His spiritual master had ordered him to preach in the West; and now with the success of his Krsna consciousness society, the Western Vaisnavas required a center in Mayapur where they could reside and worship and receive the immense benefit of the holy dhama. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati had stressed the great importance of Mayapur, and some of his sannyasi disciples had temples there. Why shouldn’t the International Society for Krishna Consciousness also be able to take shelter of Mayapur? Since birth, Prabhupada had been aware of the significance of Lord Caitanya and His dhama, Sri Mayapur. He had grown up in Calcutta, where everyone knew of Lord Caitanya, and because his father, Gour Mohan De, had been a pure devotee of Lord Caitanya, from childhood he had sung the Benga- li songs of Gaura-Nitai and Their pastimes in the land of Gauda. He had imbibed deeply the teachings and pastimes of Lord Caitanya, especially after meeting his spiritual master in Calcutta in 1922. Lord Caitanya had spent His first twenty-four years in Mayapur and Navadvipa. Yet since His manifest pastimes there almost five hundred years ago, the places of those pastimes had been obscured, the Lord’s birthsite lost, and His teachings confused and misused. Despite the disciplic line of pure devo- tees from Lord Caitanya, not until the advent of Bhaktivinoda Thakura, the father of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, did Lord Caitanya’s sankirtana movement and pure teachings begin to emerge. Bhaktivinoda Thakura published many books and preached to rees- tablish the intellectual, moral, and spiritual integrity of Caitanya Vaisnavism. He researched and explored the land of Navadvipa, ascertaining the exact birthsite of the
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