Those who forget the transcendental nature of the Supreme Lord, His abode, His devotional service and His devotees consider all these to be but manifestations of material activity. When one thinks that there is a possibility of arguing about transcendence, he is called an agnostic, and when he thinks that there is a possibility to criticize transcendence, he is called an atheist. Lord Caitanya wanted to accept all kinds of agnostics, atheists, skeptics and unfaithfuls and swallow them in the flood of love of God. Therefore He accepted the renounced order of life in order to attract all these forces.
Lord Caitanya remained a householder until His twenty-fourth year, and in the twenty-fifth year of His life, He accepted the renounced order. After accepting the renounced order (sannyāsa), He attracted many other sannyāsīs. When He had been spreading the saṅkīrtana movement as a family man, many Māyāvādī sannyāsīs did not take His movement very seriously, but after the Lord accepted the sannyāsa order of life, He delivered speculative students, atheists and those who are attached to fruitive activities and unnecessary criticism. The Lord was so kind that He accepted all these people and delivered to them the most important factor in life: love of God.
To fulfill His mission of bestowing love of God upon conditioned souls, Lord Caitanya devised many methods to attract those people disinterested in love of God. After He accepted the renounced order, all agnostics, critics, atheists and mental speculators became His students and followers. Even many who were not Hindus and who did not follow the Vedic principles accepted Lord Caitanya as the supreme teacher. The only persons who avoided the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu were those sannyāsīs who were known as the Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares. The plight of such Māyāvādī philosophers is described by Śrī Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī: "The Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares were less intelligent because they wanted to measure everything by direct perception. But everything that is perceived is calculated by material perception. The Absolute Truth is transcendence, but according to them there is no variegatedness in transcendence, for they say that anything that is full of variegatedness is māyā."