Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c6.s3.1

c6.s3.1

Although Caitanya possessed great qualities of leadership and extraordinary power over minds of men, he did not at any time of his career concern himself directly with the organisation of his followers. Absorbed in his devotional ecstasies, he hardly ever sought to build up a cult or a sect. If such a cult or sect gathered itself round him, it was due to the charm of his personality and the powerful appeal of his evident devotion. The enthusiasm of some of his more practical, or more scholastically inclined, followers would feign to see in him a great organiser and expounder of a system, but neither propagating zeal nor theological ambition ever entered his simple life of intense religious emotion. If some notable conversions were achieved, they were not the result of any direct missionary effort on his part but, as the records themselves indicate, they were due to the powerful impression he could create on receptive minds by his outstanding religious personality. Even admitting that he could employ philosophy or theology as a weapon in argument, it was yet his intimate and vivid sense of spiritual truth which cast a mystic spell and called forth a deep and lasting response.¹ One must indeed admire Caitanya's wonderful religious enthusiasm which could enthrall men of great capacity and inspire them with a life-long zeal for sectarian pioneering.