Chaitanya Movement | History | II - 4

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Absorption in Bhakti

There now followed a period quite distinct in Chaitanya’s life, which, although brief, was of untold significance for the Vaishnava faith in Bengal.

From this time on, his whole life was centred in the Vaishnava group in Navadvīpa.

Absolutely abandoning all scholastic interests and worldly concerns of every sort, he threw himself heart and soul into their life and worship.

From the first he seemed to incarnate the very spirit of their devotions. The lord Krishna became the centre of all his thoughts.

His energetic, expansive temperament found, in the emotional worship characteristic of the Krishna bhakti cult, just the sort of medium suited to call forth all the emotional energies of his nature.

His attainments and position in Navadvīpa made him a very desirable accession to the Krishna faith, and these, together with the character of his bhakti, made him the natural leader of the little community.

The chief items in the daily programme of the Vaishnava believers were the gathering for the reading of the scriptures at various homes of the faithful, and the evenings spent in chorus-singing in praise of Krishna.

Chaitanya gave himself whole-heartedly to this musical worship, called kirtan. The courtyard of a certain Śrīvāsa was the centre for the evening devotions:

Here, night after night, Chaitanya found an atmosphere so highly emotionalized and a fellowship so congenial and enthusiastic as to arouse him to a high pitch of excitement.

This courtyard figures very prominently in the history and hymnology of the sect in Bengal. Chaitanya himself in later days, when as sannyāsī residing at Purī, used to speak of it with affection and a trace of homesickness.

Although long since swallowed up by the Bhāgīrathī river, what purports to be this famous courtyard is still the haunt of pious pilgrims at Navadvīpa.

The kirtan was chorus-singing to the accompaniment or drums and cymbals. The accompanying instruments played no small part in the general results attained.

The khole, a long cylindrical-shaped drum with a peculiar detonation, and the kartāl, small brass cymbals, were so invariably associated with the Vaishnava kirtan from the beginning that they have long been looked upon as Vaishnava symbols.

The strange power of these instruments to stir the emotions of a devotee is well illustrated in the kirtan:

As it progressed, to the stimulus of song and instruments were soon added rhythmical bodily movements and hand-clapping in unison, and, as excitement increased, an abandon of dancing.

The sankirtan, or chanting of hymns by Nimāi and his companions, was unlike anything then known:

After the instruments had been played in concert for a while, during which the singers composed and concentrated their minds, the chanting of the hymns commences.

Nimāi, beside himself with bhakti, rises up and begins to dance. His companions, in a moment being as it were electrified by his performance, join Nimāi.

Nimāi dances on with uplifted arms and with eyes turned upwards, and from time to time cries out, Haribole, which means, say Hari, or simply, Bole bole ...

The soul of the kirtan was, of course, Nimāi, whose influence awoke profound religious enthusiasm in his companions, who felt themselves immersed, as it were, in a sea of divine bhakti...

Every one present was, in spite of himself, carried away by the torrent of religious excitement.

Beginning in the evening, the kirtan would increase in volume and emotional intensity as the hours passed.

The fervour of excitement, induced by the group acting upon one another, mounting higher and higher, eventually produced all the excesses of hysteria and dementia. It is difficult to conceive of the energy, both physical and emotional, expended in these exercises.

Men sang and shouted at the top of their voices hour after hour, dancing and jumping about in ecstatic abandon, until total exhaustion or unconsciousness brought their devotions to an end.

In all this display Chaitanya proved himself past-master. Gifted with a fine voice, he never failed to touch the hearts of the devotees by his singing of the love of Rādhā and Krishna.

Then, as the increased volume of song wrought upon his own emotions, he would spring to his feet, and, with arms high above his head, begin to dance in the midst of the singers.

This would continue until the perspiration poured in streams from his body and the veins stood out upon his forehead.

Often he would fall upon the ground in a stupor as the climax to this wild orgy, and remain thus for a long time. These were believed to be trances in which he entered into full communion with the Beloved of his devotions.

Often he would be taken by something very much like an epileptic seizure, with frothing at the mouth and rigid body, out of which he would come with crying and tears as though torn away from a beauteous vision.

Sometimes at the rendition of a touching song about Rādhā’s longing he would fall to weeping, and sit or stand transfixed, shedding copious tears, lost to all sense of time or surroundings.

Again, as the kirtan rose to a climax he would break away from the circle of weeping, perspiring, dancing devotees, and dash off at top speed in a wild run, until exhaustion or a seizure brought him down.

We even read of his climbing trees under the stress of excitement, and of going through all the antics of a madman, raving, and shouting the name of Krishna or Hari incessantly.

The translator of the principal biography of Chaitanya, a modern historian and scholar of established reputation, speaks very truly of the scenes of ecstasy, tireless exertion in kirtan, madness and miracles, which form the extant history of this period of Chaitanya' s life.

The break with his old life which the Gayā trip had produced was complete and unconditional.

From the interests of a proud young scholar, belonging to the aristocracy not only of birth but of learning, with all its sense of superiority and pride of attainment,

he had suddenly turned to become a religious devotee of a cult despised by scholars, and marked in their eyes alike by its lack of social standing and the grotesque absurdity of its practices.

But the break was not only one of social connection and outward attachment; it was a disruption of the very innermost habit and inclination of the mind.

This is seen in the clean sweep the new bhakti enthusiasm made of all the intellectual interests of his former life:

The scholarly pursuits of a pandit, the atmosphere and habitudes of the tol life, even the zest of the disputant and the relish for the dialectic fray - all these things had passed from his life, as though they had never existed for him.

Outside the Vaishnava scriptures - principally the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and a few Bengali Vaishnava poets - he seems to have read next to nothing after the change.