Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #46 – More Than Meets the Eye

I found the 16th chapter of the Antya-līlā of Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta very intriguing.

The last eight chapters (14-20) describe Śrī Caitanya’s intense feelings of separation from the Lord at the end of His life. He is repeatedly described there as lapitaṁ — one who talks like a crazy man. We are told that His transcendental madness is so mysterious and deep that:

“Even though one is very advanced and learned, he cannot understand it.” Antya-līlā 14.5

The reason I found chapter 16 so intriguing was because within these last chapters, which exclusively describe the Lord’s transcendental madness, this chapter focuses on the glories of mahā-prasādam. My immediate reaction, “that’s an interesting subject, but why here?”

This post is my attempt to explain why.

After Śrī Caitanya tastes and then distributes Jagannātha mahā-prasādam to His confidential associates, He comments:

“These ingredients, such as sugar, camphor, black pepper, cardamom, cloves, butter, spices and licorice, are all material. Everyone has tasted these material substances before.”

“However,” the Lord continued, “in these ingredients there are extraordinary tastes and uncommon fragrances. Just taste them and see the difference in the experience.

“Apart from the taste, even the fragrance pleases the mind and makes one forget any other sweetness besides its own.” Antya-līlā 16.108-111

Let’s unpack what the Lord is saying here.

When foodstuffs are offered to the Lord and then accepted by His devotee as prasādam, the experience, even the sensual one, mystically far exceeds in relish and inner satisfaction the tasting of those same ingredients as bhoga, food not offered to the Lord.

The potency of devotional items to invoke a sensual and emotional experience far beyond what those same material ingredients can normally arouse holds true with any sense experience in relation to God.

For example, the apparently ordinary syllables of mantra can please the ear far beyond what any mundane poetry or musical composition can offer, or the vision of the Deity or a picture of the Lord can be experienced as far more beautiful that any sculpture or painting an artist can create.

Although in general such experiences depend upon one’s purity and devotion, by the mercy of Śrī Krishna most sincere devotees regardless of their level of devotion are occasionally blessed with such experiences to encourage their faith.

How exactly does this happen?

The śāstras reveal that when something is spiritualized by offering it to God, and approached with the right devotion, we imperceptibly start experiencing objects of devotion through internal spiritual senses. In other words, we are perceiving the same thing but experiencing it through a totally different apparatus and in a totally different way.

I love how this this phenomenon is so clearly described in Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta.

“You should not consider devotional service merely an activity of the body, senses, and mind. It is in fact the eternal absolute reality, manifesting itself as the most intense ecstasy, beyond the material modes.”

Commentary: “ […] pure bhakti is never approached by material senses. Even though hearing is done with the ears, chanting with the tongue, remembering with the mind, and praying and other activities with the limbs of the body, these activities are not material; they are spiritual activities that can be performed only by a devotee’s awakened spiritual senses.” Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta 2.3.133

Now back to my initial quandary—how does this extensive discussion of mahā-prasādam fit into the later chapters of the Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta describing Śrī Caitanya’s extremely intense ecstasy? This is what I theorize:

We are warned repeatedly in the later chapters that we can’t judge Śrī Caitanya’s transcendental madness by logic or scholarship. Although such emotions may look exactly like intense anxiety and erotic longing, they are factually a spiritual reality born out of prema-bhakti and thus beyond the modes of nature. In other words, it is so important to understand that there is more than meets the eye when engaging with and trying to understand spiritual phenomena. And what better way to be introduced to this fundamental principle than Śrī Caitanya’s explanation of the inexplicable glories of mahā-prasādam?