The Great Change
The great transformation in Chaitanya's life dates from a trip to Gayā, which he undertook about the year 1508, when 21 or 22 years of age, for the purpose of performing his father's Śrāddha at this celebrated shrine.
Gayā had been a Buddhist sacred place for 2,000 years; it was also a Vaishnava tīrtha, or holy spot, as it continues to be at the present day.
Here was the famous Viṣṇupāda, the footprint of Vishnu, which was sufficient to make it a centre of pilgrimage for the devout worshippers of Vishnu of whatever sect.
To perform the Śrāddha at Gayā gave the ceremony peculiar efficacy, which accounts for the pilgrimage of a dutiful son within easy distance of the shrine.
Just what happened at Gayā to work so momentous a change in the young scholar's life it is difficult to say.
The principal factor was a meeting there with the same sannyāsī who had earlier sought to influence him religiously, the Mādhva ascetic, Īśvara Purī.
Doubtless the sacred surroundings and the sight of the pilgrims worshipping with simple fervour revived the stored-up memories and impressions of devotion to which we have referred, and aroused in him capacities for religious emotion which had been lying dormant in his nature.
The sannyāsī now found the opportunity denied him previously, and the result of those days together was the complete turning of the young man from scholastic pursuits and desires to a life of religious devotion.
Chaitanya took Īśvara Purī as his Guru, and returned from Gayā a bhakta, i.e. a man devoted in heart and life to the service of Krishna.
Evidently there took place here one of those peculiar revolutions in character common to emotional temperaments in all religions, known in Christian terminology as conversion, or, more quaintly, an experience of religion.
Of the reality and transforming quality of this experience in Chaitanya’s life there can be no doubt. His whole after life, with its immense influence, is the direct outcome of the change wrought so strangely at Gayā.
On his return to Navadvīpa the change in him became the talk of the town and the very real concern of his mother. The mystic trances, which were so striking a feature of Chaitanya's emotional experience, had their beginning now.
To his poor mother, already bereft of one son, they were a source of alarm and distress. She had him treated by physicians, believing him on the verge of insanity.
The transformation and its causes were eagerly discussed in the daily gatherings of the Vaishnavas. His new spirit was thus reported there:
He is thoroughly changed; he no longer cares to comb his beautiful curling hair; his mother follows him with wistful eyes, but he talks not with her and cries, Oh God, and sees visions of him in the clouds;
he runs with his hands outstretched and eyes full of tears to catch the Unseen; despising his soft couch and white bed he sleeps on the bare earth;
he no longer wears his gold chains, ear-rings and lockets, nor the fine cloth of silk with black borders ; he neither takes his bath nor does he eat his usual meals,
he no longer worships gods and goddesses, nor does he recite the sacred hymns as prescribed by the śāstras but weeps and cries, Oh God, do not hide your face from me!
With great hope and joy these devotees welcomed to their midst the one who was to work such wonders amongst them.