SRI CAITANYA-CARITAMRTA
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, at the eamest
request of the holy devotees of Vrndavana, the
most sacred city in all of India, Kysnadasa
Kaviraja Gosvami wrote his famous spiritual trea-
tise Caitanya-caritamrta, describing the wonder-
ful pastimes and precepts of Lord Sri Caitanya
Mahaprabhu. “‘By the mercy of Lord Caitanya,”
he wrote, “a dumb man can recite perfect poetry,
a lame man can cross over mountains, and a
blind man can see the stars in the sky.”

Who was Lord Caitanya? A teacher, certainly,
for His philosophical brilliance astounded the
greatest scholars and logicians of His day. But
besides being a teacher, He was a true saint,
for He was always chanting the names of God
and dancing, absorbed in ecstatic love for the
Supreme Lord. Yet Kysnadasa regards Him as
more than a teacher and more than a saint.
Lord Caitanya, he asserts, is the Supreme Lord
Himself playing the role of the Supreme Lord’s
devotee; no one, therefore, can be greater than
Him.

But Caitanya-caritamrta, unlike todays many
sentimental exaltations of bogus paperback
Gods, is a book of reason and evidence; indeed,
it is a unique book of spiritual science. Now,
the author of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, The Nectar
of Devotion, Sri Isopanised and a host of other
important spiritual texts has presented Caitanya-
caritamrta in its fullness, verse by verse, with
explanatory purports of extraordinary clarity
and profundity. This book, therefore, offers
sublime knowledge to one sincerely seeking the
highest truth.

On the Cover

To bestow mercy upon Sarvabhauma Bhat-
tacarya, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu manifested
His four-handed Visnu form and then His
original form as Krsna.
