During Caitanya Mahāprabhu's time there were also other impersonalist philosophers known as the Māyāvādī philosophers of Saranātha. Saranātha is a place near Benares where Buddhist philosophers used to reside, and even today many stūpas of the Buddhist Māyāvādīs can be seen. The Māyāvādī philosophers of Saranātha are different from the impersonalists who believe in the impersonal manifestation of Brahman. According to the Saranātha philosophers, there is no spiritual existence at all. The fact is that both the Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares and the philosophers of Saranātha are entrapped by material nature. None of them actually know the nature of Absolute Transcendence. Although superficially accepting the Vedic principles and considering themselves to be transcendentalists, the philosophers of Benares do not accept spiritual variegatedness. Because they have no information about devotional service, they are called nondevotees, or those who are against the devotional service of Lord Kṛṣṇa.
The impersonalists speculate on the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His devotees and subject them to the tests of direct perception. However, the Lord, His devotee and His devotional service are not subject to direct perception. In other words, spiritual variegatedness is unknown to the Māyāvādī philosophy; therefore all the Māyāvādī philosophers and sannyāsīs criticized Lord Caitanya when He was conducting His saṅkīrtana movement. They were surprised to see Lord Caitanya after He accepted His sannyāsa order from Keśava Bhāratī, for Keśava Bhāratī belonged to the Māyāvādī school. Since Lord Caitanya therefore belonged to the Māyāvādī sect of sannyāsīs, the Māyāvādīs were surprised to see Him engaged in chanting and dancing instead of hearing or reading Vedānta, as is the custom. The Māyāvādī philosophers are very fond of Vedānta, and they misinterpret it in their own way. Instead of understanding their own position, they criticized Lord Caitanya as an unauthorized sannyāsī, arguing that because He was a sentimentalist, He was not actually a bona fide sannyāsī.