The incarnations of the Lord, Krishna or Visnu, are as numerous as the waves of the ocean, a way to say that they are infinite. They keep coming and coming, performing so many different acts in order to please His devotees, destroy demons and establish the principles of spiritual life. For us, members of the Vaisnava Gaudiya tradition, there is no doubt that Sri Krishna and Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu are the most important among all divine incarnations. Sri Krishna appeared more than 5,100 years ago , Mahaprabhu more than 520 years ago . We have a vast literature telling us of these two divine descents and Their activities with Their friends. Since we know that Krishna returned on this Earth as Caitanya Mahaprabhu, is only natural that we want to know who among His associates in Goloka Vrindavana came and in which body.

Srila Rupa Goswami, one of the six Goswamis of Vrindavana, was an incarnation of Rupa Manjari, the most important of the eight confidential maidservants of Srimati Radharani in the eternal transcendental Vrindavana. It is said that without taking shelter of Rupa Gosvami one cannot enter into the pastimes of Lord Caitanya, and without taking shelter of Rupa Manjari one cannot enter into the confidential loving pastimes of Sri Sri Radha Krishna. Srila Rupa Gosvami's lineage can be traced back to Karnataka, South India where his Sarasvata brahmana descendants held influential positions. Rupa Gosvami's nephew, Jiva Gosvami has explained in his Laghu Toshani that Rupa's descendants were of the Bharadvaja gotra and were learned in the Yajur Veda.

Two messenger poems with text & translation.

Sanātana Gosvāmī wrote Bṛhad-vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī, an elaborate commentary on the Tenth Canto to explain in detail what Śrīdhara Svāmī covered briefly, and to give devotional meaning where Śrīdhara Svāmī gave brahmanvada explanations. Jīva Gosvāmī wrote Laghu-vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī as a summary version of Bṛhad-vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī. The commentaries on first eight chapters of the Tenth Canto are virtually the same but after that point there are increasing differences. Ultimately this commentary is approximately same size as the Bṛhad-vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī. He completed this work in Śakābda 1504.

Sri Chaitanya-charitamrta is the main work on the life and teachings of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the incarnation of Krishna who appeared in India five hundred years ago. Lord Chaitanya introduced the chanting of the holy names of God as the prescribed method of God-realization for our time. He began what is today called the Hare Krishna movement, since the movement's founder, Srila Prabhupada, comes in the Chaitanya line of spiritual masters. Lord Chaitanya transformed the face of India in four respects: philosophically, by encountering, defeating and converting the greatest philosophers and thinkers of His day; religiously, by organizing the largest, most widespread theistic movement in India's history; socially, by His strong challenges to the religious inequities of the caste system; politically, by His organization of a massive civil disobedience movement in Bengal, more than four centuries before Gandhi. This English translation with commentary, by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, reveals his consummate Bengali and Sanskrit scholarship, his intimate familiarity with the precepts of Sri Chaitanya, and his pure devotion to God.

At the final hour . . . This amazing narrative is based on the story of Ajamila from the Sixth Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam. The law of karma states that we're all responsible for our actions, and death is the crucial moment when mysterious forces acting according to this law work behind the scenes to determine our destiny. As the sinful Ajamila lay on his deathbed, he was terrified to see three fierce, humanlike creatures coming to drag him out of his dying body and take him to the lord of death for punishment. Surprisingly, Ajamila escaped this terrible fate. How? A Second Chance: The Story of a Near-Death Experience teaches vital truths about the fundamental nature of the self and reality. At a time when reincarnation is quickly gaining acceptance, not only with the growing ranks of people reporting out-of-body and near-death experiences but with the public at large, A Second Chance can show one how to use meditation and yoga techniques to overcome the obstacles of materialism, meet the challenge of death, and ultimately attain spiritual perfection.