(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 02 January 2018, Murwillumbah, Australia, Home Program Lecture)

From the very beginning, Nimai showed transcendental features as a child. For instance, he was showing the footprints of Vishnu on the bottom of his feet. There were also some amazing things that were happening in their family house. When Nimai was just a baby, his parents used to hear the footsteps of a child running around their house, yet Nimai was not even walking yet. So his father, Jagannatha-Mishra thought that it was the Saligram Sila that was running around the house.

Miracles were always surrounding Nimai. When he was a toddler, Nimai was kidnapped. The kidnappers took him and ran away with him, but Nimai bewildered their minds to the point that the kidnappers ended up running around in a circle and somehow came back right in front of Nimai’s family house. When the kidnappers saw this miracle, they quickly put him down and realised that this was not an ordinary being. Once there was a cobra that appeared in their garden, and Nimai was found lying on top of the cobra, just like Lord Vishnu lies on top of his bed on Ananta Sesa. So miracles were there from the outset, and continued in various ways.

Later, we saw how after Nimai had taken sannyasa, he went into the Jharkhand forests where he made all the animals chant and dance to the holy name. When there was a tiger lying in his path, he simply touched that tiger with his lotus feet and then the tiger jumped up and started chanting, ‘Hare Krsna!’, in a deep voice of course. And then Nimai waved his arms around the forest, so all the other animals like the deers and elephants also started to chant along with pure ecstasy. And at one point, the deer and tiger even started to embrace each other and kiss, which is kind of unusual. So that was a real miracle! So this way the Lord turned the entire forest upside down and miracles continued to follow him.

In Jagannatha Puri, at the time of Ratha Yatra, the enormous chariot of the Lord of the universe stopped moving. So the king sent some muscle men with big shoulders and all, and they started to push this chariot, but it did not move even one inch. Then the king brought in elephants to pull the chariot, still didn’t move. So Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu arrived, got rid of all these muscles and elephants, and then he went to the back of the chariot and touched it with his head, and immediately, the chariot started rolling down the road and those people that were pulling the chariot found the ropes simply lying in their hands.

But the greatest miracle that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu displayed was his incredible depth of love of God. It was beyond what was possible. How could someone cry so many tears? Before this Ratha Yatra, was the Snana Yatra or bathing of Lord Jagannatha. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu was dancing in front of the Lord and the water was bouncing from the body of Lord Jagannatha, but the most amazing thing was that more water was coming from the eyes of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in the form of tears. How was this possible? How could any body contain so much water? Streams were flowing from his eyes. So the love that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu possessed was truly miraculous.

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