Men of God

LAST YEARS AT PURI

Having once visited the sacred sites, he settled himself at Puri for the rest of his life leaving his disciples to do the work he had in view. The resuscitation of Brindavan was entrusted to Rupa and Sanatana, two Brahmins who had adopted the Muhammadan faith and life as state officials under Hussain Shah ’the best and famous ruler of Bengal and later sought the refuge of Chaitanya to wash off their sins. To these two goswamis (followed later by a few ardent devotees from Bengal) is due the flourishing pilgrim centre of modern Brindavan with its 1000 and more temples and 32 ghats. It soon became the centre of Radhakrishna cult and the abode of the teachers of theology of the Chaitanya faith.

Incidents in Chaitanya’s last 18 years of life at Puri have not been sufficiently recorded in his biographies. They have yet to be discovered in the Oriya manuscripts and when available in the State papers of the Raja Pratap Rudra, his humble devotee. Every year he received a contingent of devotees from Bengal who stayed there for a few months and received something of the Divine Love of Radha and Krishna in their mutual relation, to illustrate which in earthly life Sri Krishna the Vaishnava scriptures say, incarnated as Sri Krishna Chaitanya. He did little teach or preach or write, but by a contagion of Divine Love brought about a true conversion of the hearts of those ready, with whom he came in contact. His Bhakti is conceived of as an experience of Divine Love in an ascending scale, of the last stage of which, “the supreme-emotion,” Radha is the embodiment. Indeed, nobody who saw him in this Love-absorbed condition mistook him for an ordinary ascetic. No human organism could stand the strain put upon it by Chaitanya’s experiences of spontaneous Godward emotions leading up to ecstatic trances. His life adorned the earth for 47 years, and Vaishnava tradition has it that he disappeared in the image of Jagannath at Puri in 1533 A.D.

Vaishnavism in Bengal received a distinct stamp from the life of Lord Gouranga which embodied and manifested the Radha spirit, the living symbol of mystic love at its highest, discovered in the moved delights of a divine efflorescence and fulfilled in possessing and being possessed by the Divine the all blissful Sri Krishna. If, according to later Vaishnava tradition, it is impossible for any one to be blessed with a vision of Sri Krishna without first obtaining the grace of Sri Radha, it is because in the Brindavan episode Radha’s love for Krishna had no parallel even among the marvellously selfless gopis of the Brinda groves. In the recent example of Sri Ramakrishna, we find his unexampled many-sided experience including in it this Chaitanya experience, this Vaishnava realisation of Radha-Krishna union, the spiritual fact of Love lost in the Supreme Bliss. Referring to this side of this Sadhana, Ramakrishna says: “the manifestation, in the same individual, of nineteen different kinds of emotion for God is designated in the books on Bhakti as Maha Bhava. An ordinary man takes a whole lifetime to express even a single one of these. But in this body (meaning himself) there has been a perfect manifestation of all nineteen." And this is no wonder to a close student of Paramahamsa’s life; for, in his own lifetime, there was the belief among his disciples, confirmed by himself, that he was Sri Chaitanya in a previous incarnation. In our own days we get a sublime conception of Radha from the writings of Sri Aurobindo. "Radha” he says, "is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material nature the supreme Ananda."

The influence of Chaitanya’s Bhakti on society in Bengal may be summed up in the beautiful words of Vivekananda. “His Bhakti”, says the great Vedantin, "ruled over the whole land of Bengal, bringing solace to everyone. His love knew no bounds. The saint or the sinner, the Hindu or the Muhammadan, the pure or the impure, the prostitute, the street-walker-all had a share in his love, all had a share in his mercy, and even to the present day, although greatly degenerated, as everything does become in time, his seat is the refuge of the poor, of the downtrodden, of the outcast, of the weak, of those who have been rejected by society."

Indeed the wonderful liberalism of the Seat was the inevitable result of Chaitanya’s central realisation of Divine love that found vent in the godly element of real humility and spirit of service; and his life presents a striking illustration of the truth of the poet’s lines:

Thou who pervadest all the worlds below, Yet sitst above, Master of all who work and rule and know, Servant of Love! Thou who disdainest not the worm to be Nor even the clod, Therefore we know by that humility That thou art God.¹⁰⁶