When Spiritual Energy comes Alive - Raghava Pandit Bhawan

Beyond sensory experience happens if we are open to it. We are often so entangled with our intellect and physical sensory mundane experiences that we don’t allow experience of higher realm to come to our life. But if we are open, sometimes those feelings of higher just descend to enrich our life beyond description and measure. Those experiences just get embossed in your psyche and memory forever and even works as a life changing catalyst.

I had a similar experience while visiting West Bengal this year in the month of October.

While having a morning walk, I decided to see the Ganga in Panihati which is quite a walkable distance from Sodepur. Watching the rising Sun during those morning hours is an amazing experience.

Image: Sunrise

When reached the Ganga Ghat, life activity started on the Ghat. Few were taking bath on the ghat, few were collecting water, boatmen checking their boats before starting business of the day.

Image: Boat on Ganga

I visited the Panihati ISKCON temple which has taken a good shape in the last few years and spent a few minutes on the Ghat of Ganga which is flowing touching the ISKCON temple.

While returning I saw ‘The Bat-Tree’ near the Ganga Ghat where Prabhu Nityananda met Zamindar Raghunath Narayandev.

Image: Bat Tree

Prabhu Nityananda was friend and disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the force behind the 'Bhakti Movement' in West Bengal and Odisha in the 16th century. On Prabhu Nityananda’s order, Raghunath distributed chira and curd to all pilgrims. This incident happened in the year of 1517. The day is still celebrated today in the name of ‘Dand Ustav’.

Recently, Thakur Ramakrishna also attended this festival of 'chira-dadhi' and danced in ecstasy in the streets of Panihati in the year 1883.

Holy footprints of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Prabhu Nityananda and Thakur Ramakrishna makes this place called Panihati a spiritual pilgrimage. If one can feel, one can time travel to those moments and can feel those moments.

There is a flex board hanged on the bat tree which describes the meeting of Nityananda and Raghunath and about Chira Dadhi Utsav. It also mentions Raghava Pandit who was a very favorite disciple of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and about Raghava Pandit’s house at Panihati itself.

In my earlier visit to Panihati, I never felt the interest to visit Raghava Pandit’s house. But this time while reading about Raghava Pandit, I just felt the urge to visit his house. I just felt that some unknown force was urging me to visit the house which was a walkable distance from the Bat tree.

I enquired with local people and reached the Raghava Pandit’s house in 5 mins. The external looks shows that it’s a quite old house. In the morning, it was serene. Though the premise was old, the house was maintained very neat and clean. I hardly saw 1 or 2 people there in the temple.

Image: Raghava Pandit Bhawan

Morning ceremony of beautifying deity with flowers, nice dresses was in progress and hence a big curtain was dropped which prevented people from seeing deity inside the garbha griha.

I sat quietly on the verandah near one pillar and tried to meditate. There was little gap while the curtain was moving with air and I could manage to take a peep on the idol of Lord Krishna, Radharani, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Prabhu Nityananda.

While looking at the idol, I felt pulled inside and had a serene meditative state. I was feeling a deep peace inside and outside. The feeling is distinctly different from our normal state. The peace descended and stayed with me for a quite long time and was not feeling like getting up. I was having the feeling of Lord Krisha and Radharani around. I felt the presence of Chainya Mahaprabhu who worshiped Lord Krishna and Radharani in this house of Raghava Pandit. The feeling was quite strong which engulfed me with a blanket feeling of peace and calmness. It was appearing in mind that though Chaitanya Mahaprabhu blessed Raghava Pandit and this house a couple decades back in the 16th century and His presence still permeates the place.

Same time it appeared in mind that there are so much commotion and chaos in our cities like Kolkata and other cities in India due to political dynamics of different parties and groups but real essence of survival of India lies in the spiritual (adhyatmic) power of places like Raghava Bhavan where spiritual giants planted their universal force called Love which keeps moving and sustaining the world which often not visible to our common eyes.

In India, we have plenty of such places like The Auroville, Golden Temple, Belur Math, Arunachalam etc.

I stood up after some time and I was still feeling the formless presence of Mahaprabhu. While looking around, one board with big write up caught my attention which says that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu assured Raghava Pandit that He will be always present in his house. I was perplexed and utterly amazed. In my meditation and after getting up from meditation also, I was feeling the strong divine presence of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Krishan around in the house premise of Raghava Pandit and this write up on board was validating the fact how true it is till today. Newton’s energy conservation theory popped into mind - energy can’t be created or destroyed. Spiritual energy being the highest form, the presence of Spiritual energy can be felt till today and years to come even though the promise was made in the year of 16th century.

Still the curtain was down and hence I decided to leave without seeing the face of bigraha of Lord Krishna and Radharani in a proper manner. As I was about to leave, the pujariji opened the curtain and called me to take a look at the idols of Krishna, Radha, Chaitnya Mahaprabhu and Nitai. I was feeling the play and felt the blessing of almighty as if He was smiling at me.

Image: Radha Krishna (Pic courtesy: https://panihatidandomahotsav.weebly.com/)

Pujariji started chit chatting with me and we spent a few minutes discussing the current corona situation in the country. He requested me to visit again, which I agreed to.

While coming out, I entered the samadhi place of Raghava pandit and Kadamba tree and took his blessings.

Feeling blessed, I came out of the pious place of Raghava Pandit house and only one thought was reverberating in my mind - it’s because of spiritual forces (Universal Love) of places like Raghava Bhawan that India is still thriving and so is the world.