclaimed by the Vedic literature to be characteristics of divinity: wealth, bravery, fame, beauty, knowledge and renunciation.

Then came another event that signaled the turning in Mahaprabhu’s life. One day, he was sitting quietly at home, absorbed in the mood of a gopi, or cowherd girl, separated from Krishna  and angry with him for his lack of compassion in abandoning her. In this state, Mahaprabhu repeated over and over again the word, gopi, gopi. One of his students, a pashandi, happened to  hear him and challenged him, “Why are you chanting the names of some women instead of the names of Krishna? What do you gain by repeating gopi, gopi?”

Mahaprabhu thought the student was there to plead on behalf of Krishna, towards whom, absorbed in the mood of a gopi as he was, he was still feeling angry. He reacted angrily and started to accuse Krishna of unfaithfulness and all manner of flaws. The poor student was completely unable to comprehend Mahaprabhu’s words, but protested at what sounded to him like blasphemy. Mahaprabhu then picked up a stick and started to pursue the boy who fled in fear of his life. When the student told the other Nabadwip Brahmins what had transpired, they plotted to have some thugs punish him for his transgression by beating him.

The inability of the town’s Brahmin community to understand him and their reaction to this incident saddened Mahaprabhu, he said “I have shown so many wonderful pastimes in order to teach these people about spiritual life, but they have not been able to understand anything. Indeed, they are becoming inimical to pure devotion.” He concluded that he had to take extraordinary steps to remedy the problem and save them: So I must take the renounced order of life. If I take sanyasa, people will respect me simply because of my station in life.

In this way, Mahaprabhu decided to follow the social custom of taking sannyas. At around the same time, Kashava Bharati came through Nabadwip on his way to his ashram in Katwa, and Mahaprabhu revealed his intention to him. He only told five other people: his mother Sachi Devi, Gadadhar Pandit, Chandrashekhar, Mukunda and Brahmananda. However, the secret was badly kept and soon everyone in town knew about it, with the exception of one person – his wife, Vishnupriya Devi.  Sanatan Mishra‟s daughter Vishnupriya had come to Mahaprabhu‟s house as his wife, bringing with her so many hopes and dreams for a lifetime of conjugal happiness. Even so, she had never been able to feel real peace of mind, as she had long watched her beloved husband become more and more absorbed in spiritual life. Her fears had thus grown that he would one day leave her and take sannyas.

On the day before Chaitanya planned to leave, he spent the entire day in kirtan with his companions. Then, at the end of the day, he bid farewell to them all, knowing that he would soon be leaving them forever. He then returned home, where Sachi Mata and Vishnupriya were waiting. Vishnupriya brought water to wash his feet, as was the custom. Nimai went through the customary duties of a householder Brahmin – performing his evening meditation and worship, eating sanctified food and talking with his mother before finally going to his room to rest.

There, the desolate Vishnupriya joined him. It seemed as though the clouds of immanent separation were gathering in the lonely room. Her anxious questions rumbled like thunder before a storm. The beautiful Vishnupriya herself was like a flash of lightening illuminating Nimai's body.  And finally, tears began to pour from her eyes like the rains at the height of the monsoon season.

Vishnupriya's emotions also affected Nimai.  Though he had made his decision to leave everything and commit his life completely to the pursuit of devotion to Krishna, he now felt his determination wavering. The moment was dramatic, and the emotions intense. He beckoned to her to come closer and held her in his arms, telling her of all the love he felt for her in his heart. Thus reassuring her, he was able to calm her spirit.

Then began the pastimes poets so love to describe, where a lover and his beloved prepare for union. Nimai dressed Vishnupriya in her finest sari and helped her put on her golden ornaments. The room glowed with the flame of a love that was devoid of the least touch of lust.  When the night came to an end and Vishnupriya was fast asleep, Nimai cut through his attachments and affections and slipped out of the house. In a few hours he would arrive in Katwa, shave his head and become a sannyasi.

Nimai left for Katwa early in the morning with three companions – Nityananda Prabhu, Chandrashekhar Acharya and Mukunda Datta. He had spent twenty-four years in Nabadwip in various wonderful pastimes, and now he was setting off to take sannyas. They went first to the Ganges, in the place that has been immortalized as Nirdaya Ghat. The word nirdaya means “bereft of compassion,” for by leaving Nabadwip, Nimai seemed to be acting most cruelly to all his family, lifelong friends and companions. He and his three associates swam across the river and then made for Katwa, which lies about ten miles to the north on the other bank.

On arriving at Keshava Bharati’s ashram, Mahaprabhu begged him for sannyas.  His companions stood by and performed sankirtan while he danced. A barber was called to shave his head, and as he cut through Mahaprabhu's beautiful tresses, he and all the devotees shed tears of distress.

As the day drew to a close, Mahaprabhu whispered a mantra he had received in a dream into Keshava Bharati’s ear and asked him whether this was indeed the sannyas mantra.  It was Mahaprabhu’s wish that Keshava Bharati repeat this very same mantra to him, by speaking it into his ear according to the custom. In fact, by first repeating it to Keshava Bharati, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was in effect blessing him by making him his disciple. Keshava Bharati gave Nimai  the name Krishna Chaitanya. In his new saffron clothing, he looked extraordinarily beautiful.

Meanwhile, in Nabadwip the news quickly spread that Nimai had left to take sannyas. Sachi Devi had lost her son and herself in lamentation. Vishnupriya shed tears incessantly. She felt herself so alone – she was still so young, not yet a woman, and now she was watching the only possibility for future happiness shatter before her eyes. She seemed to have fallen into a shore- less expanse of water, where she was drifting without any direction.

Vishnupriya was to incarnate the mood of love in lifelong separation. The intensity of her emotions perhaps even exceeded that of Radharani, who suffered so much in a previous age after Krishna left for Mathura. After all, Radharani always had the hope that Krishna might one day come back, but Vishnupriya could not even hope for that much.

The other devotees were also affected by Mahaprabhu’s departure. The town was filled with the sounds of their lament, the memory of which still washes over the world, communicating their suffering.

After being ordained a sannyasi, Mahaprabhu left Katwa and went to Shantipur. A messenger went to Nabadwip to tell Sachi, who came there to see him. Sachi asked him not to go to

Vrindavan, as had been his original intention, but to go instead to Jagannath Puri, where she             would be more likely to get news of him.

Mahaprabhu reached Puri in March of 1510. When he first arrived there, he went to see Lord Jagannath in the temple. The sight of the Deity sent Mahaprabhu into an ecstatic trance, falling  to the ground in a faint. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, a great scholar of Vedanta, happened to be there at the time and, impressed by the young sannyasi, took him to his own home. The devotees who had accompanied Mahaprabhu revived him with their chanting of the Holy Names.

King Prataparudra 

Prataparudra was the king of Orissa at the time, and Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya his court scholar. Sarvabhauma was eager to have Mahaprabhu meet the king, but Mahaprabhu was extremely reluctant to do so. According to the rules of behavior for renunciates, it was forbidden for a sannyasi to meet with any materialistic person, and a king was by definition the most materialistic of all by virtue of his position alone. As a result, Mahaprabhu refused to entertain any such suggestions. When Ramananda Raya retired from his government service and came to live in Puri, the king acted very sympathetically by not only releasing him from his obligations, but awarding him a pension equal to his previous salary as well. Ramananda thus praised Prataparudra to Mahaprabhu, telling him that he was a Vaishnava with all the appropriate qualities. Mahaprabhu’s heart softened toward the king after hearing Ramananda, but even so,   he stuck to his principles.

The seasons changed and Snana Yatra, Lord Jagannath’s annual bathing festival, came around. After the bathing festival, the deity of Lord Jagannath is kept out of sight of the public for a fortnight. During this time, Mahaprabhu would go to Alalanath because he could not tolerate being in Puri while Lord Jagannath was indisposed. After the two-week period, he returned to Puri and met with Advaita and other devotees from Bengal who had come to see him and participate in the Rathayatra.

King Prataparudra made sure that all the Bengali Vaishnavas were given proper food and accommodation.  Out of their appreciation for the king’s service, Nityananda and other devotees asked Mahaprabhu to grant him an audience. When he remained intransigent, Nityananda had to pacify the king by giving him a piece of Mahaprabhu’s used cloth. Then, Ramananda arranged for Mahaprabhu to meet the adolescent crown prince, whom Mahaprabhu embraced as a Vaishnava.  Mahaprabhu’s touch sent the prince into a convulsion of ecstasy, and later, when King Prataparudra touched his son, he too experienced the power of Mahaprabhu’s blessings and divine love.

Finally, it was time for the Rathayatra festival. According to the ancient custom, King Prataparudra swept the ground before Lord Jagannath’s chariot with a gold-handled broom,  and then sprinkled it with sandalwood scented water. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu observed how the king performed this service in genuine humility and was very pleased by it.

During the pulling of the chariots, Mahaprabhu became absorbed in chanting and dancing as always. When the chariots stopped at the midpoint between the temple and Gundicha, their destination, Mahaprabhu rested in a shaded garden called Balgandi. He was still overcome by the ecstasies of the festival and only half aware of what was going on around him. At this time, King Prataparudra, dressed simply as a Vaishnava, approached Mahaprabhu alone and began to massage his feet.

At the same time, he recited the verses from the Srimad Bhagavatam known as "The Gopi's Song". The following verse was especially dear to Mahaprabhu: My Lord, your words and the descriptions of your activities are like nectar for those who have been made thirsty in this desert-like material world. Transmitted by exalted personalities, these narrations eradicate all sinful reactions. Whoever hears them attains all good fortune. Those in this world who broadcast these delightful topics are certainly the most munificent altruists. 

As soon as Mahaprabhu heard this verse, he embraced the king. Mahaprabhu recognized him as a genuine humble Vaishnava and no longer saw him as the icon of materialistic culture.

Last Years in Jagannath Puri

After touring the pilgrimage places in northern India – Vrindavan, Mathura, Prayag, Benares – Mahaprabhu returned to Puri in around 1515, and remained there until his departure from this world in 1533.  King Prataparudra’s spiritual master Kashi Mishra had a cottage built on his property for Mahaprabhu, known as the Gambhira.  Mahaprabhu’s interest in external matters diminished day by day. Close devotees like Svarupa Damodar, Ramananda Raya and Paramananda Puri surrounded him. Nevertheless, in the intensity of his absorption in the mood of Srimate Radharani, he became progressively unconscious of the world around him. Extraordinary ecstatic symptoms manifested on Mahaprabhu’s body. Sometimes in a state of         divine madness, he would run to the entrance of the Jagannath temple and fall down, unconscious.

Sometimes Mahaprabhu would lose himself in the sand dunes on the beach, running toward them with the speed of the wind, taking them to be Govardhan Hill in Vrindavan. Sometimes he would dive into the ocean, thinking it was the Yamuna River, where Krishna had his pastimes.

One full moon night, Mahaprabhu was walking with his devotees from one flower garden to another, singing the verses from the Bhagavatam commemorating the Rasa lila. When they came to the garden known as Ai Tota, Mahaprabhu caught a glimpse of the ocean, with the silver effulgence of the moon reflected on its dancing waves. Mahaprabhu‟s memory of the Yamuna was enkindled and he began to run toward the sea as fast as he was able and jumped into the water. While he was in a trance-like state, seeing himself as a servant of the gopis participating

in Krishna‟s water games in the Yamuna, the outgoing tide pulled his body away from the shore and farther east in the direction of Konark.

None of the other devotees had been able to see where Mahaprabhu had fallen into the water. Svarupa Damodar and the others began to search for him everywhere along the shore. After being unable to find him anywhere, they glumly concluded that he had drowned and would never be seen again. As they were lamenting the loss of Mahaprabhu, Svarupa Damodar saw a fisherman walking along the beach, ecstatically calling out the names of Krishna. Suspecting that there was some connection, Svarupa Damodar asked the fisherman the reason for his ecstatic state. The fisherman answered that he had been fishing at night when he had felt something large tugging on his net. Upon pulling it up, he found what he thought was a dead body, but the moment he touched it, divine ecstasy entered his own body like an electric current. He could not understand what had happened to him and thought that he had caught some kind of supernatural being or ghost. After hearing this account from the fisherman, everyone immediately understood that he was talking about Mahaprabhu and after reassuring him, insisted on being led to him.

The devotees changed Mahaprabhu into dry clothes. As he returned to a state of semi- awareness, he told them about the visions he had seen: “I went to Vrindavan and saw Krishna there with the gopis, splashing each other and playing hide-and-seek in the waters of the Yamuna. I stood on the shore with the other cowgirls and watched them play.”

Mahaprabhu's pastimes come to a close

Every year Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sent someone to Bengal to bring a reassuring message for his mother Sachi, the incarnation of motherly love. One year he sent Jagadananda Pandit, who not only took Mahaprabhu’s message, but on Paramananda Puri’s request, a piece of Mahaprabhu’s cloth and sanctified food from the Jagannath deity. While Jagadananda was in Bengal, he also visited Nabadwip and Shantipur before returning to Puri.

Mahaprabhu’s divine madness continued to grow stronger and stronger. One night he rubbed his cheek against the wall of the Gambhira, trying to get out to find Krishna. Svarupa Damodar  and Ramananda sang the songs of Dhandi Das, Vidyapati and Jayadeva to try to bring him little peace of mind.  On the whole, the last twelve years of Mahaprabhu’s life passed in this way. There was barely any difference between his waking and sleeping state.

Most of Mahaprabhu’s biographers – Murari Gupta, Kavi Marnapur, Vrindavan Das and Krishna Das Kaviraj – have written nothing about his disappearance. Only Lochan Das writes, In the third watch on a Sunday, Mahaprabhu disappeared into Lord Jagannath‟s body.

According to this account, Mahaprabhu embraced the deity of Lord Jagannath and disappeared into his body in the mid-afternoon one Sunday at the Gundicha temple. Srivasa Pandit, Mukunda Datta, Govinda, Kashi Mishra, and others were present there. They saw Mahaprabhu go into the temple, but when they did not see him come out, they became anxious. They asked the pujari of the Gundicha temple to open the temple doors, but the pujari answered: Mahaprabhu has disappeared inside the Gundicha temple. I saw him enter into Jagannath with my own eyes, so I can tell you this with all certainty.

Other people say that Mahaprabhu left his body in the presence of his close friend Gadadhar Pandit, in a state of divine possession, and that his holy remains were buried there on the grounds of the Tota Gopinath temple.

The accounts of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s life are wondrous indeed, though difficult to fully grasp. The Vedic literatures speak of great saints like Dhruva and avatars like Ramachandra ascending into the spiritual world in the very same body. What then is the reason for doubting that Mahaprabhu could have entered into either Jagannath’s body or that of Tota Gopinath?

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s life is full of many miraculous events and those who find pleasure in hearing about him will be rewarded with spiritual gifts beyond compare.