Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Ji is the avatar (Divine descension) of Radha and Krishna, and Raya Ramanand is actually a great scholar who surrendered to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Ji and gained the ultimate knowledge. In this conversation Mahaprabhu Ji is asking the questions and Raya Ramanand is trying to answer (recorded in the book Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya-leela, chapter 8: “Talks Between Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Ramanand Raya). It seems, on one hand, that Mahaprabhu Ji is asking (questions) because when a person asks, it means they do not know, but that is not actually why he is asking. He is asking so that the knowledge can be revealed.
Just like Parvati (the Divine consort of Lord Shiv) asked questions in the Ramayan (the Divine epic history of Lord Ram), and Shankar Ji (Lord Shiv) gave the answers, and because of that conversation all of Ram’s leelas (Divine pastimes) were revealed - just like Arjun (the disciple of Lord Krishna) questioned Shree Krishna (the Supreme Lord) in the Bhagavad Gita (the Song of God), and because of that the knowledge of the Gita is available today. And just like in the Bhagwatam, Uddhav (Krishna’s intimate devotee) asked questions and Shree Krishna gave the answers throughout the whole 11th canto. And because of that we have all of that knowledge available to us today.
Similarly, Mahaprabhu Ji was asking questions and Raya Ramanand was answering. But although He was asking the questions, Mahaprabhu Ji was also judging the answers. He was telling whether the answer was good enough or whether more information was needed. So His question was,
“What is the aim of the soul?”
A very basic question. In other words,
“Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What are we supposed to be striving for?”
