Sri Caitanya Caritamrta

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, at the earnest request of the holy devotees of Vrndavana, the most sacred city in all of India, Krsnadasa Kaviraj Gosvami wrote his famous spiritual treatise Caitanya-caritamrta, describing the wonderful pastimes and precepts of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. "By the mercy of Lord Caitanya," he wrote, "a dumb man can recite perfect poetry, a lame man can cross over mountains, and a blind man can cross over mountains, and a blind man can see the stars in the sky."

Who was Lord Caitanya? A teacher, certainly, for His philosophical brilliance astounded the greatest scholars and logicians of His day. But besides being a teacher. He was a true saint, for He was always chanting the names of God and dancing, absorbed in ecstatic love for the Supreme Lord. Yet Krsna dasa regards Him as more than a teacher and more than a saint. Lord Caitanya, he asserts, is the Supreme Lord Himself playing the role of the Supreme Lord's devotee; no one, therefore, can be greater than Him.

But Caitanya-caritamrta, unlike todya's many sentimental exaltations of bogus paperback Gods, is a book of reason and evidence; indeed, it is a unique book of spiritual science. Now, the author of Bhagavad-gita As It is. The Nectar of Devotion, Sri Isopanisad and a host of other important spiritual texts had presented Caitanya-caritamrta in its fullness, verse by verse, with explanatory purports of extraordinary clarity and profundity. This book, therefore, offers sublime knowledge to one sincerely seeking the highest truth.

On the cover

Lord Caitanya in five features.