Lord's Ordinary Children by Gitasri Pani

With a desire to accept the service of His devotees, Mahaprabhu also happily ate various foodstuffs offered by them and began to describe previous experiences of the devotees headed by Srivasa. Thereafter, Sri Gaurasundara spontaneously extended His lotus feet to be worshiped, and all the devotees worshiped His lotus feet with various accumulated ingredients according to their respective desires. After worshiping Mahaprabhu with sixteen ingredients according to the prescriptions of the ten-syllable Gopala-mantra, the devotees offered various prayers and described His transcendental qualities and pastimes by glorifying Him as the cause of all causes, the controller of all controllers, and the Lord who has accepted the mood of a devotee to manifest His own service for delivering the fallen souls. This day, in response to the Lord’s gesture, the devotees happily worshiped Sri Gaura-Narayana, who is the Lord of Vaikuntha and full in six opulences, with various ingredients through the performance of the abhiseka ceremony meant for the King of kings. In this maha-prakasa pastime, He manifested all the forms of Visnu’s incarnations. On this day, however, the Supreme Lord Sri Gaurasundara concealed His mood as a devotee, and with a desire to accept the service of His surrendered devotees, He sat on the throne of Visnu for twenty-one hours and revealed that He is personally Lord Visnu, the shelter of all devotees. Sri Gaurasundara, who is the supreme teacher of everyone, regularly danced in the kirtana in the mood of a devotee, yet in His own mood He sometimes sat on the throne of Visnu as if unaware of what He was doing. Understanding the mood of the Lord, all the assembled devotees began to perform kirtana. One day Mahaprabhu came with Nityananda to the house of Srivasa. This chapter describes Sri Gaurasundara’s sata-prahariya-mahaprakasa, or twenty-one-hour divine manifestation, His sitting on the throne of Lord Visnu, the performance of His abhiseka by the devotees, the offering of prayers and the worship of Mahaprabhu with sixteen ingredients according to the rules and regulations prescribed with the ten syllable Gopala-mantra, the Lord’s eating foodstuffs offered by the devotees, Mahaprabhu’s narration of the previous histories of devotees headed by Srivasa, the devotee’s performance of evening arati, topics of the topmost devotee Sridhara, and the glories of Vaisnavas’ characteristics. Sri Chaitanya Bhagavat, Madhya Kanda, Chapter 9-10, English translation by Bhumipati dasa, Commentary by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada Chapter 9 – The Lord’s Twenty-One Hour Ecstasy and Descriptions of Sridhara and Other Devotees’ Characteristics

Lord's Ordinary Children by Gitasri Pani