The Power of His Religious Experience
The emotional fervour, which required for its expression the strenuous exertions of Chaitanya's sankirtan and dance, was a new element in Vaishnavism, at least in north India.
This statement is true in spite of the fact that the Bhāgavata Purāṇa has much to say about singing praises to Krishna.
It is not asserted that Chaitanya created the kirtan, for it was known long before his day.
It is true to say, however, that he transformed it. None of the other sects based upon the Bhāgavata Purāṇa developed anything comparable to the Nadia outburst.
We may rightly speak of it, therefore, as a new contribution to bhakti; and its continuance in the sect after Chaitanya marked off the Bengal Vaishnavas as possessing a distinct characteristic.
The possession of emotional capacities like Chaitanya's would have marked a man in any sect, but enlisted in the service of a faith like the bhakti cult, the result could hardly fail to be extraordinary.
Here lay the secret of its great appeal to the heart of the common people. Chaitanya wrought upon their feelings until the contagion of his own fervent bhakti swept them off their feet.
As the Bengalis are a people in whom the emotional element is strong, this type of appeal was peculiarly fitted to evoke a popular response.
It was this aroused emotional power of the group, finding vent through the kirtan in its various forms, that became so effective a propagandist agency.
Thus the very power of the movement to propagate itself lay in the immense vitality of Chaitanya's religious experience.
A further evidence of the effect of his experience is seen in the new spirit which he imparted to asceticism:
He brought into it an element of joyousness that lit up the sombre and forbidding aspect that Indian asceticism usually wears.
The lyric strain that was such an ineradicable element in Chaitanya's devotion, and the emotions of his heart so easily stirred to overflowing
- these endowments of a generous nature could not be changed or subdued by the assumption of the yellow robe and the mendicant's bowl.
To the end of the day Chaitanya remained a minstrel of Hari, with a song in his heart and the lilt of it ever upon his lips:
How far this spirit was perpetuated in the ascetic order of the sect, among the vairāgīs, it is not possible to say. But it is easy to believe that a real measure of the same spirit has characterised these men down through the years.
Certainly song appears to be their chief characteristic today, even in their degradation, and the ever-present ektārā, and the even cruder gopīyantra, simple instruments of one string, remain as humble symbols of the lyric quality that was the glory of their master's life.
Another effect of his religious experience upon the sect is a most interesting and important one:
This has to do with the way in which Chaitanya's whole life soon came to be the norm by which the songs about Rādhā and Krishna were interpreted.
This will be dealt with when we come to the literature of the sect:
Suffice it here to say that, as the years went by, men saw with increasing clearness that Chaitanya’s life was a drama of the eternal longing of the human soul for the Infinite.
This was also the interpretation that came to be put upon the Vrindāvan legends,
whereby the too-evident sensuousness of the poetry glorifying Krishna's amours was sought to be transmuted into a spiritual allegory of the divine love.
So it came about quite naturally that the life of the master was used to illustrate and interpret the literature of the movement. This is the meaning of the Gaurachandrikā an invocation to Chaitanya, which is invariably sung at the beginning of kirtan:
The singer sings the story of some incident in the life of Chaitanya revealing his passion for Krishna, and this provides the key for the proper understanding of the Rādhā-Krishna songs which follow.