Divine Life of HDG Srila Bhakti Prakash Aranya Goswami Maharaj
One of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada’s spiritual descendants is Srila Bhakti Prakash Aranya Goswami Maharaj. He was born in the village of Gangarampur, Jessore, Bangladesh in 1887. When he was born, his parents gave him the name Yadunath, which means Lord of Yadava’s dynasty. Since his childhood, he had a spontaneous attachment to Sri Sri Radha Krishna’s services. According to family tradition and pressure, he got married but the Lord did not give him any children.
Although Yadunath faced lots of obstacles in his family life, he never left his service mood. Yadunath used to run a shop in his village. Once, Srila Prabhupada Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur (Srila Prabhupada) came to Yadunath’s village area with his preaching team. The local people arranged one public program with Srila Prabhupada’s discourses and Mahajan Padavali kirtans. After the programs, Yadunath came to see Srila Prabhupada, personally; at that time, Srila Prabhupada gave him the instruction to engage in the service of Lord Hari to his best ability. After hearing Srila Prabhupada’s instruction, Yadunath immediately decided to leave his shop as well as home and came to Sri Gaudiya Math, Bag Bazar, Kolkata with Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada saw his skill for spreading the loving message of Lord Chaitanya and his sound knowledge of different sastras. He was always preaching at universities and to educated persons like professors. All of them became impressed hearing his philosophical explanations. He was also skilled in publishing different devotional books and magazines. Seeing his various skills in publications of magazines and books, Srila Prabhupada became very happy and bestowed his mercy upon Maharaj. Whenever Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj used to give discourses, the discourses were replicas of Srila Prabhupada Bhaktisiddhanta’s words. After Srila Prabhupada’s physical departure, most of the time, Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj used to stay in Kolkata at the Sri Chaitanya Gaudiya Math temple of his godbrother, Srila Bhakti Dayita Madhav Goswami Maharaj. Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj had lots of enthusiasm for preaching and used to travel with his godbrothers and other brahmacharis. He used to perform the Vrindavan Dham and Navadvipa Dhama parikramas barefoot.
One time, Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj had finished his preaching tour in Bangladesh and was crossing the Padma River by boat. When the boat was in the middle of the river, a huge storm arrived. The steersman said, “Oh, Sadhu! We are in trouble. We will not be able to survive the storm.” Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj stood up holding his sannyasa danda and started crying and chanting, “Jay Prabhupada! Jay Prabhupada! Jay Prabhupada!” At the time, Srila Prabhupada was at Bag Bazar Gaudiya Math; he called all the brahmacharis and told them, “Everyone should chant kirtan. Aranya Maharaj is in trouble.” Everyone started chanting along with Srila Prabhupada. Meanwhile, the huge storm began to calm down at the Padma River. Seeing this, the steersman fell at the feet of Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj on the boat; he was crying and said, “Oh Sadhu! By your mercy, today, I have survived, the boat has survived and the other people traveling on this boat have survived.”
Before his physical departure, Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj manifests illness pastimes for two months at Sri Chaitanya Gaudiya Math, Vrindavan. After that, he came to Bengal for preaching purposes and started to travel with his godbrothers. On Friday 6th January 1967, Ekadasi at 6:30 pm in the house of Nani Gopal Kundu located in Dhalchita, Basirhat, 24 Parganas, West Bengal, Srila Aranya Goswami Maharaj was chanting the sloka “tava kathamrtam tapta jivanam” and left his body surrounded by his godbrothers and disciples. He was 80 years old. Maharaj’s exemplary preaching enthusiasm, austerity, adjustment with all devotees including his godbrothers, disciples, householders, and his attentive listening to Gurudeva’s discourses which he later repeated, as it is, are our inspiration for following in the footsteps of guru and Vaishnavas. If anyone reads his life history, one will definitely get pure devotion for following in the footsteps of the spiritual master and of the Vaishnavas, which is the main goal of Vaishnava practice.
