GAURANG GITA

Five thousand years ago, Sri Krsna delivered perfect spiritual knowledge to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kuruksetra. Although Lord Krsna personally did not write anything, His spiritual instructions were perceived by Sanjaya and compiled by Srila Vyasadeva. The immortal words of Sri Krsna became famous as the Bhagavad-gita, “The Song of God.”

In Kali-yuga, Lord Sri Kṛṣṇa and His eternal pleasure potency Srimati Radharani appeared five hundred years ago in a combined form as the Golden Avatara, Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu, to distribute krsna-prema. The mission of Lord Caitanya is to scientifically teach people how to develop pure love of God. Soon after His divine appearance in a high class brahmin family in Navadvipa, West Bengal, Lord Caitanya began teaching Sanskrit in an exclusive school on the bank of the Ganga. In His youth, Lord Caitanya was affectionately known as Visvambhara, Gaurahari, Gauranga or Nimai Pandita. At the age of sixteen, Nimai Pandita defeated a world famous scholar, a digvijaya pandita, named Keśava Kāśmiri.

At the age of twenty-four, Nimai Pandita took sannyasa and began traveling and preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over India. At this time, the Lord was known as Sri Kṛṣṇa Caitanya, Mahaprabhu and Lord Gauranga. Although Caitanya Mahaprabhu only wrote eight verses of spiritual instructions called Sikṣāṣṭaka, He was constantly speaking and giving lectures on bhakti-yoga and Vaisnava philosophy. Gauranga’s sublime teachings to Prakasananda Sarasvati, Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya, Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami have been studied and followed by thousands of devotees for the last five centuries. Besides the eight verses of His Sikṣāṣṭaka, Caitanya Mahaprabhu did not write any book with His own hand. The followers of Lord Gauranga, however, especially the six Gosvamis, wrote volumes of books on the basis of these eight verses.

From the Bhagavad-gita one learns that Sañjaya, the private secretary of Dhrtarastra, possessed a kind of television within the heart. Although sitting in a room far away from the battlefield of Kuruksetra, Sanjaya could still see everything that was occurring there and describe it through his mystic power. By the grace of Vyasadeva, his guru, Sañjaya’s senses were so purified that he could see Krsna and hear His words. Sanjaya learned the art of seeing internally, and thus he explained the Bhagavad-gitā by directly experiencing it within his heart.