Text 360] Lord Caitanya’s Travels to the Holy Places 103
nor Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu accepts this sense gratificatory worship to be of any
spiritual significance.” The Mayavadis imagine themselves to be the Supreme.
They imagine that the Supreme has no personal form and that all His forms are
imaginary like the will-o’-the-wisp or a flower in the sky. Both Mayavadis and
those who imagine forms of God are misguided. According to them, worship of
the Deity or any form of the Lord is a result of the conditioned soul's illusion.
However, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu confirms the conclusion of Srimad-
Bhagavatam on the strength of His philosophy of acintya-bhedabheda-tattva. That
philosophy holds that the Supreme Lord is simultaneously one with and different
from His creation. That is to say, there is unity in diversity. In this way Sri Caitanya
Mahaprabhu proved the impotence of fruitive workers, speculative empiric phi-
losophers and mystic yogis. The realization of such men is simply a waste of time
and energy.

To set the example, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu personally visited temples in
various holy places. Wherever He visited, He immediately exhibited His ecstatic
love for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When a Vaisnava visits the temple
of a demigod, his vision of that demigod is different from the vision of the imper-
sonalists and Mayavadis. Brahma-samhita supports this. A Vaisnava’s visit to the
temple of Lord Siva is different from a nondevotee’s visit. The nondevotee con-
siders the deity of Lord Siva an imaginary form because he ultimately thinks that
the Supreme Absolute Truth is void. However, a Vaisnava sees Lord Siva as being
simultaneously one with and different from the Supreme Lord. In this regard, the
example of milk and yogurt is given. Yogurt is actually nothing but milk, but at the
same time it is not milk. It is simultaneously one with milk yet different from it.
This is the philosophy of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and it is confirmed by
Bhagavad-gita:

maya tatam idarh sarvam
jagad avyakta-murtind
mat-sthani sarva-bhatani
na caham tesv avasthitah
“By Me, in My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are
in Me, but | am not in them.” (Bg. 9.4)

The Absolute Truth, God, is everything, but this does not mean that everything
is God. For this reason Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His followers visited the
temples of all the demigods, but they did not see them in the same way an imper-
sonalist sees them. Everyone should follow in the footsteps of $ri Caitanya
Mahaprabhu and visit all temples. Sometimes mundane sahajiyas suppose that
the gopis visited the temple of Katyadyani in the same way mundane people visit
the temple of Devi. However, the gopis prayed to Katyayani to grant them Krsna
as their husband. Mundaners visit the temple of Katyayani to receive some ma-
