2
Teachings of Lord Chaitanya
both ourselves and God. But God and ourselves, although both immortal, are different. The living entities have many activities, but have a tendency to fall down. God has no such tendency. He is All-powerful. He never comes under the control of material Nature, because material Nature is only a display of His energy.
There is a nice example of this: When I was flying from San Francisco, the plane was above the cloud ocean. Above the cloud was the sun; and though we came down through the cloud and everything in New York was dim, still, above the cloud, the sun was shining. A cloud cannot cover the whole world—it can't even cover the whole United States, which is not more than a speck in the universe. From the sky the skyscrapers are very tiny, just as from God's position all this nonsense becomes insignificant. I, the living entity, am very insignificant, and my tendency is to come down; but God hasn't got this tendency. The Supreme Lord doesn't come down to Maya, and more than the sun comes under the cloud. But we have the tendency to be controlled by Maya.  Mayavadis , impersonalist philosophers, say that because we are under the control of Maya in this world, when God comes, He is also put under the control of Maya. This is the fallacy of their philosophy.
Lord Chaitanya therefore is not one of us. He is Krishna Himself, the Supreme Living Entity. He doesn't come under the cloud of Maya. Krishna and His expansions, or even His higher devotees, are never in the clutches of Maya. Lord Chaitanya came to preach  Krishna Bhakti : Lord Krishna Himself is teaching us how to approach Krishna; just as the teacher, seeing a student not doing well, takes the pencil and says, "Do it like this, write like this: A, B, C." But we must not mistakenly think that the teacher is learning the ABC's. Teaching us how to become Krishna conscious is Lord Chaitanya's position, and we must study Him in that light.
In  Bhagavad Gita  the Lord says, "Give up all this nonsense and surrender to Me." And we say "Oh—surrender? Give up? But I have so many responsibilities." And Maya says to us, "Don't do it, or you'll be out of my clutches. Stay in my clutches, and I'll kick you." It's true; you are being kicked by Maya. Do you know how Maya kicks? The she-ass kicks the male-ass in the face when he comes for sex. Among the cats, they fight and whine. These are the teachings of Nature. She tricks. It is like the capture of an elephant. He is caught in the forest by the use of a trained she-elephant, who leads him and makes him fall into a pit. Maya has many activities, and her shackle is the female. Of course, male and female means this outer dress—we are all actually Krishna's servants. But we are shackled by iron chains which are