During the time (The Lion Guru ) Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur Jagad Guru Prabhupada was considering sending a few of his disciples to foreign countries to spread the message of Sriman Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he met with Sri Rabindranath Tagore, the world-renowned author and winner of the Nobel prize in Literature, to inquire about his visit to the West to receive the Nobel prize.
Srila Jagad Guru Prabhupada enquired, “In your opinion, to which Western country should our Gaudiya Matha preachers first be sent to spread the message of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu?”
Sri Rabindranath Tagore replied, “None. It is unadvisable to send preachers to any western countries at this moment. Many unscrupulous people who earlier visited these places to preach Vedic Dharma have tarnished the image of Indian saints. As a result, the people of the western countries have lost faith in sadhus.”
After further discussion on the matter, Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada briefly introduced him to the ideology of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, which is the doctrine of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas. Sri Rabindranath Tagore, being captivated and moved by Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada’s presentation of Gaudiya philosophy said, “It is only if you yourself visit the western countries that great success in preaching will be assured. Everybody will certainly greet you with honour.“ Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada replied, “I will send persons who are just as qualified as me.”
During the conversation, while referring to pseudo Gaudiya Vaisnavas, Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada used the term prakrita-sahajiya. Upon hearing the term, Sri Rabindranath Tagore said, “I have never come across this term in my life; I have not seen this term anywhere in the dictionary.“
Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada explained, “The word sahajiya is a highly sacred term. It refers to those truly pure devotees of Sri Krishna whose hearts are filled with a spontaneous, unconditional love and affection for Him that does not depend on the statements of scriptures that glorify him as Bhagavan. Examples of such exalted, eternally perfect devotees are the residents of Vraja, like Sri Nanda, Sri Yasoda, Sri Radharani and others. Nowadays, many unqualified conditioned souls try to imitate the moods of these great, liberated personalities by deceitfully imposing such moods on their own character. Therefore, I use this word prakrita-sahajiya to refer to such persons, because nowadays, the prostitution of words, or the gross misrepresentation or concoction of the true meaning of words, to support one’s vested interest has become common practice. These days, the vast majority of people are incapable of understanding the actual imports of words, and so, perversions of terminology often remain unchecked.“
The underlying message in this account is that the words of Jagad Guru Srila Prabhupada did not belong to this material world, but rather to the transcendental world. He often used terms that were unknown even to the most famous and admirable scholars of society.
~from “Visuddha Chaitanya-Vani” Volume 1
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